Hacker News Reader

Comment by tesmar2 | Hacker News Reader

Then 230 protections should be removed.

"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

You want to remove this? So the runners of every forum on the internet will be responsible for content posted?

Not all forums engage in this type of moderation. In fact, most don’t. At some point, moderation turns you into a publisher. For example, book publishers generally work by receiving content from authors, deciding which works they would like to publish while rejecting others, and then using their distribution power to send it out to people around the world.

What part of that process is different from what Twitter is engaging in here?

Really? I'm gonna say that posting pics of your butt on non-porn forums is gonna get you booted from most of them, likewise if you post spam or contraband media. Even on social media where no moderation facilities exist, if one or a few participants are serially abusing the channel and can't be persuaded to stop or leave, the other users will tend to set up a new channel that doesn't include those bad actors and be more careful about who they invite in future.

We are talking about censoring speech that is otherwise acceptable under the TOS, not “pics of your butt”.

It sounds like you are complaining about the inability to game the system (in this case the TOS) by demanding that all potential abuses be proscribed in advance or excluded from moderation.

No, we're saying that currently the platforms enjoy unlimited immunity.

Courts have departed from the most natural reading of the text by giving internet companies immunity for their own content. Section 230(c)(1) protects a company only when content is "provided by /another/ information content provider". Nowhere does this provision protect a company that is itself the information content provider.

And an information content provider is not just the primary author or creator, it is anyone "responsible, /in whole or in part/, for the creation of development" of the content. (words of justice Thomas)

Because of Youtube/Twitter/FB selective showing of content outside of the good faith clause, they should be liable, yes. Keep the law, just enforce it. If you're not going to enforce it, you might as well get rid of it.

They currently enjoy unlimited immunity in a way the spirit of the law does not allow. You can't enjoy tax breaks etc. of being a platform and then go and ban content that you don't agree with, but which is not harmful in the way the law lets you do. I.e. the law lets you remove illegal content, but if you are being treated as a platform, you can't just go and, oh, I don't know, not let the New York Post show a breaking story about Hunter Biden's laptop.

Exactly. They are either a publisher or a platform. There is no in between. They need to take their pick, and deal with the liability if they want to continue on the publisher path.

> They are either a publisher or a platform. There is no in between.

In the print world there is an in between: distributors, such as bookstores, newsstands, and libraries.

They do not become liable for false claims in books they sell. It is the authors or publishers of those books who are liable. If the bookstore itself produced libelous material, such as in a press release, they would be liable for that.

Book distributors generally will carry any book given them by a publisher, regardless of content. Twitter is engaging in moderation, which puts them not just in the business of distribution. They are playing the publisher role - receiving content from authors and deciding whether or not to publish it. That is the very definition of a publisher. And yes, publishers can indeed be sued.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com