Comment by juniper_strong | Hacker News Reader

Comment by juniper_strong | Hacker News Reader

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You asked people to read section 230 and you claimed that section 230 says absolutely nothing about impartiality.

I read section 230 and mentioned parts of it that I think are relevant to impartiality. In particular, I don't see how you maximize user control over the information they receive if information providers are going to be partial to one political party. And I don't see how you have forums for a true diversity of political discourse if forums are going to be partial to one political party.

If you can tell me, I would love to know, how do Twitter's actions in this case maximize user control over the information they receive? I don't think they do, I think it is quite the opposite of that, but go ahead and make a case if you have one.

Now it is true that the implementation of section 230 lacks an enforcement mechanism to enforce the policies that it advocates. That's a problem with the law, and it is what some people are advocating that we fix. I agree with those proposals, I would like to see section 230 amended so that companies that don't maximize user control over the information they receive lost section 230 protections. And the same thing for companies that don't allow a true diversity of political discourse.

> I read section 230 and mentioned parts of it that I think are relevant to impartiality.

I don't think the part you highlighted is relevant to impartiality. It sets an aspirational goal of Section 230 and the safe harbor is the means to promote that goal. Without the safe harbor, providers would be forced to strictly police what users post. Smaller providers who aren't able to bear the burden of strict moderation would be forced to shut down entirely. This would have the consequence of reducing overall user access to information.

> I don't see how you maximize user control over the information they receive if information providers are going to be partial to one political party.

By using a different information provider.

> description of the internet as, among other things, "a forum for a true diversity of political discourse".

You said it yourself. The Internet is neutral, according to Section 230. Not individual information providers. If you don't like what one information provider does, go make your own. It's all based on free tools and open standards. No one's stopping you.

Believe me, no one of any political stripe should want to take away ability to moderate Internet forums. It will turn all forums, regardless of political, religious or other affiliation, into spam-filled, unusable messes. That also reduces "user control over the information they receive", since the garbage will drown out anything useful and platforms will have no power to remove it.

>> By using a different information provider.

That doesn't work when network effects are involved. Just like there aren't going to be hundreds of cell phone networks, there aren't going to be hundreds of networks with the reach of Twitter or Facebook.

Any time Twitter or Facebook don't allow certain information to be sent, users have less control over the information they receive.

>> Believe me, no one of any political stripe should want to take away ability to moderate Internet forums. It will turn all forums, regardless of political, religious or other affiliation, into spam-filled, unusable messes

The question is where the moderation happens, at the corporate level or at the user level. If a user who creates a space on a discussion board gets to moderate it, and anyone can create a space on that discussion board, that's perfectly usable and it puts the control in the user's hands.

So now you're demanding companies build specific features (user moderated boards) to accommodate what you think the law should be, regardless of how those companies' products already work?

If the companies actions aren't advancing the stated policies for which the law was enacted, then the law should be strengthened so that it promotes those policies.

Companies currently are acting in ways that are in direct opposition of those policies, so if you believe in those policies, you should want their actions to change.

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