Why is that? S230 protects platform from trolls. Look at Twitch right now. You could run up to a stream in real-life, blast copyrighted music, and get the streamer banned for life.
How can you be held legally liable for content on your platform when you can’t actually control that content.
most of this stuff sounds like bad news, but I have felt for a while that we need to address the issue of moderation on the largest social media platforms. I don't think it should be a binary choice between safe harbor and doing any moderation whatsoever, but there ought to be some sort of gradient for liability. that is, the more you remove stuff you don't like, the more accountable you should be for whatever stuff you continue to host. as an extreme example, suppose you have a billion users and a hundred of them are making libelous posts about some guy. you shouldn't be able to remove everything but those posts and claim safe harbor because it's user generated content.
> the more you remove stuff you don't like, the more accountable you should be for whatever stuff you continue to host
It seems to me that this just creates a perverse incentive to never moderate anything. How would that be an improvement? At a minimum, you’d end up with a space overrun by spammers.
The platform can provide tools that allows users to moderate what they want. RES on reddit is good at that, you can make it so you don't see posts from certain users, filter posts and links, etc.
What happens if the users are the ones that moderate to include only the libellous content, per the GP’s example? Is the provider then responsible for that in this world where more moderation = more liability? Do the volunteer moderators become the liable parties instead? What if a user is also an employee of the company, does that make the company liable again?
While I like the idea of self-policing communities, it doesn’t always work so well in reality (Slashdot’s comment voting system was great at burying bad content during the site’s heyday—though it never eliminated it—now it works pretty poorly because most of the audience has shifted away. Reddit’s subreddit moderation system can be great, except for the racism[0].)
This seems to me like a poorly thought through solution and I’m not really sure what the goal is.
GP’s comment isn’t referring to the tools given to volunteer moderators. They are referring (and strictly so) to the tools that end-users can use to moderate what they themselves want to see.
Oh, I see. My mistake. It makes no sense to me that a user choosing to censor content would solve any institutional problem so it didn’t even cross my mind that someone would bring it up. Thanks for the clarification!
maybe I didn't express this clearly, but the scale of the platform (in users, and possibly also revenue) should be taken into account. a forum the size of HN with only a couple moderators should have most or all of the current safe harbor protections. but if a platform the size of facebook wants to pick and choose what kind of content is allowed, it should face some liability for whatever it allows to stay up. maybe not the same as if I post something libelous on my own personal website, but some fraction of that, proportional to the degree of moderation.
the point is not to discourage moderation entirely, but to make it a bit more costly/risky so that the influence of the biggest players is checked somewhat.
It sets up a two-tired internet: one tier for sites with third party content, with rules and compliance and failure modes and enforcement; and one tier for sites which don’t allow third party content. It seems designed to setup a regime or structure or legal framework to force platforms to allow third party content which would otherwise violate the platforms’ terms of service or other guidelines, or force a legal standoff with the government.
It removes control of the site from site operators. This would result it a system ripe for selective enforcement. Not a fan.
Not a fan of how sites currently selectively enforce their terms of service either, whether directly through employees or hired contractors, or indirectly via community moderators. Selective enforcement is the common thread running through this topic on all its sides: the questionable or controversial content and its creators; the platforms and hosts; and the government and its representatives, eager to also have a seat at the selective enforcement table.
>Section 230 is an essential legal pillar for online speech. And when powerful people don’t like that speech, or the platforms that host it, the provision becomes a scapegoat for just about every tech-related problem.
Does anyone actually believe this is an authoritarian attempt to squash speech that is "speaking truth to power"?
This is the result of years of work to remove any dissenting voice from the generally Left-leaning sites of the Internet -- Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc. First they started disabling comment sections, calling all opposition "trolls". Then they tried to deplatform, go after advertisers, etc. Most recently, two sites were dropped from AdSense because they had unmoderated comment sections. Not only is Google saying what can live on it's platform, but also what can live on the sites of others.
But wait...they're a private company and have every right to remove people from their platform. Fine, then they lose all government protection from the results of their choice to decide what legal information people can and cannot see.
I’d rather the sites themselves decide than the US government decide. You can always go to a different site. But once we have the government intervening and saying “this is what is acceptable speech online, this is what isn’t”, that’s a whole nother level of censorship I’d rather avoid.
> this is what is acceptable speech online, this is what isn’t
But that isn't what they're saying. They're saying, "if you are deciding what is acceptable speech, you're now responsible for it." And for the record, I absolutely agree.
I only consider sewing-related posts acceptable on my sewing message board. If I moderate anything else, I'm suddenly responsible for any libel that gets posted while I'm asleep?
I think he meant that people posting instructions on how to see country flags or how to make a swastika or gay rainbow flag should not be moderated, of you do moderate then you are liable (for example if someone post instructions to sew a KKK hood and you refuse to remove that, but you remove other things, then you get sued for condoning hate speech)
That interpretation doesn't follow from GP's position of "if you are deciding what is acceptable speech, you're now responsible for it."
Removing off-topic posts is just as much "deciding what is acceptable speech" as is removing on-topic posts that happen to be posts I don't like. That is to say, the consideration of what is on-topic vs. off-topic is at its core a decision of what is acceptable.
The problem is that it’s very hard to write a law that both bans the moderation of political speech, and would allow the hypothetical sewing forum operator to ban non-sewing content.
How do you define political? How do you handle extreme political ideologies that advocate for violence too? Who has the power to decide which speech is moderation proof? How do you avoid abuse when politicians eventually control such a system? And how do you survive legal challenges to the fact that you’ve created a third type of extra protected speech?
Right? And even if there were some magical law that could distinguish between "off-topic" and "on-topic," that would still prevent me from running my little sewing site - because if I truly don't want the KKK hoods on there and I remove them, I'm suddenly still responsible for anything else that gets posted. So I'd either get no sleep because I'm constantly reviewing every post, have to hire a dedicated moderation team, or give in to the trolls entirely.
S230 is not just a "big tech" shield, it literally enables internet communities as we know them to exist.
If you'll look at the DOJ proposal, it's not requiring you to turn your message board into 4chan. You can moderate whatever you like, you just have to be clear in the TOS what content you are moderating.
That would have the opposite effect you’re hoping for.
If the bar for Twitter becoming responsible for every yahoo’s tweet is set that low, they will have a hair trigger on what it takes to get banned. Why risk it?
I guess the alternative is to ban all moderation and let every site turn into Gab, which sounds pretty awful to me.
Libertarians are real free enterprise until it affects their lives...
But before I get thrashed for hurthing feelings, the real problem is these networks act like pubs and open networks. Paid amplification is almost certainly the problem in that it allows money to act as speech. by allowing it to reach more people that didnt seek it. Historically a wild fringe idea stayed that way because it was hard to convert people at scale. Now a fringe/bad idea coming from a group of power and "pump up the juice."
It would be interesting if they either limited the pay for audience equation or create hypertransperency around who is behind the message.
All in all, Facebook is going to be heavily regulated over the next decade and I hope they're diversifying somewhere. The newspapers were fractured, "The Bells," and it seems historically governments step in after about 10-20 years of abuse.
Paid amplification isn't the fundamental problem, but it contributes. The root of all evil on the Internet in the past 10-15 years is algorithmic timelines and algorithmic content curation whose goal function is to increase engagement.
What increases engagement? Fear, hate, conflict, and spectacle. The media has understood this for years: "if it bleeds it leads." People have a strong bias to stare at danger, probably a social adaptation to notice if a mountain lion is attacking your tribe. But when you apply it to user-generated free content, the result is the familiar "rabbit hole" and "filter bubble" phenomena and folie a deux at scale.
Back when humans directly curated content via curated lists, organic timelines that were actually just timelines, and organic non-spam-driven hyperlinking, everything was more rational and less toxic. (Even Reddit/HN style voting is better if it's truly organic and not biased by some algorithm, though it does lead to a different sort of "Borg" phenomenon sometimes.)
Even the fringe was far less toxic and more reasonable. Go find some conspiracy or other fringe topic sites from prior to 2010 on the Wayback Machine.
The problem isn't humans. The problem is that we stuck a middleman in front of human group communication and programmed that middleman to bias what messages are shown in a way that tends to amplify negativity, irrationality, and fluff as opposed to more useful and interesting but less dopamine-releasing content.
I actually believe that and the fact that a "fact checking" button sparked this is evidence of that. It's not liberal or conservative - its government attempts to limit information and discussion. And it should be fought.
These sites remove doxxing and hate from many angles. Look at the subreddit communities reddit has banned - they're not all right wing - many are just bad.
Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, etc. all are right leaning individuals who have a massive following via these platforms.
Logan Paul was deplatformed and he's not right wing.
And both sides have a ton of people being trolls. Did you ever read r/theDonald or r/Conservative or comments sections on Sargon of Aakaad?
Fox News' Tucker Carlson segments are routinely recommended by the youtube algorithm to me despite me having no interest in him and rarely or never clicking on them.
Does anyone actually believe this is an authoritarian attempt to squash speech that is "speaking truth to power"?
Yes - this speaks to my lived experience and my understood experience of the trend in authoritarian countries.
I'm not sure how this makes the internet better. So now sites have to host actual neo Nazis and the KKK for fear of losing section 230 protections? Oh and if you have a site focused on programming or motorcycling you have to host completely off topic content because otherwise you lose section 230 protections?
The whole point of section 230 is to make it so that sites can moderate user generated content without becoming legally liable for it. Removing this forces every site to become 4chan for fear of losing section 230 protections. This isn't a positive change in my view.
Your position basically insinuates that right-wing discourse is impossible without violating these rules.
But I think that’s pretty unfair considering the range and depth of conservative intellectual thought.
Maybe you should encourage the more moderate segments of conservatism to speak out against extremists who use the language of racist violence instead of defending them.
Also, /r/conservative is a thing, and they’re not exactly a bastion of the type of free speech they’re advocating; it’s super easy to get banned from that sub.
It's hard not to see this as an authoritarian backlash to "speaking truth to power" when the President is arguing Twitter should lose 230 because they fact checked his tweet. Fact checking a President's tweet translates quite naturally to speaking truth to power.
It's also editorializing Twitter...ergo Twitter is no longer a neutral platform and should be subject to all the same liabilities that Fox, CNN, etc are including libel and defamation.
What? Not only does the legal concept of a "neutral platform" not exist, the examples you cite (Fox, CNN) are certainly not "neutral platforms." They aren't responsible for what their commenters post on their sites either (and it is certainly... eye-opening to check out their comment sections sometimes).
Twitter already does have libel liabilities, just like Fox and CNN, if they were to themselves post something libelous - just like if Fox were to produce a segment themselves that is libelous.
No they don't. Twitter cannot be sued for something someone tweets that is false or defamatory about someone else. That individual tweeter is responsible. Unlike Fox or CNN who are responsible for what their reporters and commentators say. If Twitter ventures against the spirit of 230 protection, which was designed to protect neutral platforms like a utility, then they deserve to lose it. It's not about who produces a segment, Twitter is clearly the publisher and distributor. 230 was designed to protect free speech not to allow unlimited corporate intervention into speech.
Here's section 230, it's very short: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 Please can you explain how this was "designed to protect neutral platforms like a utility", given that the text contains none of the words "neutral", "platform" or "utility"? It also doesn't contain "editorialise" or any variant that I can see.
Note the original TCA created the FCC. That entire bill was packed with legislation to regulate cable and phone companies as well as providers of internet services...ergo utility.
Section 230 was developed in response to a pair of lawsuits against Internet service providers in the early 1990s that had different interpretations of whether the service providers should be treated as publishers or distributors of content created by its users.
Note, it is my strong opinion that Twitter selectively fact checking and blocking tweets or shadowbanning particular users that do not violate any laws or TOS means they are venturing into the publisher role more and more.
Section 230 was clearly designed to preserve free speech not to encourage its destruction by homogeneous corporations.
If Twitter themselves posted a tweet defaming someone, they'd have the exact same liabilities as those reporters at CNN, who are employed by CNN to create content for CNN.
Twitter can't be sued for a libelous tweet that someone else posts. Just like Fox can't be sued for a libelous comment that someone else leaves on a story. Well, you can sue anyone for anything, the point is neither of these suits would be successful.
I mean, this is just a common sense way of things working. In fact, the liability following-through to whoever actually did the bad thing was the entire motivation behind why S230 was created.
> 230 protection, which was designed to protect neutral platforms like a utility,
The text of section 230 has none of the words "neutral platform" nor "utility," nor are they legal concepts that exist in this context.
No of course they're not a neutral platform - I assume they ban spam and they have a terms of service and require adult content to be marked and all sorts of things. Isn't the point of 230 that they're allowed to moderate without taking on those liabilities because otherwise they obviously wouldn't exist?
Yes, that's the entire point of Section 230. Should those protections be removed, most of these sites would increase their moderation, and remove anything potentially libelous. A huge chilling effect on speech.
There is an ongoing effort to upend those protections and bifurcate the internet into locked-down, heavily-moderated walled-garden sites, and sites that have no moderation at all. The motivations behind this movement range from malice (wanting the internet to become an unproductive wasteland) to political revenge (their favorite user got banned from Twitter and they want to lash out). I suppose "misunderstanding" of what S230 actually does is another motivation, but at this point if someone is still making an argument against it from that perspective, they're not arguing in good faith.
The result of removing S230 protections is not "the internet becomes a wonderful place where all 'political opinions' can be expressed equally," the result is "all Internet sites become 4chan or Nickelodeon, pick one."
These arguments are always full of motivated reasoning; they start with the desired goal (Twitter shouldn’t be allowed to block people I like, usually), then they try to work backwards from the law to that outcome. This produces some fairly hilarious misinterpretations of how Section 230 works, along with the occasional misreference to State Action by the better read.
Because they are supposedly active in moderating content (I am not talking about taking down illegal stuff here). Moderating content to fit their narrative arguably makes them a publisher with all the consequences.
I guess what they are saying (entities that are meddling with 230) is either be totally neutral with the exception of taking down illegal stuff and spam or face the outcome.
> Moderating content to fit their narrative arguably makes them a publisher with all the consequences.
The problem being that there is no proof that this happens. Despite all attempts to construct some kind of "one side gets moderated stronger than the other" narrative this stays a conspiracy theory.
The other problem is that moderating content doesn’t make them the publisher. That is literally the point of section 230, giving platforms the ability to moderate without becoming responsible for the content.
I dunno. If readers can see that it is obviously satire, then Twitter just looks silly and no harm has been done. If readers can't tell though, then Twitter is providing a useful service here.
No, they have not. Even without 230 this wouldn’t be libelous for a huge number of reasons. The bar for libel is not “someone is offended”, even if that someone is the president.
The contortions that people keep going through to find a way to make Twitter liable is both getting old, and frankly it’s embarrassing.
My point has nothing to do with being offended or with section 230. The point is: if Twitter is labeling something as "manipulated content" (implying an earnest attempt deceive) when the content is in fact satire, then Twitter is itself making misleading claims.
It's like when Snopes was "fact-checking" the Babylon Bee (a satirical news website). They initially labeled some of their articles as false, but then re-labeled it more appropriately as satire after receiving push-back.[1]
I'm not even saying Twitter should be sued here. But Twitter is now engaged in speech of their own, rather than just moderating a platform for other peoples' speech.
You’re changing the subject. You argued that Twitter might be liable for libel. In order for that to be true, then the speech in question must be libelous.
So, even ignoring 230, is mislabeling a satirical argument as false libelous? It is without a single doubt not libelous.
First of all, defamation (the larger category that includes libel) usually requires a statement of fact, whereas something being satire vs. just plain wrong is a matter of opinion. It is very hard to sue over matters of opinion, by design. This is why saying “the president is stupid” or “the president is racist” aren’t libelous; those statements are opinions and not objective statements of fact.
Second, defamation either needs some form of harm, or it needs to be in a narrow category of statements that are defamation “per se”. The latter category is very narrow and not relevant here, so we can focus on the former. What, pray tell, harm did the president suffer?
Finally, the president is a public figure, and the bar for defamation against a public figure is very very high. The standard is “actual malice”, which requires that Twitter knew that they were lying and did it anyways. If Twitter genuinely believed that the video was not satire, even if you think that’s dumb, then they have a rock solid defense against defamation.
> This is the result of years of work to remove any dissenting voice from the generally Left-leaning sites of the Internet
Not a single one of the big sites is left-leaning, they are centrist (at most) and behave accordingly. The problem is that so many people believe the center is farther on the right than it is, so every centrist argument becomes left wing extremism, what is called centrist is really right wing and what is called right wing is extreme right.
With that in mind it's no surprise right wing content gets blocked more often - the left wing equivalent (e.g. kill everyone in the name of the class fight!) doesn't really exist on Twitter & co.
Honestly I am not sure legal immunity for network platforms is actually a good thing. Those platforms are very much like traditional publishers in that they greatly amplify and spread the content posted on their network. Amplification* without accountability is very different than freedom of speech.
* if you want to quibble with “amplification,” I would more specifically say that _asynchronous_ and/or _targeted_ distribution is the key characteristic that makes it logical for these platforms to be held to the same standards as traditional publishers in my opinion.
You basically just don't believe in free speech. Which is, historically, the more popular position. The idea that ideas should be able to amplified & spread w/o institutional control is rather radical.
That’s false. There has always been a difference between freedom to say what you want and freedom from consequences. The famous adage “you can’t shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”
Newspapers are liable for libel suits and other legal remedies if they publish false and damaging information. I think it’s fair to consider Facebook a publisher when their algorithms take content and distribute it to the world better than any newspaper could have.
That is fundamentally very different from self-hosting one’s own website, or giving a speech in the town square.
> There has always been a difference between freedom to say what you want and freedom from consequences.
No. Free speech is speech which is (at least largely) free of consequence. Not just free of legal consequences either, but social consequences as well (such as getting fired from your job for having certain political opinions). Free speech =/= first amendment.
> The famous adage “you can’t shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”
Which was used as justification to punish anti-war protesters.
> Newspapers are liable for libel suits and other legal remedies if they publish false and damaging information.
Which is part of a set of well known, long-standing exceptions to the first amendment.
>Free speech is speech which is (at least largely) free of consequence.
Only useless speech comes with no consequences. It's pretty much a tautology. I don't see how your definition of "free speech" is useful. In what world would it ever exist?
Perhaps I wasn't clear. Unless you can voice an opinion with which others disagree without legal or serious social consequences, you do not have free speech.
Most people probably don't push their definition of free speech that far. If I kick someone out of my house because they are being an asshole, that doesn't feel like an infringement on their free speech to me.
I didn't say "absolutely" free of consequence, I said "largely". No one is debating about whether you can kick someone out of your house. The kind of "social consequences" that I (and others) are concerned about are things like:
- being fired from a job
- blacklisted by an industry
- canceled by a payment processor
- being kicked out of a university
Imposing financial consequences for having a difference of opinion is a very insidious way of manipulating public speech. It doesn't actually change people's minds, and is a great way to get preference falsification (like what was seen in the 2016 U.S. presidential election).
If you're "free" to do something, but only with consequences, you're not actually free.
If you have the belief that the best possible outcomes can be achieved by open discussion of ideas, then any sort of consequences for speech, be it social opprobrium, being blacklisted from jobs, having social media accounts closed, being blacklisted from web-hosting, etc., are all suppressing the open discussion of ideas, and thus bad.
There is a continuum; it is possible to have a viewpoint that certain kinds of speech are identifiably negative and it's worth banning them; hence, e.g., laws against slander (or, in the past, indecency).
The kinds of restrictions that are now becoming in vogue, however, go far beyond that, and are basically trying to squash politically undesirable viewpoints. I think at that point you've passed anywhere on the continuum that could reasonably be described as "free".
You're ascribing beliefs to me that I don't hold. There are two fundamentally different things at play here.
First, I _do_ believe in freedom of speech, in the sense that any individual should be allowed to say what they think and that should be largely free of legal ramifications.
However I do think there are limits to this, and specifically I don't think that you should be allowed to blatantly lie without any risk of consequences. This is the standard that publishers are held to, they can basically publish whatever they want so long as they can demonstrate reasonable evidence that it is true.
I couldn't be more opposed to this "thought police" movement that is growing largely on the left.
But to preserve a reasonable middle ground between "unlimited free speech" which includes blatant deception with no consequences and the Orwellian thought police, we do have to have some standards of what is acceptable and what can get you in trouble. To me that standard is truth supported by evidence.
And all I am arguing is that social media should be held to the same standards as traditional media, that when their claims are unsubstantiated they can face legal consequences.
Perhaps I misunderstood your position. Reading your original comment, it is not as I remembered it -- either I misunderstood, or the comment has evolved.
Regarding this:
> And all I am arguing is that social media should be held to the same standards as traditional media
If I were to slander someone on HN, HN should be held responsible? It seems unworkable in practice, since HN is an automated system, more akin to the post office or a public bulletin than a traditional publisher.
(Though, obviously, it's sort of in the middle, since they will moderate particularly obnoxious comments.)
But if you hold them liable, it would be unreasonable legal risk to assume to allow the comment section to continue to exist, no?
HN is very actively moderated, so I think it might be able to exist. And presumably things like comment sections would generate “consequences” similar to radio stations that pay relatively small fines when live guests on air say “indecent” things.
I think it’s possible that Facebook and Twitter, etc. could not exist under that threat of legal liability. A few years ago I would have said that was unbearable, but now I’m not so sure. The flat earthers and anti-vaxxers of the world worry me. I don’t think they should be prohibited from speech by any stretch, but Facebook and Twitter engagement algorithms lead to echo chambers that amplify radicalism and research has shown how that directly leads to an increasingly angry, divided, polarized citizenry.
It’s one thing if we are angry and divided about truth. It’s another if entire cohorts of the population no longer believe in objective reality because the Facebook algorithm serves them a never ending stream of anti-vax untruth. And much worse the hate groups that lead to “doxing” and worse.
I don’t know what the appropriate answer is, but I don’t think that the status quo is trending in the direction of a better future for humanity, and I think it’s good for us to be asking tough questions and possibly reconsidering whether some of the newer technologies like social media are, on aggregate, worth the harm they cause.
For me, if someone wants to start a facebook group to talk about flat earth or antivax or any other crazy thing they believe, their freedom as humans to have that conversation trumps other concerns, but you can certainly argue credibly there are dangers and downsides. To me it does not seem qualitatively different than the printing press or allowing physical freedom of association. The invention of the printing press is indirectly responsible for quite a bit of upheaval!
Let's say S230 was dropped. Would this really damage free speech online, or would it damage platforms and lead to a resurgence of the open web?
Edit: also would it genuinely endanger end-to-end encryption or only do so in the context of these platforms?
It's a genuine question since I don't understand all the nuances of these laws. If I put up a personal site without S230 protections, am I at risk? What about truly neutral ISPs and cloud hosts that do not curate content but just sling packets? What if all the data is encrypted from my server to the end user anyway?
Exactly. It would lead to a smaller Internet. Giant platforms built around scaling past what human moderators can handle would be unviable, but subject-focused communities and human-curated ones would thrive.
Bear in mind, the law is not going to actually or reasonably crucify you because someone left a nasty comment on your blog while you were asleep (nobody seriously believes this can happen). The law needs to be able to go after companies that built social platforms that create extremely bad social effects at scale, who are focused on creating as much engagement as possible to fuel ad revenue.
Honestly, the "largest" social platform that would likely benefit from Section 230's repeal is Reddit: They'd have to make some policy changes and probably discourage more cross-posting, and very large communities might need company-hired moderation. But the general design of it being built around small communities moderated individually is likely to allow it to adapt to the change pretty well. Maybe they'd shut down the really large general subs, but it'd be pushed more towards being a shared login way to be a part of a bunch of distinct communities.
I agree. People seem to regard FB and Twitter as bedrock but I wouldn't be sorry to see them forced to spend what it takes to actually moderate themselves or shutdown.
I recently rejoined twitter (I watched a bunch of sci-fi shorts on the youtub and wanted to tell people about them) and it is messed up. It's a hate machine. People are so shitty to one another. And the doxxing mobs are fucking terrifying, flash-mobs of hate, ravening and lawless.
Liberty means liberty for all, especially those whom you intensely disagree with. It also means allowing someone to do or say something you consider stupid -- because, someone, somewhere will consider whatever you're doing stupid; do you really want some random self-righteous inquisitor shutting your speech off?
Furthermore, if some group is really proposing or performing heinous, illegal acts, we should want to have them feel comfortable associating with each-other in public. Police can then do their job, infiltrate these groups, and track down, charge and prosecute these miscreants.
I just don't want to see it. And, they probably don't want to see me berating them. There's a solution to these kinds of situations...
My hypothesis is that Google, FaceBook, et.al. have investigated using k-means clustering, and have decided against it, because it reduces the "drama" on their platforms, reducing their revenues...
> Liberty means liberty for all, especially those whom you intensely disagree with.
Correct, and said people have the liberty to create their own websites.
Freedom of speech also means freedom from compelled speech. Removing section 230 means all sites have to be like 4chan - devoid of moderation and hosting the content of genuine Nazis and the like.
While it's fair to point out that moderation may be biased, forcing sites to remove moderation for fear of being held liable for content users post is not a positive change.
Note that the groups pushing the removal of section 230 are some of social media's biggest competitors (namely traditional media). This is a calculated move. Remove section 230 and social media becomes a cesspool. This pushes users out of social media and back in front of cable news and newspapers.
So let me get this straight: the total removal of moderation, and the subsequent inclusion of content which espouses ideas of racial superiority and extermination of peoples is a positive change?
Calling for violence against groups of people is not illegal. Only specific, actionable incitement of violence [1]. I don't think you really understand what total absence of moderation really means.
I'm wondering how you jumped from "K-means Clustering", which implements much stronger and more fairly applied moderation than any current scheme, to "total removal of moderation".
K-means clustering is insufficient to guarantee that no content that results in lawsuits or charges gets uploaded. These are sites with a billions of users. A failure rate of even 0.001% still means a lot of content that can result in charges or lawsuits gets through.
Removal of section 230 means companies can even be criminally liable for things their users post. It's not a question of fairness at that point.
Of course not - since that is an impossible task. We can’t even build LEGO sites that make it impossible for kids to build and upload genitalia. Nor should we - if you don’t want your kids seeing LEGO dicks, help them downvote a bunch of users that upload those, and voila, they don’t see any posts by any users in that cluster. Conversely, your “beevis and butthead” kid sees nothing but dicks. Fill your boots...
The only requirement is long-lives identities. Create a new identity anytime you want; it’s just that no veteran users will see anything you post until you establish a long track record of reasoned debate, and work yourself through clusters with logarithmic aging baskets, until you finally “graduate” to being seen by people of substance in your target audience. And, you can easily move yourself out again, by a few hot-headed off-the-cuff remarks. Welcome to the real world! Actions have consequences.
The thing about being an unbiased conduit vs. a editorializing publisher is significant; if your clustering algorithms are standardized and published, and aren’t subject to editorial interference — you’re safe from lawsuits, just like the phone companies.
It is unlikely that you will be able to escape from the requirement to give up metadata on users to the FBI — just like the phone company.
Removal of section 230 for companies that have proven themselves unworthy by clearly political editing of users posting feeds deserve what they’re going to get, when they lose these protections, in my opinion.
If they want to run an opinionated newspaper, then they’ve chosen the heavy lifting required to ensure no rando publishes an illegal article. Tough beans.
> The only requirement is long-lives identities. Create a new identity anytime you want; it’s just that no veteran users will see anything you post until you establish a long track record of reasoned debate, and work yourself through clusters with logarithmic aging baskets, until you finally “graduate” to being seen by people of substance in your target audience. And, you can easily move yourself out again, by a few hot-headed off-the-cuff remarks. Welcome to the real world! Actions have consequences.
And? None of this changes the fact that without Section 230 protections, companies are dead. There's simply no way to reliably prevent any and all illegal content from being posted. Sites like HN could not exist. There's no way Paul Graham, or whoever actually owns HN, is going to risk criminal charges to keep the forum running.
> It is unlikely that you will be able to escape from the requirement to give up metadata on users to the FBI — just like the phone company.
Giving metadata to law enforcement never had anything to do with Section 230. All section 230 says is, people hosting content are not liable for content created by other people.
> Removal of section 230 for companies that have proven themselves unworthy by clearly political editing of users posting feeds deserve what they’re going to get, when they lose these protections, in my opinion.
> If they want to run an opinionated newspaper, then they’ve chosen the heavy lifting required to ensure no rando publishes an illegal article. Tough beans.
So it's not a blanket removal. It's a targeted removal of section 230 protections from sites that are perceived to have biased moderation.
This is even worse. Now politicians can go to Facebook or YouTube and say, "hey, you better promote positive content about me and negative content about my opponents or I'm going to strip your Section 230 protections." Such a change to Section 230 likely won't lead to less biased sites, it'll lead to even more biased sites as they lick the boots of politicians to keep their protections. There's nothing stopping a government from claiming that k-clusters are biased. This mechanism of some sites getting liability protections and others not getting them is rife for abuse.
The cesspool's already on the clearnet, we have examples of what it looks like: 4Chan, Gab, Voat - are all platforms that pride themselves on minimal moderation.
If we want the entire internet to either look like that, or force platforms to review every post for potential illegality (an impossible task), then yeah removing S230 is the way to go. If we think that sounds silly, then preserving S230 is essential.
This will not be the result. The scale of content posted on social media makes it impossible to remove content that could result in lawsuits or charges down the road. The only way for social media companies to avoid liability would be to eliminate moderation. Either that or remove comments and user uploaded content outside of a much smaller pool of vetted people - and at that point it's not longer really social media is it?
This thread is being throttled, reply in edit:
Understand that removing section 230 means that companies are treated as though they are the ones
making the statements.that users post. One user recruits terrorists, or participates in sex trafficking and the whole site is responsible for recruiting terrorists and engaging in sex trafficking in the eyes of the law. With stakes this high delegating moderation to users doesn't cut it.
If companies like Facebook or Google don't have the resources to comply then there's zero chance that a smaller company with less resources can do so. There's a reason why removal of section 230 is being pushed by cable and traditional news. It's a death sentence for some of their biggest competitors.
freedom of speech is a bit of a red herring here. liability (and even criminal penalties) for certain speech is not generally considered incompatible with the first amendment. keep in mind that section 230 exempts the platform from the usual liability and penalties that an individual or company would normally face.
>keep in mind that section 230 exempts the platform from the usual liability and penalties that an individual or company would normally face.
As it should. If you insult Elon Musk on here, you should sued for it. Why do you think HN should be liable? Section 230 doesnt say you wouldn't be liable.
I think the current state of things is just fine for a niche forum like HN, but not so much for a huge platform like facebook. see my other comments on this article if you're curious about my position.
also, elon would probably be considered a "public figure". it would be pretty hard for him to win any sort of libel suit over a random internet post.
One of the big complaints towards these platforms is that content is already too clustered (the filter bubble effect). Clustering people makes things worse.
I struggle to see how clustering trolls so they're just trolling each-other is a problem?
K-means clustering can quite easily distinguish between "echo chambers" -- where people just want to hear others who parrot their opinions and downvote any other voice, from "reasoned debate" -- where people downvote others who spout un-reasoned opinion, but upvote people they don't agree with, but who bring reasoned, respectful debate.
This is a solved problem. Its just that platform owners don't like the financial (and other) results of the solution.
Echo chambers cause an overall increase in extremism. After reddit banned /r/fatpeoplehate, reddit as a whole became less mean.
When you give extremism room to congregate, extremists feel more empowered. (This is generally true, but relevant only to extremism at the moment).
Unless you simultaneously cut them off from the rest of the site, which in the context of reddit, twitter, and Facebook doesn't make sense, you just make things worse.
I hate to beat a dead horse, but we do have a right to free speech.
The issue on encryption should be addressed by 4th amendment protections.
We don't have to frogs in a pot of water. There is enough tech to give us enormous reach to a broad audience. This debate does not have to happen in some basement in congress with lobbyists hidden away from the public.
> any platform providing secure end-to-end encryption would face a torrent of litigation
I do not see this. By definition content transmitted with end-to-end encryption cannot be moderated. How would anyone but the sender and receiver know that a given message contains "illegal content"?
(I put "illegal content" in quotes because it makes my skin crawl, even though in practice I think some content should be suppressed (but I also don't want to be the one to say which content should be suppressed with the force of law because that's hard-to-impossible, and my heart's not in it.) It's a little like anti-smoking laws: technically a gross violation of personal freedom, but one that I'm not prepared to vote down until smoking is a fringe fetish.)
In terms of platform vs. conduit it seems to me that e2ee forces the service provider into the "conduit" category.
I mean there is also a parallel effort led by Bill Barr and some folks in Congress that would effectively remove your S230 protections for running E2E anyway (EARN IT act), so it's a battle we're fighting on all fronts right now.
Facebook carries both messaging traffic and user-generated content. If they support E2E encryption in their messenger, the threat is that they are not "following best practices for law enforcement intercept" and risk losing their protections over the non-E2E user-generated content on their main site.
The confusion is understandable because the two are unrelated in any technical capacity, but the DoJ seeks to twist their arm by taking away an existing legal protection for not making law enforcement's job easier.
Under this law, a host will be immune from liability only if they "assist government authorities to obtain content (i.e., evidence) in a comprehensible, readable, and usable format". A host that uses end-to-end encryption would not meet this requirement and would therefore not be immune from liability.
The host is required only to "assist" the authorities so I don't think they'd be liable for that. The encryption process was under your control and short of disabling your internet access or cracking your machine there's nothing they can do about it. If they encrypted your email themselves on your behalf and threw the key away so that authorities couldn't get to it, they might be liable.
Now that I think about it, sending malicious updates to a router might be one way they could be required to assist the authorities in their quest for lawful access...
I use a web-hosted email provider that offers e2e encryption (done client-side with a Java app I think.) I don't actually encrypt any emails in practice. But it would be defeating the entire purpose if a service like this could read my encrypted emails (for the authorities or anyone else).
While I am concerned about the potential negative consequences to altering section 230, there are several elements in the DOJ proposal that I think would be excellent ideas:
> 3. Promoting Competition
A third reform proposal is to clarify that federal antitrust claims are not covered by Section 230 immunity. Over time, the avenues for engaging in both online commerce and speech have concentrated in the hands of a few key players. It makes little sense to enable large online platforms (particularly dominant ones) to invoke Section 230 immunity in antitrust cases, where liability is based on harm to competition, not on third-party speech.
Breaking up advertising monopolies (which all of these social media platforms essentially are) would probably be a good outcome.
> b. Provide Definition of Good Faith. Second, the Department proposes adding a statutory definition of “good faith,” which would limit immunity for content moderation decisions to those done in accordance with plain and particular terms of service and accompanied by a reasonable explanation, unless such notice would impede law enforcement or risk imminent harm to others. Clarifying the meaning of "good faith" should encourage platforms to be more transparent and accountable to their users, rather than hide behind blanket Section 230 protections.
Is it too much to ask for social media companies to actually abide by their TOS? How often have we seen people complain (outside the realm of politics) about getting banned without explanation or appeal? If people are going to be building their livelihoods around these platforms (for content distribution, ad revenue, etc.) then I think it's time for these platforms to be more transparent with their content creators.
The outcome of "breaking up advertising monopolies" can be achieved with existing anti-trust law, without cannibalizing an existing protection that benefits every UGC website large and small.
> Is it too much to ask for social media companies to actually abide by their TOS? How often have we seen people complain (outside the realm of politics) about getting banned without explanation or appeal?
A physical business can trespass you for any non-protected-class reason they want. Online, one should expect no different treatment.
> The outcome of "breaking up advertising monopolies" can be achieved with existing anti-trust law, without cannibalizing an existing protection that benefits every UGC website large and small.
I don't think it requires cannibalizing existing protections in order prevent section 230 from being invoked in anti-trust cases. And for the record, I don't think I agree with all of the DOJ recommendations, but I think there may be room for improvement.
> A physical business can trespass you for any non-protected-class reason they want. Online, one should expect no different treatment.
I'm not entering into a legal agreement simply by entering a physical business. However, terms of service are a legal agreement. A lot of tech businesses seem to be under the impression that a TOS doesn't actual impose any obligations on them, but in fact it does.
If Twitter has taught us anything, it's that everyone should not have an equal voice and an equal platform. A person or company's reach or audience should be a function of 1) what they're talking about and 2) what credibility they have re: 1.
I'm all for anyone being allowed to say anything but I'm completely against anyone being allowed to amplify anything.
Also, the Republicans would do well to introduce legislation expanding data portability and making it much harder for these completely unethical platforms to keep your data locked into their walled gardens. Friends names, birthdays and emails as a csv is basically impossible to export from FB for example.
> If Twitter has taught us anything, it's that everyone should not have an equal voice and an equal platform. A person or company's reach or audience should be a function of 1) what they're talking about and 2) what credibility they have re: 1.
How do you propose we should establish credibility of sources? Also, how do propose to factor in the originality of what they say?
> Also, the Republicans would do well to introduce legislation expanding data portability and making it much harder for these completely unethical platforms to keep your data locked into their walled gardens. Friends names, birthdays and emails as a csv is basically impossible to export from FB for example.
Let's put aside originality for now. I think with a few small deep structural changes, you can get 80% of the way there.
I would have all posts require a tagged context, let's call it a topic (in reality it'd be multi facet hierarchical object). I would also have all profiles list the topics they'd like to be credible in.
The credibility score for a given topic would be an algorithm that would use followers credibility scores to "rub off" on your score for that topic. You seed the profiles you know to be credible and then propagate the graph. It'd initially be a guesstimate and then gets refined as more humans rate, interact and judge the post. Over a few posts, I think you'd be able to get a broad credibility bucket for a given profile/topic pair.
Btw I've built a social network with tens of millions of users and we used this approach and it works pretty well. It does require a bit of moderation and bad actor weeding out but for the most part it works.
Also, FB and Twitter aren't full of retards (shockingly) They know they can do this but they also know they would tank a shitload of their core quantitative metric for a vague qualitative metric. It'd just never happen from within.
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 94.3 ms ] threadHow can you be held legally liable for content on your platform when you can’t actually control that content.
It seems to me that this just creates a perverse incentive to never moderate anything. How would that be an improvement? At a minimum, you’d end up with a space overrun by spammers.
While I like the idea of self-policing communities, it doesn’t always work so well in reality (Slashdot’s comment voting system was great at burying bad content during the site’s heyday—though it never eliminated it—now it works pretty poorly because most of the audience has shifted away. Reddit’s subreddit moderation system can be great, except for the racism[0].)
This seems to me like a poorly thought through solution and I’m not really sure what the goal is.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/06/reddi...
the point is not to discourage moderation entirely, but to make it a bit more costly/risky so that the influence of the biggest players is checked somewhat.
It removes control of the site from site operators. This would result it a system ripe for selective enforcement. Not a fan.
Not a fan of how sites currently selectively enforce their terms of service either, whether directly through employees or hired contractors, or indirectly via community moderators. Selective enforcement is the common thread running through this topic on all its sides: the questionable or controversial content and its creators; the platforms and hosts; and the government and its representatives, eager to also have a seat at the selective enforcement table.
Does anyone actually believe this is an authoritarian attempt to squash speech that is "speaking truth to power"?
This is the result of years of work to remove any dissenting voice from the generally Left-leaning sites of the Internet -- Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc. First they started disabling comment sections, calling all opposition "trolls". Then they tried to deplatform, go after advertisers, etc. Most recently, two sites were dropped from AdSense because they had unmoderated comment sections. Not only is Google saying what can live on it's platform, but also what can live on the sites of others.
But wait...they're a private company and have every right to remove people from their platform. Fine, then they lose all government protection from the results of their choice to decide what legal information people can and cannot see.
But that isn't what they're saying. They're saying, "if you are deciding what is acceptable speech, you're now responsible for it." And for the record, I absolutely agree.
That position is absurd.
Removing off-topic posts is just as much "deciding what is acceptable speech" as is removing on-topic posts that happen to be posts I don't like. That is to say, the consideration of what is on-topic vs. off-topic is at its core a decision of what is acceptable.
How do you define political? How do you handle extreme political ideologies that advocate for violence too? Who has the power to decide which speech is moderation proof? How do you avoid abuse when politicians eventually control such a system? And how do you survive legal challenges to the fact that you’ve created a third type of extra protected speech?
S230 is not just a "big tech" shield, it literally enables internet communities as we know them to exist.
If the bar for Twitter becoming responsible for every yahoo’s tweet is set that low, they will have a hair trigger on what it takes to get banned. Why risk it?
I guess the alternative is to ban all moderation and let every site turn into Gab, which sounds pretty awful to me.
But before I get thrashed for hurthing feelings, the real problem is these networks act like pubs and open networks. Paid amplification is almost certainly the problem in that it allows money to act as speech. by allowing it to reach more people that didnt seek it. Historically a wild fringe idea stayed that way because it was hard to convert people at scale. Now a fringe/bad idea coming from a group of power and "pump up the juice."
It would be interesting if they either limited the pay for audience equation or create hypertransperency around who is behind the message.
All in all, Facebook is going to be heavily regulated over the next decade and I hope they're diversifying somewhere. The newspapers were fractured, "The Bells," and it seems historically governments step in after about 10-20 years of abuse.
Google and the other monopolies do not deserve any special protection.
What increases engagement? Fear, hate, conflict, and spectacle. The media has understood this for years: "if it bleeds it leads." People have a strong bias to stare at danger, probably a social adaptation to notice if a mountain lion is attacking your tribe. But when you apply it to user-generated free content, the result is the familiar "rabbit hole" and "filter bubble" phenomena and folie a deux at scale.
Back when humans directly curated content via curated lists, organic timelines that were actually just timelines, and organic non-spam-driven hyperlinking, everything was more rational and less toxic. (Even Reddit/HN style voting is better if it's truly organic and not biased by some algorithm, though it does lead to a different sort of "Borg" phenomenon sometimes.)
Even the fringe was far less toxic and more reasonable. Go find some conspiracy or other fringe topic sites from prior to 2010 on the Wayback Machine.
The problem isn't humans. The problem is that we stuck a middleman in front of human group communication and programmed that middleman to bias what messages are shown in a way that tends to amplify negativity, irrationality, and fluff as opposed to more useful and interesting but less dopamine-releasing content.
These sites remove doxxing and hate from many angles. Look at the subreddit communities reddit has banned - they're not all right wing - many are just bad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...
Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, etc. all are right leaning individuals who have a massive following via these platforms.
Logan Paul was deplatformed and he's not right wing.
And both sides have a ton of people being trolls. Did you ever read r/theDonald or r/Conservative or comments sections on Sargon of Aakaad?
Fox News' Tucker Carlson segments are routinely recommended by the youtube algorithm to me despite me having no interest in him and rarely or never clicking on them.
Does anyone actually believe this is an authoritarian attempt to squash speech that is "speaking truth to power"?
Yes - this speaks to my lived experience and my understood experience of the trend in authoritarian countries.
The whole point of section 230 is to make it so that sites can moderate user generated content without becoming legally liable for it. Removing this forces every site to become 4chan for fear of losing section 230 protections. This isn't a positive change in my view.
* Is illegal
* Is involuntary pornography
* Is sexual or suggestive content involving minors
* Encourages or incites violence
* Threatens, harasses, or bullies or encourages others to do so
* Is personal and confidential information
* Impersonates an individual or entity in a misleading or deceptive manner
* Uses Reddit to solicit or facilitate any transaction or gift involving certain goods and services
* Is spam*
https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy
A few of the banned subreddits are:
* Beatingwomen
* Braincels
* CreepShots
* CringeAnarchy
* DarkNetMarkets
* Deepfakes
* FatPeopleHate
* Gore
Your position basically insinuates that right-wing discourse is impossible without violating these rules.
But I think that’s pretty unfair considering the range and depth of conservative intellectual thought.
Maybe you should encourage the more moderate segments of conservatism to speak out against extremists who use the language of racist violence instead of defending them.
Twitter already does have libel liabilities, just like Fox and CNN, if they were to themselves post something libelous - just like if Fox were to produce a segment themselves that is libelous.
What legal consequences have they faced, or are they going to face for these blatant lies?
Note the original TCA created the FCC. That entire bill was packed with legislation to regulate cable and phone companies as well as providers of internet services...ergo utility.
Section 230 was developed in response to a pair of lawsuits against Internet service providers in the early 1990s that had different interpretations of whether the service providers should be treated as publishers or distributors of content created by its users.
Note, it is my strong opinion that Twitter selectively fact checking and blocking tweets or shadowbanning particular users that do not violate any laws or TOS means they are venturing into the publisher role more and more.
Section 230 was clearly designed to preserve free speech not to encourage its destruction by homogeneous corporations.
Twitter can't be sued for a libelous tweet that someone else posts. Just like Fox can't be sued for a libelous comment that someone else leaves on a story. Well, you can sue anyone for anything, the point is neither of these suits would be successful.
I mean, this is just a common sense way of things working. In fact, the liability following-through to whoever actually did the bad thing was the entire motivation behind why S230 was created.
> 230 protection, which was designed to protect neutral platforms like a utility,
The text of section 230 has none of the words "neutral platform" nor "utility," nor are they legal concepts that exist in this context.
The historical revisionism around platform neutrality and section 230 is all made up.
There is an ongoing effort to upend those protections and bifurcate the internet into locked-down, heavily-moderated walled-garden sites, and sites that have no moderation at all. The motivations behind this movement range from malice (wanting the internet to become an unproductive wasteland) to political revenge (their favorite user got banned from Twitter and they want to lash out). I suppose "misunderstanding" of what S230 actually does is another motivation, but at this point if someone is still making an argument against it from that perspective, they're not arguing in good faith.
The result of removing S230 protections is not "the internet becomes a wonderful place where all 'political opinions' can be expressed equally," the result is "all Internet sites become 4chan or Nickelodeon, pick one."
I guess what they are saying (entities that are meddling with 230) is either be totally neutral with the exception of taking down illegal stuff and spam or face the outcome.
The problem being that there is no proof that this happens. Despite all attempts to construct some kind of "one side gets moderated stronger than the other" narrative this stays a conspiracy theory.
They're now "fact checking" obvious satire. That's not merely moderation, but applying a false context that changes the meaning of the tweet.
EDIT: just speculation, but by mislabeling the tweet, I wonder if Twitter could be exposing itself to a libel lawsuit.
The contortions that people keep going through to find a way to make Twitter liable is both getting old, and frankly it’s embarrassing.
It's like when Snopes was "fact-checking" the Babylon Bee (a satirical news website). They initially labeled some of their articles as false, but then re-labeled it more appropriately as satire after receiving push-back.[1]
I'm not even saying Twitter should be sued here. But Twitter is now engaged in speech of their own, rather than just moderating a platform for other peoples' speech.
[1]https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/georgia-lawmaker-go-back-c...
So, even ignoring 230, is mislabeling a satirical argument as false libelous? It is without a single doubt not libelous.
First of all, defamation (the larger category that includes libel) usually requires a statement of fact, whereas something being satire vs. just plain wrong is a matter of opinion. It is very hard to sue over matters of opinion, by design. This is why saying “the president is stupid” or “the president is racist” aren’t libelous; those statements are opinions and not objective statements of fact.
Second, defamation either needs some form of harm, or it needs to be in a narrow category of statements that are defamation “per se”. The latter category is very narrow and not relevant here, so we can focus on the former. What, pray tell, harm did the president suffer?
Finally, the president is a public figure, and the bar for defamation against a public figure is very very high. The standard is “actual malice”, which requires that Twitter knew that they were lying and did it anyways. If Twitter genuinely believed that the video was not satire, even if you think that’s dumb, then they have a rock solid defense against defamation.
So no, this was not libel. Nowhere close.
Um, no? I agree the subject of this conversation is whether Twitter is liable for libel.
> So no, this was not libel. Nowhere close.
OK, so that's a an answer to my question as to whether it exposes Twitter to libel. Thanks!
Maybe if Twitter decided all verified accounts will be subject to fact-checking?
This was a few days before: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/23/21268433/president-trump-...
And this was from last year: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/15/18626785/white-house-trum...
Not a single one of the big sites is left-leaning, they are centrist (at most) and behave accordingly. The problem is that so many people believe the center is farther on the right than it is, so every centrist argument becomes left wing extremism, what is called centrist is really right wing and what is called right wing is extreme right. With that in mind it's no surprise right wing content gets blocked more often - the left wing equivalent (e.g. kill everyone in the name of the class fight!) doesn't really exist on Twitter & co.
* if you want to quibble with “amplification,” I would more specifically say that _asynchronous_ and/or _targeted_ distribution is the key characteristic that makes it logical for these platforms to be held to the same standards as traditional publishers in my opinion.
Newspapers are liable for libel suits and other legal remedies if they publish false and damaging information. I think it’s fair to consider Facebook a publisher when their algorithms take content and distribute it to the world better than any newspaper could have.
That is fundamentally very different from self-hosting one’s own website, or giving a speech in the town square.
No. Free speech is speech which is (at least largely) free of consequence. Not just free of legal consequences either, but social consequences as well (such as getting fired from your job for having certain political opinions). Free speech =/= first amendment.
> The famous adage “you can’t shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”
Which was used as justification to punish anti-war protesters.
> Newspapers are liable for libel suits and other legal remedies if they publish false and damaging information.
Which is part of a set of well known, long-standing exceptions to the first amendment.
Only useless speech comes with no consequences. It's pretty much a tautology. I don't see how your definition of "free speech" is useful. In what world would it ever exist?
- being fired from a job
- blacklisted by an industry
- canceled by a payment processor
- being kicked out of a university
Imposing financial consequences for having a difference of opinion is a very insidious way of manipulating public speech. It doesn't actually change people's minds, and is a great way to get preference falsification (like what was seen in the 2016 U.S. presidential election).
If you have the belief that the best possible outcomes can be achieved by open discussion of ideas, then any sort of consequences for speech, be it social opprobrium, being blacklisted from jobs, having social media accounts closed, being blacklisted from web-hosting, etc., are all suppressing the open discussion of ideas, and thus bad.
There is a continuum; it is possible to have a viewpoint that certain kinds of speech are identifiably negative and it's worth banning them; hence, e.g., laws against slander (or, in the past, indecency).
The kinds of restrictions that are now becoming in vogue, however, go far beyond that, and are basically trying to squash politically undesirable viewpoints. I think at that point you've passed anywhere on the continuum that could reasonably be described as "free".
First, I _do_ believe in freedom of speech, in the sense that any individual should be allowed to say what they think and that should be largely free of legal ramifications.
However I do think there are limits to this, and specifically I don't think that you should be allowed to blatantly lie without any risk of consequences. This is the standard that publishers are held to, they can basically publish whatever they want so long as they can demonstrate reasonable evidence that it is true.
On the other hand, there is a deeply toxic "thought censorship" going on right now, which I cannot describe as well as this article does: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-i...
I couldn't be more opposed to this "thought police" movement that is growing largely on the left.
But to preserve a reasonable middle ground between "unlimited free speech" which includes blatant deception with no consequences and the Orwellian thought police, we do have to have some standards of what is acceptable and what can get you in trouble. To me that standard is truth supported by evidence.
And all I am arguing is that social media should be held to the same standards as traditional media, that when their claims are unsubstantiated they can face legal consequences.
Regarding this:
> And all I am arguing is that social media should be held to the same standards as traditional media
If I were to slander someone on HN, HN should be held responsible? It seems unworkable in practice, since HN is an automated system, more akin to the post office or a public bulletin than a traditional publisher.
(Though, obviously, it's sort of in the middle, since they will moderate particularly obnoxious comments.)
But if you hold them liable, it would be unreasonable legal risk to assume to allow the comment section to continue to exist, no?
I think it’s possible that Facebook and Twitter, etc. could not exist under that threat of legal liability. A few years ago I would have said that was unbearable, but now I’m not so sure. The flat earthers and anti-vaxxers of the world worry me. I don’t think they should be prohibited from speech by any stretch, but Facebook and Twitter engagement algorithms lead to echo chambers that amplify radicalism and research has shown how that directly leads to an increasingly angry, divided, polarized citizenry.
It’s one thing if we are angry and divided about truth. It’s another if entire cohorts of the population no longer believe in objective reality because the Facebook algorithm serves them a never ending stream of anti-vax untruth. And much worse the hate groups that lead to “doxing” and worse.
I don’t know what the appropriate answer is, but I don’t think that the status quo is trending in the direction of a better future for humanity, and I think it’s good for us to be asking tough questions and possibly reconsidering whether some of the newer technologies like social media are, on aggregate, worth the harm they cause.
Edit: also would it genuinely endanger end-to-end encryption or only do so in the context of these platforms?
It's a genuine question since I don't understand all the nuances of these laws. If I put up a personal site without S230 protections, am I at risk? What about truly neutral ISPs and cloud hosts that do not curate content but just sling packets? What if all the data is encrypted from my server to the end user anyway?
Bear in mind, the law is not going to actually or reasonably crucify you because someone left a nasty comment on your blog while you were asleep (nobody seriously believes this can happen). The law needs to be able to go after companies that built social platforms that create extremely bad social effects at scale, who are focused on creating as much engagement as possible to fuel ad revenue.
Honestly, the "largest" social platform that would likely benefit from Section 230's repeal is Reddit: They'd have to make some policy changes and probably discourage more cross-posting, and very large communities might need company-hired moderation. But the general design of it being built around small communities moderated individually is likely to allow it to adapt to the change pretty well. Maybe they'd shut down the really large general subs, but it'd be pushed more towards being a shared login way to be a part of a bunch of distinct communities.
I recently rejoined twitter (I watched a bunch of sci-fi shorts on the youtub and wanted to tell people about them) and it is messed up. It's a hate machine. People are so shitty to one another. And the doxxing mobs are fucking terrifying, flash-mobs of hate, ravening and lawless.
For this we invented the transistor?
I feel like this is the most important question of the whole mess. What you do in the privacy of your own e2ee tunnel is your own business.
How could Chuck sue the service provider for a message sent between Alice and Bob?
Furthermore, if some group is really proposing or performing heinous, illegal acts, we should want to have them feel comfortable associating with each-other in public. Police can then do their job, infiltrate these groups, and track down, charge and prosecute these miscreants.
I just don't want to see it. And, they probably don't want to see me berating them. There's a solution to these kinds of situations...
We're techies here; I find it surprising that no-one has considered K-means Clustering: https://brainbomb.org/Artificial-Intelligence/Machine-Learni....
My hypothesis is that Google, FaceBook, et.al. have investigated using k-means clustering, and have decided against it, because it reduces the "drama" on their platforms, reducing their revenues...
Correct, and said people have the liberty to create their own websites.
Freedom of speech also means freedom from compelled speech. Removing section 230 means all sites have to be like 4chan - devoid of moderation and hosting the content of genuine Nazis and the like.
While it's fair to point out that moderation may be biased, forcing sites to remove moderation for fear of being held liable for content users post is not a positive change.
Note that the groups pushing the removal of section 230 are some of social media's biggest competitors (namely traditional media). This is a calculated move. Remove section 230 and social media becomes a cesspool. This pushes users out of social media and back in front of cable news and newspapers.
Calling for violence against groups of people is not illegal. Only specific, actionable incitement of violence [1]. I don't think you really understand what total absence of moderation really means.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio
Removal of section 230 means companies can even be criminally liable for things their users post. It's not a question of fairness at that point.
The only requirement is long-lives identities. Create a new identity anytime you want; it’s just that no veteran users will see anything you post until you establish a long track record of reasoned debate, and work yourself through clusters with logarithmic aging baskets, until you finally “graduate” to being seen by people of substance in your target audience. And, you can easily move yourself out again, by a few hot-headed off-the-cuff remarks. Welcome to the real world! Actions have consequences.
The thing about being an unbiased conduit vs. a editorializing publisher is significant; if your clustering algorithms are standardized and published, and aren’t subject to editorial interference — you’re safe from lawsuits, just like the phone companies.
It is unlikely that you will be able to escape from the requirement to give up metadata on users to the FBI — just like the phone company.
Removal of section 230 for companies that have proven themselves unworthy by clearly political editing of users posting feeds deserve what they’re going to get, when they lose these protections, in my opinion.
If they want to run an opinionated newspaper, then they’ve chosen the heavy lifting required to ensure no rando publishes an illegal article. Tough beans.
And? None of this changes the fact that without Section 230 protections, companies are dead. There's simply no way to reliably prevent any and all illegal content from being posted. Sites like HN could not exist. There's no way Paul Graham, or whoever actually owns HN, is going to risk criminal charges to keep the forum running.
> It is unlikely that you will be able to escape from the requirement to give up metadata on users to the FBI — just like the phone company.
Giving metadata to law enforcement never had anything to do with Section 230. All section 230 says is, people hosting content are not liable for content created by other people.
> Removal of section 230 for companies that have proven themselves unworthy by clearly political editing of users posting feeds deserve what they’re going to get, when they lose these protections, in my opinion.
> If they want to run an opinionated newspaper, then they’ve chosen the heavy lifting required to ensure no rando publishes an illegal article. Tough beans.
So it's not a blanket removal. It's a targeted removal of section 230 protections from sites that are perceived to have biased moderation.
This is even worse. Now politicians can go to Facebook or YouTube and say, "hey, you better promote positive content about me and negative content about my opponents or I'm going to strip your Section 230 protections." Such a change to Section 230 likely won't lead to less biased sites, it'll lead to even more biased sites as they lick the boots of politicians to keep their protections. There's nothing stopping a government from claiming that k-clusters are biased. This mechanism of some sites getting liability protections and others not getting them is rife for abuse.
(Whether that's a good thing or not I dunno.)
If we want the entire internet to either look like that, or force platforms to review every post for potential illegality (an impossible task), then yeah removing S230 is the way to go. If we think that sounds silly, then preserving S230 is essential.
This thread is being throttled, reply in edit:
Understand that removing section 230 means that companies are treated as though they are the ones making the statements.that users post. One user recruits terrorists, or participates in sex trafficking and the whole site is responsible for recruiting terrorists and engaging in sex trafficking in the eyes of the law. With stakes this high delegating moderation to users doesn't cut it.
If companies like Facebook or Google don't have the resources to comply then there's zero chance that a smaller company with less resources can do so. There's a reason why removal of section 230 is being pushed by cable and traditional news. It's a death sentence for some of their biggest competitors.
Impossible or just expensive?
Reddit amortizes moderation over it's user-base, couldn't they share liability too? FB and Twitter could do likewise.
On the other hand, if it really is too expensive to moderate at scale maybe these companies should be broken up?
As it should. If you insult Elon Musk on here, you should sued for it. Why do you think HN should be liable? Section 230 doesnt say you wouldn't be liable.
also, elon would probably be considered a "public figure". it would be pretty hard for him to win any sort of libel suit over a random internet post.
K-means clustering can quite easily distinguish between "echo chambers" -- where people just want to hear others who parrot their opinions and downvote any other voice, from "reasoned debate" -- where people downvote others who spout un-reasoned opinion, but upvote people they don't agree with, but who bring reasoned, respectful debate.
This is a solved problem. Its just that platform owners don't like the financial (and other) results of the solution.
When you give extremism room to congregate, extremists feel more empowered. (This is generally true, but relevant only to extremism at the moment).
Unless you simultaneously cut them off from the rest of the site, which in the context of reddit, twitter, and Facebook doesn't make sense, you just make things worse.
- requiring platforms to be more proactive about removing illegal content.
- helping law enforcement to punish illegal content
- enabling antitrust action against monopoly platforms
- requiring platforms to be more transparent regarding their moderation policy
The first two I'm conflicted about, but the latter two I think would be a big win.
The issue on encryption should be addressed by 4th amendment protections.
We don't have to frogs in a pot of water. There is enough tech to give us enormous reach to a broad audience. This debate does not have to happen in some basement in congress with lobbyists hidden away from the public.
I do not see this. By definition content transmitted with end-to-end encryption cannot be moderated. How would anyone but the sender and receiver know that a given message contains "illegal content"?
(I put "illegal content" in quotes because it makes my skin crawl, even though in practice I think some content should be suppressed (but I also don't want to be the one to say which content should be suppressed with the force of law because that's hard-to-impossible, and my heart's not in it.) It's a little like anti-smoking laws: technically a gross violation of personal freedom, but one that I'm not prepared to vote down until smoking is a fringe fetish.)
In terms of platform vs. conduit it seems to me that e2ee forces the service provider into the "conduit" category.
I don't understand how a service provider can be anything but a carrier if the traffic is E2E encrypted.
The confusion is understandable because the two are unrelated in any technical capacity, but the DoJ seeks to twist their arm by taking away an existing legal protection for not making law enforcement's job easier.
Now that I think about it, sending malicious updates to a router might be one way they could be required to assist the authorities in their quest for lawful access...
I use a web-hosted email provider that offers e2e encryption (done client-side with a Java app I think.) I don't actually encrypt any emails in practice. But it would be defeating the entire purpose if a service like this could read my encrypted emails (for the authorities or anyone else).
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
> 3. Promoting Competition A third reform proposal is to clarify that federal antitrust claims are not covered by Section 230 immunity. Over time, the avenues for engaging in both online commerce and speech have concentrated in the hands of a few key players. It makes little sense to enable large online platforms (particularly dominant ones) to invoke Section 230 immunity in antitrust cases, where liability is based on harm to competition, not on third-party speech.
Breaking up advertising monopolies (which all of these social media platforms essentially are) would probably be a good outcome.
> b. Provide Definition of Good Faith. Second, the Department proposes adding a statutory definition of “good faith,” which would limit immunity for content moderation decisions to those done in accordance with plain and particular terms of service and accompanied by a reasonable explanation, unless such notice would impede law enforcement or risk imminent harm to others. Clarifying the meaning of "good faith" should encourage platforms to be more transparent and accountable to their users, rather than hide behind blanket Section 230 protections.
Is it too much to ask for social media companies to actually abide by their TOS? How often have we seen people complain (outside the realm of politics) about getting banned without explanation or appeal? If people are going to be building their livelihoods around these platforms (for content distribution, ad revenue, etc.) then I think it's time for these platforms to be more transparent with their content creators.
> Is it too much to ask for social media companies to actually abide by their TOS? How often have we seen people complain (outside the realm of politics) about getting banned without explanation or appeal?
A physical business can trespass you for any non-protected-class reason they want. Online, one should expect no different treatment.
I don't think it requires cannibalizing existing protections in order prevent section 230 from being invoked in anti-trust cases. And for the record, I don't think I agree with all of the DOJ recommendations, but I think there may be room for improvement.
> A physical business can trespass you for any non-protected-class reason they want. Online, one should expect no different treatment.
I'm not entering into a legal agreement simply by entering a physical business. However, terms of service are a legal agreement. A lot of tech businesses seem to be under the impression that a TOS doesn't actual impose any obligations on them, but in fact it does.
I'm all for anyone being allowed to say anything but I'm completely against anyone being allowed to amplify anything.
Also, the Republicans would do well to introduce legislation expanding data portability and making it much harder for these completely unethical platforms to keep your data locked into their walled gardens. Friends names, birthdays and emails as a csv is basically impossible to export from FB for example.
How do you propose we should establish credibility of sources? Also, how do propose to factor in the originality of what they say?
> Also, the Republicans would do well to introduce legislation expanding data portability and making it much harder for these completely unethical platforms to keep your data locked into their walled gardens. Friends names, birthdays and emails as a csv is basically impossible to export from FB for example.
Agreed.
I would have all posts require a tagged context, let's call it a topic (in reality it'd be multi facet hierarchical object). I would also have all profiles list the topics they'd like to be credible in.
The credibility score for a given topic would be an algorithm that would use followers credibility scores to "rub off" on your score for that topic. You seed the profiles you know to be credible and then propagate the graph. It'd initially be a guesstimate and then gets refined as more humans rate, interact and judge the post. Over a few posts, I think you'd be able to get a broad credibility bucket for a given profile/topic pair.
Btw I've built a social network with tens of millions of users and we used this approach and it works pretty well. It does require a bit of moderation and bad actor weeding out but for the most part it works.
Also, FB and Twitter aren't full of retards (shockingly) They know they can do this but they also know they would tank a shitload of their core quantitative metric for a vague qualitative metric. It'd just never happen from within.