So HN is gone, too, then.
Any site can have any rules they want. But they shouldn't expect to be able manipulate and control discussion and face no backlash from users.
> Without becoming a target for filling up with illegal shit to overwhelm the moderators and cause legal trouble for the owners?
'Trolling', 'flaming' and 'swearing' are not illegal, and honestly, most complaints about 'trolling' I see are just people who disagree with what they're reading.
You're saying they should face backlash from government regulators not from users.
If there's a big user backlash, those users are already free to move to whatever site they want, or make their own.
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Re: your comment about trolling, etc, not being illegal: yes, exactly. So if a site wanted to enforce some sort of "family friendly" policy, you could simply bomb them with truly illegal shit instead and get them in trouble with the regulators for not being able to keep up as they would be liable for that, since they aren't a "anything legal goes" platform.
I never said that. But it's probably a good idea to have some sort of oversight for a massive platform that censors and manipulates discussion of millions of people. You may think their policies are totally justified and correct (they aren't), but the specific opinions they choose to promote may change to something you are against.
> If there's a big user backlash, those users are already free to move to whatever site they want, or make their own.
Yes, they are also free to shit on the website and point out it's flaws.
> So if a site wanted to enforce some sort of "family friendly" policy, you could simply bomb them with truly illegal shit instead and get them in trouble with the regulators for not being able to keep up as they would be liable for that, since they aren't a "anything legal goes" platform.
Trolling is not illegal, it's not even a specific thing. It's a very ambiguous term used to describe 'comment's that make me feel bad'. Trolling and posting illegal shit is completely different, sure ban illegal stuff - you kind of have to, but don't use 'trolling' as an excuse to ban stuff you disagree with.
Think through the mechanics of how this oversight would work.
Someone will have to decide "is this site sufficiently neutral in how they moderate UGC." So let's spin up a government department more that, maybe call it part of the FCC, maybe make it a new one, who knows.
Now let years, maybe even decades go by. Now let's say some site you like gets essentially taken out - since massive sites aren't going to be able to do manual moderation of everything - by a regulator who leans to the opposite side of the political spectrum you do.
Now you don't have much resource, since you aren't free to go off and try again - the regulator would just get that site too.
I have a hard time seeing how this is better.
And this is a weird stance for conservatives to be preaching, since the previous similar thing, the fairness doctrine, was no favorite thing of theirs.
This is one of those things where you can't say "only the government can solve this problem" unless the only speech you want to see protected is fairly-mainstream government-endorsed speech.
There are many ways this can work, and it's not necessarily simple. I don't have a specific proposal.
> Now let years, maybe even decades go by. Now let's say some site you like gets essentially taken out - since massive sites aren't going to be able to do manual moderation of everything - by a regulator who leans to the opposite side of the political spectrum you do.
1) Manual moderation of massive sites is already going away for the most part.
2) Sites like reddit have swarms of moderators, the ability to report, and send legal notices to take down specific content and also be made.
3) We have laws about 'illegal content' these websites are already complying on a massive scale.
4) My suggestion was an oversight of excessive moderation and manipulation of opinion, not what your example suggests, which is the opposite. You literally don't have to moderate anything to not be charged with 'excessive censorship' or whatever.
> Now you don't have much resource, since you aren't free to go off and try again - the regulator would just get that site too.
We have a justice system for a reason.
> I have a hard time seeing how this is better.
We can all come with with 100 different imaginary scenarios where some very generic suggestion may fail. I don't see the point. Do you think there should be no laws about content? No libel laws? No copyright enforcement? Where do you draw the line?
> And this is a weird stance for conservatives to be preaching, since the previous similar thing, the fairness doctrine, was no favourite thing of theirs.
I'm not a conservative, but what I find more jarring is the people who want sites like facebook forced to be censored and moderated politically, while reddit can do whatever it pleases as long is it aligns with their political ideology.
> This is one of those things where you can't say "only the government can solve this problem" unless the only speech you want to see protected is fairly-mainstream government-endorsed speech.
Again, I did not suggest that there should be laws about what content is allowed. I actually think we already have too many such laws - I would personally do away with DMCA and other such bullshit. What we should have is a check on mass-scale censorship and manipulation of opinion by corporations.
I was talking about the proposal from `cwhiz, in which the government would revoke protections under existing current law. I think there are holes in that suggestion that are miles wide, that will extend to pretty much any other proposal that depends on the government deciding if a site is over- or under-moderated.
Without a specific proposal to talk about, or specific opinions on "should a site have to relinquish editorial control or rule-setting ability to enjoy liability protections from stuff done by users" (I say "no"), I don't see much more interesting stuff to debate. Those are real, active questions and proposals being made; other hypotheticals could go on forever but are less relevant to now.
But if you aren't interested in those specific points, I don't know why you're participating in a thread that was specifically about the questions around that current law.
Do you honestly believe that a discussion forum site that wanted a family friendly policy shouldn't be able to have any liability protections? That if someone started flooding them with child porn, say, at a rate they couldn't keep up with, they should have to shut down because they'd otherwise be liable for all that content due to their having a content moderation policy that forbid certain types of legal speech (say, swearing)?
And what does child pornography have to do with swearing?
> Do you honestly believe that a discussion forum site that wanted a family friendly policy shouldn't be able to have any liability protections?
Again, I never said that.
The pitch being made in this subthread was "I don't think Reddit should be able to censor lawful content and also claim protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act."
So you lose liability protection if you censor lawful content.
So if you want to ban swearing, you become liable for your user's content. Which makes you a WIDE OPEN target for bad actors who could post whatever illegal content they want faster than you could moderate it.
I'm trying to illustrate why I think `cwhiz took an absurd position, and am not using the term "trolling" in general now. I've given a specific example of "legal content some communities might want to prohibit" as well as "illegal content that bad actors could use to get the owner of that site in trouble in this proposed world."
If your laws permit speech you don't like, either fix your laws or fix yourself.
If you would like to learn more, and see exactly what happened when Section 230 was not in effect, check out this case:
Stratton Oakmont, Inc. and Daniel Porush, v. Prodigy Services Company, "John Doe", and "Mary Doe".
Stratton Oakmont (yep, the one that was made by Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street), won that case against Prodigy and, yes, John Doe and Mary Doe. You, the user, are John Doe or Mary Doe. Section 230 protects you.
I'd be in favor of a law that required uncensored free speech on all forums but that also allowed users to opt-in to moderation. Even if 99% of users opted in to moderation it would still leave an escape valve for totally uncensored free thought.
Honestly I don't see what's the best alternative. Probably the segregation of comment platforms and sites. If Section 230 were to be substituted with something effective in regards of speech protection, or conversely the right of platforms to curate comments, then still this would only apply to the US and it would be a significant factor to move the comments elsewhere.
This isn't a practical idea. People aren't always aware of their own biases and critics are also inclined to see bias even when there is none. There is no practical way to determine bias levels.
> Reddit is very happy to claim they are unbiased, neutral, hate free.
Are they? Can you point to an example of such a claim?
> But some preferred subreddits will ban people for heaving wrong gender or wrong race
Subbredits are run by users.
> They also tolerate hate speech, incitement to violence or even advocacy for genocide , if it matches their ideology.
Reddit would say they don't tolerate those things, you say they do, how do we determine who is right?
No, they are run day to day by users, but ultimately are at the discretion of the site owners. Case in point, this article we are discussing.
> Reddit would say they don't tolerate those things, you say they do, how do we determine who is right?
The behavior of the site owners? Reddit site owners treat different subreddits differently and different viewpoints differently, although there is single characteristic differences (gender, race, etc) because of the people and topics that are generated from the groups. Pre-censoring, is not uncommon, which has led up to this wrongthink penalty.
If you're challenging the history of reddit, you aren't informed enough to be discussing this and it's not worth rehashing.
The site owners don't ban users based on race and gender which is the claim I responded to.
> Reddit site owners treat different subreddits differently and different viewpoints differently
Well yes, that is how standards work, "different views" are treated differently based on how they stack up with respect to the standard. I understand that you're arguing that reddit applies the rules selectively, but reddit would argue that they apply them fairly, so how do you suggest this kind of conflict be resolved at scale? Who should decide if reddit is being fair or not?
> If you're challenging the history of reddit, you aren't informed enough to be discussing this and it's not worth rehashing.
If you want to make an argument then make it, but condescending declarations of a monopoly on the informed position does not do your case any favors.
I'm not making a case. I'm describing the state of the reddit culture. Whether you believe it or not, is incidental.
> The site owners don't ban users based on race and gender which is the claim I responded to.
Your statements were broader than that. Revisionism aside, you can get banned for voting on a post, and there are lots of rules (written and unwritten by each community) that can get you banned from the subreddit or reddit as a whole. Making statements about YOUR gender (or a number of other attributes) can also get you banned. Here, I'll do a google search for you (since you can't be bothered) for subreddit bans, to start you off: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=subredd...
You aren't informed enough to be discussing this and it's not worth rehashing.
That much is clear.
> I'm describing the state of the reddit culture. Whether you believe it or not, is incidental.
Very convincing. Oh, I know, you don't care about that in the least.
> Your statements were broader than that. Revisionism aside...
No, they weren't. You stated that the subreddits are ultimately controlled by the site owners, and I explained that the site owners don't ban people based on race and gender. Simple. Revisionism indeed.
> Making statements about YOUR gender (or a number of other attributes) can also get you banned. Here, I'll do a google search for you
The results of the google search does not support the claim you're making, like, not even a single result. Beyond that, mods can ban users for whatever reason they want, but the site owners do not ban people based on their race and gender, that claim is totally false.
> You aren't informed enough to be discussing this and it's not worth rehashing.
lol, a laughable assertion coming from someone who can't even cherry-pick google search results to support their argument. Stop wasting my time.
Not cherry picking to make an observation that documents the history. Its an ongoing, and well covered, topic for which you can demonstrably research without difficulty. Denial doesnt help either of us and causes me to question your sincerity. Good luck with whatever.
The answer is going to be a moving target. You're gonna have some government bureaucrats having to make rulings on these regulations.
And many of the proponents of this seem to fail to imagine a world where Donald Trump is ever not president. Imagine the power this would give the government against someone who plays fast and loose with 'facts'. "We've decided that the statements in this post were intentionally misleading, therefore they are a political statement, and the owners of the site promoted them in a way that they didn't do to this other post, therefore the owners are making a political statement and this is not a neutral site, which makes it liable for these other comments from other users that we're interpreting as violent threats."
This is unsustainable though, there is just too much content to filter. There is also the fact that lacking such protections the site will be targeted by bad-faith actors who intend to harm the site by posting lots of legally problematic content.
The legal realism prevails with this stupid law, it will always prevail. You can both moderate / review / editorialize content, including political content, while simultaneously enjoying Section 230 protections.
Section 230 did not create a distinction between a platform and a publisher that required censorship rules to be applied fairly or evenly.
I'm a big fan of the idea that internet providers, DNS registrars, etc. need to be neutral to content in the way common carriers are, but I'm not convinced yet that platforms should have similar obligations. It seems that the appropriate response to schismatic disagreement with the "SysOps of the BBS" is to build another BBS as the "telephone network" is open to all.
Someone else mentioned as well, but some very specific monopoly/necessity cases could change this delineation, however I could only see this being necessary with a much different environment than we have today (that is, situations without feasible common carrier alternatives, _maybe_ google search would be an example today).
I won't speak to your particular motives because I don't know you from anyone else, but I sometimes wonder if a core driver behind wanting to mess with section 230 is because people feel entitled to an audience at low/no cost to them, at the expense of platform owners, to blather on about whatever they please. To this end, I say "nope, you're not entitled... we have an open internet, drive your own damn traffic".
You mentioned Google Search, I'd add Youtube for video content, Twitch for streaming, FB for social network etc. Sure, you can broadcast video content without Youtube, there's vimeo or you could host it yourself, but it's really not a feasible approach. Much like you don't really have to rely on the local utility company to provide you with electricity and water, you could totally run a generator in your back yard and have trucks bring in fresh and move out waste water ... but it's not a realistic approach.
> To this end, I say "nope, you're not entitled... we have an open internet, drive your own damn traffic".
I'd respond that we don't have an open internet, but more importantly: you don't have to be a platform, nobody is stopping Reddit from being a publisher.
The reason why they don't want to legally be a publisher is simply that their low-cost approach doesn't work if they have more responsibility for what they publish. They very much want to be able to pick and choose what is published, but they don't want to be considered a publisher.
But Reddit is effectively just a big message board. Such interpretation would force every small internet forum to either become a [0-9]chan or a closed space for invited members only. There is lots of middle ground where the owners/the community polices some speech and you can reasonably, realistically just go somewhere else.
The entire point of 230 was to allow companies like Reddit to censor lawful content while still claiming protections. It was never designed at any point to create neutral platforms.
Lack of moderation was already a defense before 230 was created:
> CompuServe stated they would not attempt to regulate what users posted on their services, while Prodigy had employed a team of moderators to validate content. Both faced legal challenges related to content posted by their users. In Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc., CompuServe was found not be at fault as, by its stance as allowing all content to go unmoderated, it was a distributor and thus not liable for libelous content posted by users. However, Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. found that as Prodigy had taken an editorial role with regard to customer content, it was a publisher and legally responsible for libel committed by customers. [0]
Section 230 was not designed to foster neutral platforms, it was designed to allow platforms/communities to moderate as they saw fit without opening themselves up to legal liability. To re-phrase that in modern terms, section 230 is one of the strongest protections we have today for community's Right to Filter[1].
When people say that they like Section 230 but it's gone off the rails, what they really mean is that they think Section 230 was always a bad idea. Or perhaps more charitably that they haven't really researched how Section 230 works or what its history was.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
The whole point of Section 230 was so sites could do that. Before 230, there has been court rulings that said if you moderate the content you are liable for the content. 230 was enacted specifically to reverse that.
I don't think people espousing this view understand the scope of what sites need to tolerate to comply. Would reddit be a better place if they let people say, "ni\\\\s belong in shackles" and, "death to Jews"? Because that's legal speech.
As far as Reddit and Facebook go, understand that freedom of speech also means freedom from compelled speech. It's not just about being able to say what you want, it's about being able to not say the things you don't want to say. Making Section 230 contingent on hosting all legal content compels people so say a lot of things they don't want to say.
The internet is open. If you disagree with Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc, there are alternatives. Of course when the hateful all congregate, the farce of their positions becomes too clear. They need the legitimacy of Twitter or Facebook to ply their nonsense.
As an aside, it's interesting that those far right sites are some of the most fervently moderated, "snowflake" sites. Even The_Donald on reddit was hysterical in its suppression of even a simple question on the truthfulness of some fake claim. Instant comment deletion and account ban. Gab's extreme assertions of their moderation policy are uproarious when compared to its creation (you know - "Twitter silenced right wing voices!")