Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> An alternative approach would be exemptions for non-profit sites.

Another alternative would be "leave this problem alone, it's working just fine". Site operators can and should have the ability to ban anyone or remove any content, for any reason or no reason, and doing so does not mean they should be liable for everything they might have missed. (In practice, "liable for everything they might have missed" is equivalent to "unable to operate" for anything but the most massive sites that could theoretically afford an army of moderators, and it'd have a chilling effect even there.)

Destroying the concept of moderation does not make the world better. The liability shield is the whole reason Section 230 exists: to make it possible to have enjoyable communities online, without incurring so much liability that you have to shut them all down for fear of getting prosecuted.

If you want unmoderated communities, they exist. Go use them. Stop trying to destroy the concept of moderated communities.(Removing the liability shield would be tantamount to destroying such communities.)

Some people want the audience of moderated communities, but they don't want the standards of those communities. There's a reason unmoderated communities have fewer (and different) users.

>> "leave this problem alone, it's working just fine"

You have the major internet networks 3 weeks before an election banning speech because if they allowed it it might hurt their preferred political candidate. I mean they can claim otherwise, but they don't apply the criteria they use in this instance to instances where the speech is done by their political party. It is clear what is going on here.

Maybe that is working fine for you, it isn't working fine for me.

The ask of companies under section 230 is that they be allowed to publish libel, publish slander, publish copyright violations, publish content that violates laws against discrimination, publish threats of violence, publish posts by terrorists coordinating their attacks, publish all this with no liability whatsoever.

That is a huge ask. The question is, what do we get back for allowing them that privilege? Increasingly, in my opinion, we get negative value back for that.

It's not working just fine for me, it's time to amend section 230 so that the law advances the policies it advocates or abolish it altogether and let internet content providers live by the same rules that print content providers have lived by.

The world you propose gives more power to large site operators, not less, because they're the only ones that could possibly afford the requisite moderation resources. The world you propose does not have functional real-time public communication, because nobody could risk the liability of allowing the posting of content they haven't checked yet. The world you propose is one in which nobody could take the risk of running a community online. The world you propose is one in which the site you're making this comment on cannot exist in a functional way. The world you propose has more governmental restraint on speech, not less; that restraint comes in the form of "we're not actually telling you that you can't administrate your site, but if do something we don't like, we'll just stand back and let you get prosecuted out of existence for the actions of your users". That's just regulation of speech by an indirect means.

> The ask of companies under section 230 is that they be allowed to publish

No. "publish" is a distortion promoted by people trying to use the repeal of Section 230 as a weapon. To the extent liability should exist for speech at all, companies should absolutely be liable for what they publish. They should not be liable for what their users publish. Without that distinction, the Internet cannot exist as a medium for any kind of user-generated content. Centralized services providing curated content would fare just fine, but anything that allows users to interact or contribute would die.

> The question is, what do we get back for allowing them that privilege?

A functional Internet. Websites that contains content supplied by others, that aren't "anything goes" cesspools. An Internet that helps people interact in a read-write manner, not just consume content in a read-only manner.

>> The world you propose gives more power to large site operators, not less, because they're the only ones that could possibly afford the requisite moderation resources

Not true, someone running a small blog can read every single comment that gets submitted. Twitter can't.

>> The world you propose does not have functional real-time public communication, because nobody could risk the liability of allowing the posting of content they haven't checked yet

Not true, even pre-internet the world had functional real-time public communication. We called them telephones. You didn't get cut off if your politics didn't match the phone company's. And if you act as a platform like that on the internet, you could allow the posting of content you haven't checked yet.

Platform or publisher, pick one.

>> The world you propose is one in which nobody could take the risk of running a community online

Not true, there are print communities that publish users' content - people take that risk.

>> "publish" is a distortion promoted by people trying to use the repeal of Section 230 as a weapon

Dictionary definitions of publish: "to make generally known", "to disseminate to the public". No, "publish" is not a distortion, it's a dictionary definition, you just don't like the consequences of that definition.

>> "Without that distinction, the Internet cannot exist as a medium for any kind of user-generated content"

Not true, user generated content exists in print and it should be cheaper on the internet than in print. False claim.

>> A functional Internet

An internet where 3 weeks out from an election, the major providers of information ban information that hurts their political candidate is not a functional internet, it's an Orwellian dystopia.

No. Just no.

> Not true, someone running a small blog can read every single comment that gets submitted.

But they then have to choose between allowing every racial epithet, porn link and scam, and risking a lawsuit because a commenter says something that’s construed as defamatory.

> Not true, even pre-internet the world had functional real-time public communication. We called them telephones.

Telephones are not public communication.

> An internet where 3 weeks out from an election, the major providers of information ban information that hurts their political candidate is not a functional internet, it's an Orwellian dystopia.

It’s interesting to me that the same people who are up in arms about the response to the NY Post story — the veracity of which has been questioned by several prominent publications — had nothing to say when Twitter announced that they would suspend accounts of users wishing the President would die of COVID. If I had to label one of those an “Orwellian dystopia”, it would not be the suppression of pro–ruling party agitprop.

>> But they then have to choose...

Yes, that's correct. They have to choose what content to allow. That's called being a publisher.

>> Telephones are not public communication

I'm guessing that you are too young to have heard of party lines.

But yes, telephones were public communication.

Wishing the president would die of COVID would obviously be allowed under a platform scenario, what law do you think it breaks where a content provider wouldn't publish a wish that the president of the US dies of a disease?

Also, I don't think you know what the term agitprop means.

> Yes, that's correct. They have to choose what content to allow. That's called being a publisher.

If you're really advocating forcing individuals and small communities to choose between filtering spam and risking lawsuits, we'll have to agree to disagree. Hopefully the chilling effects that would have on speech are self-evident.

> I'm guessing that you are too young to have heard of party lines.

> But yes, telephones were public communication.

Unless I'm misunderstanding what party lines are… no they weren't. How would I listen to a conversation happening between two people outside of my local loop?

> Wishing the president would die of COVID would obviously be allowed under a platform scenario, what law do you think it breaks where a content provider wouldn't publish a wish that the president of the US dies of a disease?

This wasn't a hypothetical; it happened last week. Twitter announced it would suspend the accounts of people wishing the president would die, and the people who would go on to cry foul about the NY Post article were curiously quiet.

> Also, I don't think you know what the term agitprop means.

Yes I do.

The rules you're proposing would lead to most blogs closing their comment sections entirely. People simply would not want to take the risk. This situation would not be an improvement over the status quo.

>Not true, even pre-internet the world had functional real-time public communication. We called them telephones.

Telephone calls are private; not public. There are two parties. It's literally against the law for other parties to attempt to become privy to those communications under most circumstances (wiretapping).

Please explain how something like HN works on the telephone.

>Not true, user generated content exists in print and it should be cheaper on the internet than in print.

User generated content does indeed exist in print, where the cost of printing and shipping that content are incumbent on the party that wishes to make their opinion known. When unsolicited or tiresome, we refer to this as junk mail or chain-letters.

> An internet where 3 weeks out from an election, the major providers of information ban information that hurts their political candidate is not a functional internet, it's an Orwellian dystopia.

Or it's a sign that Twitter and FB shouldn't be "major providers of information".

> Or it's a sign that Twitter and FB shouldn't be "major providers of information".

Yeah, it really does seem some times like what Section 230 abolitionists really want is better accomplished through antitrust law. Trying to use liability for unrelated torts as a lever to force sites not to moderate is a very indirect and messy way to get back at the major platforms while creating a lot of collateral damage for smaller sites.

What has twitter done that would even remotely fall under anti-trust laws?

On the other hand using communications regulation does sound kind of obvious when you use the telephone or previous net neutrality disputes as reference points. Although it is ironic that the current anti-NN FCC now wants to push for platform services in the name of neutrality.

They aren't in violation of current anti-trust laws (AFAIK), but if the problem is that companies have grown so powerful that they can control speech, that has parallels to the problem of companies growing so powerful they can control prices. So what I'm suggesting is, why not create new laws that target the biggest platforms, using the same framework as existing anti-trust laws?

Can you explain how twitter is controlling the speech of a newspaper by blocking its article on their platform? Does twitter blocking the article suddenly unpublish it?

Should conventional printing press owners be considered utilities because you might want to post a bunch of posters somewhere, and by refusing to print your posters they censor you?

It doesn't unpublish it, but in the long run it sets up Twitter and Facebook as de facto deciders of what type of content is created. To the extent that newspapers rely on social media for traffic, the editorial decisions of those platforms will silently shape the content of those newspapers. It's the “hidden” aspect of this control that worries me.

The difference in the printing press analogy is that if a printing company won't print my poster, I can take it elsewhere.

Even if there's one poster printing company in town, they have first amendment rights.

You don't lose those for being too successful.

If a poster printing company started making editorial decisions about which posters they printed, they would be at risk of being considered a publisher and as such being liable for the content of the posters they printed.

That isn't true for internet content providers due to section 230.

They are already liable for such things because they make active editorial decisions.

If internet publishers make active editorial decisions, they are also liable. Consider the new york times online.

I gave an example elsewhere that the owner of a physical bulletin board wouldn't be liable for posters on it, even if they occasionally came by and took down ones that they felt should be removed (for any reason).

Section 230 claims that internet sites are more like a physical bulletin board then a newspaper, in that they are remove-later, not review-first models. Aa such they deserve the same liability as physical remove-later systems: relatively few.

>> Yeah, it really does seem some times like what Section 230 abolitionists really want is better accomplished through antitrust law

That's called false dichotomy.

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make? Yes, you could do both, but you'd still have the collateral damage I mentioned as a negative of the CDA approach. If there's another approach without that downside, why do both?

> Site operators can and should have the ability to ban anyone or remove any content, for any reason or no reason.

If a major fraction of human communication, especially during lockdowns, is facilitated by social networks then they are fulfilling a utility role. So being in the position of dictating what millions of people will talk about is at least questionable.

> for anything but the most massive sites that could theoretically afford an army of moderators

Ok, I have not considered this angle and it is indeed concerning.

> Destroying the concept of moderation does not make the world better.

That may be the goal of the FCC, but I for one did not say that I am in support of destroying moderation. Quite the opposite, I was thinking how it could be made to work while providing more open communication platforms and putting more control in the hands of the users rather than the companies.

> If a major fraction of human communication, especially during lockdowns, is facilitated by social networks then they are fulfilling a utility role.

Removing the ability of those sites to moderate will not make them better. (Even if it did by some metric, that still wouldn't be acceptable; what constitutes "better" is entirely up to the site owner to determine. But it's even less reasonable given that it wouldn't have the intended effect, unless the intended effect is to cause harm.) Having many users should not suddenly mean you don't own the site, nor should it mean that you cannot moderate the site as you see fit. "We came up with a new algorithm to automatically detect spam" should not need to come with "and several years later we managed to get the government to say we're allowed to use it without incurring liability".

>> for anything but the most massive sites that could theoretically afford an army of moderators

> Ok, I have not considered this angle and it is indeed concerning.

That angle is why Section 230 was created in the first place, and why it should remain intact.

> That may be the goal of the FCC, but I for one did not say that I am in support of destroying moderation.

Removing the liability shield for sites that moderate will destroy either the site or the moderation, and either way the usefulness of the site comes to an end.

> Quite the opposite, I was thinking how it could be made to work while providing more open communication platforms and putting more control in the hands of the users rather than the companies.

Make a new network that puts control in the hands of the users in the way you envision, and test it to see how well it works. Or join one of the existing efforts already working on that. This isn't a legislative problem; it certainly shouldn't have a legislative non-solution masquerading as a solution.

I think most people's experience with moderation puts more weight on any encounters they've had with being moderated, and little to no weight (except perhaps in the abstract) on the volume of what they don't see. Moderation, when done well, is close to invisible; I think as a side effect of that, people underestimate its value in contributing to their good experiences.

> Having many users should not suddenly mean you don't own the site

You continue to own it, but that does not mean you can do arbitrary things to your users. That's precisely how things work for utilities. You can do whatever with your private road or power generator. But if you're providing essential services to the masses then eventually universal service, non-discrimination and neutrality rules come into play.

If doctors coordinate their covid response over facebook groups, elon musk makes stock-affecting announcement over twitter and the police sends out warnings via twitter than they're taking on the role of a public communication provider.

You could argue that it's a free service and you're not a customer as you're with a utility. But on the other hand you're paying with your data and attention.

> Removing the liability shield for sites that moderate will destroy either the site or the moderation, and either way the usefulness of the site comes to an end.

You're assuming that there is no way to adapt to the new rules. Separation of platform services and moderation would be one. Would it work? Maybe not and you could be right and communities would be destroyed. Or maybe it would result in more Bloggers, Wordpresses and Signals.

> Make a new network that puts control in the hands of the users in the way you envision, and test it to see how well it works.

Regulation is a valid approach though? I'm not saying that the FCC is intending to do good here, just that I can can imagine a hypothetical well-intentioned version of what they're doing.

> That angle is why Section 230 was created in the first place, and why it should remain intact.

Let me rephrase, I find it concerning that it could specifically empower the entrenched players while harming the smaller ones. Requiring an army of moderators when you want to create a global communication platform on the one hand but impose your preferred corporate image (and be it just to remain attractive to advertisiers) on all participants then I am not feeling all that sympathetic. And this isn't just about communication in the narrow sense. The controversy around the apple app store is in a similar vein. On the one hand they pretend that they act as a simple market facilitator, a platform. On the other hand they categorically ban certain categories of legal software because it goes against their corporate interests. Forcing them to choose between platform and publisher could result in either a smaller, carefully curated official apple store + sideloading or larger, more open default app store. Either outcome seems desirable to me.

> You're assuming that there is no way to adapt to the new rules.

If you're liable for user-posted content, you either need massive resources to review literally everything your users post (and a sufficient delay for such review to take place, and a massive insurance policy for the inevitable mistake), or you stop allowing user-posted content entirely.

This proposal would make it nearly impossible to simultaneously have user-posted content and moderation. Sites that post read-only content for user consumption would do just fine, but any site that enables the usage of the Internet in a read-write contributory way would be dead. There's no "adapting" to that, nor should there be.

> if you're providing essential services to the masses

Twitter is not in any way an "essential service". The collective set of communication platforms that people use are, in concert, important, but it'd still be a stretch to say even that combination was "essential"; I certainly don't think it's reasonable to consider any one of them "essential" by itself. If any one of those sites went away, people would adapt and use others, and more would arise rapidly to fill the void.

If the power goes out, people die. If Facebook goes down, people probably become on balance happier.

Ignore for a moment that Facebook is publicly traded; imagine it weren't. Do you believe, by way of example, that Facebook should be prohibited from pulling the plug and formatting all the servers one day, just because they decided they were tired of it? I don't.

Twitter is not an "essential service". It's useful. We're not utterly dependent on any one site; we're dependent on some site. If it went away, life would go on, and people would find alternatives. The only critical issue would be if all such sites went away simultaneously, rather than just one. "Widely used" is not "essential".

> The collective set of communication platforms that people use are, in concert, important, but it'd still be a stretch to say even that combination was "essential"

Yes, I am concerned about the collective of privatized communication mediums. More and more private, personal communication runs over these platforms. Facebook is not just your timeline, it also is whatsapp. Twitter has DMs too. Those get filtered too. This is unlike telephone or face-to-face communication.

Their continued existence is not essential to life, I agree. But they shape communication which is essential to society as a whole. If we can't do anything about the network effect then having a disinterested network should be preferable.

> This proposal would make it nearly impossible to simultaneously have user-posted content and moderation.

I already mentioned this in another post, but let the userbase collectively handle the moderation of what would now be considered "community guidelines", let the platform provider handle moderation of illegal content. This may require much better tooling and different ways content is amplified (or not) than social media platforms currently offer but it doesn't seem as impossible as you say.

> If we can't do anything about the network effect then having a disinterested network should be preferable.

I don't want a disinterested communication platform. I want a highly interested communication platform that actually cares and maintains standards. I've tried both, and I find moderated platforms far more enjoyable. I'm not telling other people what kind of platform they should prefer; I'm stating that both such platforms should be available to those who prefer them. Freedom of association is valuable.

> let the userbase collectively handle the moderation

First, it's not at all obvious why user moderation would avoid the liability, and why that wouldn't put either the site or the user at risk under this new draconian liability scheme.

Second, user moderation like that requires some form of meta-moderation ("which users get to moderate"), and then you're back to the same problem.

Third, you're arguing that a site isn't allowed to pay people to moderate, and instead should rely on unpaid labor by volunteers to make the site more useful.

Fourth, you're effectively arguing that people who run websites (as opposed to those who use them) are not allowed to have standards. (And "not allowed without incurring liability" means "not allowed", in practical terms.) No. If I host a chat server, and someone comes on and starts chanting "butts butts butts butts" (saw this one happen) or "you should be gassed" (also saw this one happen) or "good ban all (slur)" (saw that one in a flagged comment on this website today) or "such-and-such group are mentally ill" (I've seen this one too), they're getting banned, whether I own the server or not, the same way they'd get kicked out of a party, or a cafe, or a business. Do you believe that, because I have standards and norms, I should not be allowed to run a server? Because if that causes me to incur liability for user's content, I cannot run such a server. Why is that a problem? Use someone else's server. I do, in fact, have freedom of association, and (modulo protected classes) believe very strongly in "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com