Comment by originalvichy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by originalvichy | Hacker News Reader

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>Section 230 makes sites like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, Instagram and even Hacker News possible. Revoking Section 230 could expose those platforms to the possibility of liability for content posted on them. This might cause a re-shaping of the Internet in general.

>Part of me seriously wonders - would that necessarily be a bad thing? I am not convinced, by any stretch of the imagination, that these social media opinion aggregation platforms are universally positive.

Here's where you are wrong to think this. It doesn't protect social media giants, Hacker News and news websites. It protects literally everyone on the internet in the USA.

Thanks to this law you can't be held liable if you have a blog with a comment section. Anyone can post anything there and you could be at serious risk of legal trouble if someone posted something that breaks the law on your website. Any communal website would either a) move out of the US and b) probably require some very strict controls on who can post and what.

The law doesn't protect American giants, it protects everyone that uses the internet to discuss.

I suggest you read this blog post on the issue, especially this part:

""If you said "Section 230 is a massive gift to big tech!"

Once again, I must inform you that you are very, very wrong. There is nothing in Section 230 that applies solely to big tech. Indeed, it applies to every website on the internet and every user of those websites.""

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

> Thanks to this law you can't be held liable if you have a blog with a comment section.

Even absent a comment section, most blogs are hosted by someone else (e.g. WordPress), who does not vet the content on that blog. That won't be possible anymore in a post-Section 230 world.

Right. So WordPress has no protections if you post bad content. So probably WordPress goes away.

No problem, you say, I'll self-host my content on AWS and use CloudFlare as a CDN. But AWS and CF also have no section 230 protections any more either and probably won't do business with you unless you indemnify under some kind of insurance policy (which you won't be able to afford as a small blog).

Even if you run your own server and install it at home, the lack of section 230 protections will probably make your ISP responsible for content you publish (remember: your ISP is not a common carrier - thanks FCC) so you're probably going to find that all consumer ISPs are going to have terms of service that prohibit publication, and technical implementations that enforce that.

I mean, in the non-Internet world, if I want to make a newsletter and mail it out to a subscriber list; I can at least do that. All I need is a laser printer, and a stack of stamped envelopes. The postal service is a common carrier, at least.

Today's internet is a composition of platforms, all of which are really only possible due to the existence of section 230. It blows my mind that people are so blasé about the idea of tossing it out or reworking it in a naive way.

Thank you for your final comment. As a lawyer, reading people's reactions to 230 repeal attempts (especially when it comes from educated engineers and technologists) is shocking. What is more astounding is that, for some reason, they seem convinced that this will take out FB/Google/Twitter, etc. where we have ample evidence that the opposite will occur, and they'll just become further entrenched platforms since they are the only ones that would have the financial capacity to continue running community based platforms effectively. I have yet to come across a strong argument for repeal that doesn't exacerbate the issues that repeal proponents purport to want to address.

> It protects literally everyone on the internet in the USA.

I think this is the kind of knee-jerk hyperbole I want people to really think deeply about.

> Thanks to this law you can't be held liable if you have a blog with a comment section.

Maybe that should not be protected. If I am unable/unwilling to moderate the comment section of a blog I host then maybe I should't have one. I do not believe a completely open free-speech comment section is a requirement of a good or successful blog. Also, there is a business opportunity for those who want comment sections to pay for moderation services.

> I must inform you that you are very, very wrong.

This kind of patronizing is neither useful nor conducive to mature discussion. Aggregate user-generated-content sites aren't some kind of holy thing, forums, comment sections or otherwise. I want people to consider the fact that we may all be fine without them at all. Nothing stops people from posting whatever content they want on their own site. It just discourages aggregation of other people's content.

> If I am unable/unwilling to moderate the comment section of a blog I host then maybe I should't have one.

I completely agree, it’s clear that a successful business model around content moderation cannot exist in the internet’s current form, and there are very few consequences for people who post malicious content.

>Maybe that should not be protected. If I am unable/unwilling to moderate the comment section of a blog I host then maybe I should't have one. I do not believe a completely open free-speech comment section is a requirement of a good or successful blog.

It's not about having to moderate a completely free speech comment section. It's about being able to even have one and to be able to host good people and good comments without having to be liable for the time when people act terribly.

Where I'm from I don't think a bar owner can be held liable if a patron starts a fight and wounds another patron. You don't open a bar with the explicit intent of it being an amateur boxing arena, but a nice place for people to enjoy drinks and conversation.

If a user online decides to breach trust and common courtesy by posting vile stuff on my site I shouldn't be held liable for their actions as I did not force or coerce them to do it.

>Nothing stops people from posting whatever content they want on their own site. It just discourages aggregation of other people's content.

Yes, nothing is stopping them. But 230 is allowing you to do more with the internet other than just post things on your own site. That blog even describes an instance where replying/forwarding an email - in which you are repeating what rule/law breaking thing another person said to be able to reply/comment on said thing - you are protected against liability.

If you dismiss these liability rules you are effectively removing everything from chatrooms to comment sections from the internet, effectively making the internet into a snailmail/bulletin board service.

> If you dismiss these liability rules you are effectively removing everything from chatrooms to comment sections from the internet, effectively making the internet into a snailmail/bulletin board service.

Yes, I am pondering exactly this. How much of the Internet do I consider valuable that would be lost? I mean, lost in the sense it would be completely irreplaceable without Section 230 protection. To be fair to my position, the vacuum of unmoderated spaces would be filled one way or another.

Maybe people are surprised by such a position, but I don't actually see enough inherent value in unmoderated comment sections on private blogs or even all of the 1990's era phpbb forums to worry about their loss. In fact, when I consider the negative effects of the massive companies hiding behind Section 230 they really seem to heavily outweigh whatever positive effect comments on my personal blog could ever bring.

It seems these things keep coming up: public comments on personal blogs and anonymous forums. I want people to deeply think about whether or not these things are really valuable and even more so whether or not the are irreplaceable without Section 230.

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