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Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

Underpinning the whole question of censorship;

“Under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, tech firms have legal immunity from the majority of the content posted on their platforms (unlike ‘traditional’ media publications). This protection has empowered YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit to create spaces for free speech without the fear of legal action or its financial consequence.”

Censoring content is suspiciously like editorializing content, and steps social media a lot closer than they want to being publishers and not platforms.

Proceeding with censorship seems to carry the risk of losing immunity under Section 230.

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This was the subject of one of John C. Dvorak's last PC Mag articles: "Twitter and Facebook Are Publishers, Not Platforms" https://www.pcmag.com/commentary/363100/twitter-and-facebook...

This is true, and some have said they have already crossed the threshold and should be regulated by the government.

Proceeding with censorship seems to carry the risk of losing immunity under Section 230.

Nope. The whole point of Section 230 is platforms can make and enforce rules, and still have a safe harbor. Otherwise, they all would have lost their safe harbor decades ago.

The issue is that Google is now associating itself with the role of a "publisher" rather than a "platform" (in particular on slide 68). Publishers are not protected under Section 230.

This is a very lazy way to view things, considering oneself as a plattform instead of a publisher I mean. We all agree that the press by itself is free in the Western world, including the US. Sovthere is, as a direct consequence, nothing wrong with editing.

By being a platform you can basically have it both ways, compete with journalism without being journalism. And once that is causing issues you say freedom of speech and you are of the hook.

Maybe in the begining that was even true. Now, not so much anymore I guess.

Editing =|= Censorship, important to understand.

We have a problem with spins in many articles that mostly results from writers instead of editors, but the overall conclusion that editing cannot be detrimental to freedom of information is wrong or insufficient at least.

What would be the practical consequences of losing this immunity?

IANAL

You can sue Google for damages if someone uploads a copyrighted movie to youtube.

You can sue Google for libel or slander if someone posts disparaging statements about an individual to Blogspot or Youtube

Since Google has a lot of money and the people who publish this content may not have too much money, Google would become the target for many lawsuits

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