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Comment by throwaway829 | Hacker News Reader

It's obviously not a first amendment is since that restricts what the fed gov can do, but it is a free speech issue which is a philosophy thought to be better than censoring opposing ideas. It's a legal issue in regards to section 230 which only protects open platforms from liability from user content. If Twitter whats to be a publisher with editorial authority then they should be held to the same standard as NYT and CNN.

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> It's a legal issue in regards to section 230 which only protects open platforms from liability from user content. If Twitter whats to be a publisher with editorial authority then they should be held to the same standard as NYT and CNN.

Nope. User-generated content can be moderated and Section 230 protections still apply:

> With that done, we can discuss the various ways you might have been wrong about Section 230. If you said "Once a company like that starts moderating content, it's no longer a platform, but a publisher" […]

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

again this awful misreading of 230. No, the law explicitly does not demand a platform be 'open', or neutral or censor free. That is completely nuts, because it would imply hackernews and your personal blog would be legally liable publishers as soon as you start to moderate content. Which is obviously silly because any content-specific platform that controls what it serves would be legally liable and effectively unable to operate on the internet.

230 grants platforms both freedom from liability and gives them the ability to moderate. They do not need to pick.

I think most people who say they This are advocating for 230 to be rewritten, not misreading it. Personally, I think that individual curation of content should be considered an editorial decision, and not simply moderation. Tightly moderated forums where everyone sees the same posts are fine, but twitter/Facebook with their individualized front pages is not.

> they should be held to the same standard as NYT and CNN.

There still are significant distinctions. NYT and CNN have a much smaller number of people publishing news, who are hired and paid for their work. Twitter is just a host with a block button. For example Twitter doesn't have a sign-up hiring interview so anyone could have an account. Another distinction is that Twitter is publish first, ban later while newspapers are filtering before publishing.

Demanding a rule that works for few people to scale to hundreds of millions is wishful thinking. It's a different situation requiring different treatment.

I'm curious: what's the line between Terms of Service and editorial authority?

I don't know the exact wording of section 230. Even if I knew it, it wouldn't help, because I'm not a lawyer.

That's why I don't understand where the line is drawn and why. If the idea is to "protect open platforms from liability from user content", why is it okay to have policies that remove child porn, but not those that remove incitement to hate crimes?

> I'm curious: what's the line between Terms of Service and editorial authority?

IANAL: prior approval prior to posting.

If an employee of the publisher is in the 'chain of command' and hits a "Publish" or "Approved" button in the CMS, then it is editorial authority.

If any random yahoo can post something without moderation beforehand, then it is user generated. But the CMS operator could then remove the content after the fact per ToS.

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