It fascinates me that the people most offended by the recent actions of google, amazon, facebook, etc are the ones pushing for the repeal of section 230.
This is fairly clearly an antitrust case, which has nothing to do with S230. Behavior of the digital giants is very similar to the behavior of railroad oligopolies of the 19th century which actually led to antitrust legislation.
It would be different if, say, CenturyLink were blocking content across their transit infrastructure. That would be more like your railroad analogy.
There is a longish recent staff report on the Web of the Congress regarding behavior of Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook (almost 500 pages) [0]. I actually read most of it. These platforms have already engaged in a lot of stuff that is anti-competitive. And the latest purge of Parler is, among other effects, also a suppression of a potential competitor.
Of course, the tech giants say that they weren't officially motivated by a desire to suppress a competitor, but they acted against potentially competing firms so many times already that one should be wary about their explanations.
[0] https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_dig...
It seems more like poor planning on their part: over-reliance on specific services of a single provider, and no disaster recovery plan for if this is made unavailable. Particularly considering the business they're in - publishing controversial content that gets its users banned on more mainstream social media sites. They would have been wise to have a backup plan for hosting.
On the other hand, if you were also passing reference to the app store duopoly (as the report mentions this), I agree with you on that. At least on Android a banned app can be fairly easily side-loaded; iOS users are entirely subject to Apple's whims on what their device is permitted to run.
If Amazon acted alone, I do not think that there would be an antitrust case. But given that Amazon acted together with the app store duopoly, in what appears to be a coordinated action with the same goal, I think the antitrust case applies. If two very dominant players make a pact with a third not-so-dominant player to squeeze somebody a bit more, it only makes their anti-competitive behavior harsher.
BTW, I believe that Parler really could have prepared better. It is obvious that they did not have a good plan B.
Mikhail Gorbachev used to say "Trust, but verify." I would like to see some verification in this case.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
Your thesis is flawed. You can't define "good faith" in any real way. You either have to accept that sites will be moderated and some number of people will disagree with the moderation, or you have to swing HARD in the opposite direction and decide all sites are now publishers and responsible for all content on their sites including user created content.
That standard doesn't exist and isn't objective. No, even that really clever one you're about to come up with. It's not real. It's all subjective. The entire US legal system is a "Common-law" legal system, meaning it's all subjective. Objective is for mathematics, not the law.
*edited for typo
If you believe that there is a massive conspiracy that resulted in widespread election fraud, flipping the election results, and that the massive conspiracy is going to ruin everyone's lives in the future, you'll find it objectively truthful to make sure everyone posts as much information about the election being stolen as possible up to and including taking up arms and fighting for your freedom, and there's no way to reasonably interpret that content as harmful to the greater good.
If you believe there was no conspiracy resulting in widespread election fraud, but there is a massive disinformation campaign stemming from a demagogue that now has enough followers willing to take up arms and attempt to overthrow the government, you will find it objectively truthful that posting information about the election being stolen will contribute to inciting those followers and is a grave threat to our model of democracy.
Content is, by its nature, open to interpretation, and often written with persuasive language. If you're persuaded, your beliefs and actions will tend one way, and if you're not, they'll tend another way. The same content can only be evaluated in a subjective manner.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
It's a quick read, it's not long, and it's actually reasonably clear what it does and does not do.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/section-230-the-...
It is the policy of the United States- (1) to promote the continued development of the Internet and other interactive computer services and other interactive media; (2) to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation; (3) to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families, and schools who use the Internet and other interactive computer services; ...
Up until now, a Laissez-faire regulatory approach seemed to achieve these goals, but it's hardly fair to call what exists at this point a "vibrant and competitive free market" which "maximizes user control over what information is receives by individuals". Especially if a cartel of tech platforms can completely stamp out individuals' ability to listen to the speech of people they want access to. Regulation is needed now.
It's a special form of doublethink where aesthetics and actions can go into completely opposite directions. Many republican campaigns have made great use of this, particularly to appeal to rural america.
They see things in a more absolutist free speech lens, meaning any content that is legal should be allowed. And they don't see platforms as being responsible for moderation. They view centralized moderation as inherently biased and illegitimate. If they can't or wont allow legal speech, then they think 230 should be repealed and these sites should cease to exist.
They are reacting to takedowns from social media sites, SaaS providers, IaaS providers, and financial services because they view these sites as an oligopoly acting in unison to bar them from the basic infrastructure of modern life. Imagine if typewriter companies ganged up to stop selling to right leaning newspapers and authors. Or, imagine if telegraph companies said they wouldn't transmit messages for Abraham Lincon.
On 230, they see social media sites as a monopoly due to network effects. Also/alternatively they talk about a bait-and-switch, where the social media sites held themselves out as public squares when they were small. But once they were big, they started enforcing their views.
Generally, I think people are failing to put themselves in a Trump supporter's shoes. Imagine you genuinely believed that the election was stolen. The court cases were almost all dismissed on standing and laches. From their perspective, no one will substantively address their videos, affidavits, statistical anomalies, etc.
And when they protest, people call them violent insurrectionists, despite all year BLM doing very similar things (again from their perspective).
If they should have cut people off earlier and didn't, or haven't gone far enough, section 230 says they have no liability to moderate, unless specific other liabilities apply.
If they cut people off that you don't think is appropriate, section 230 says they have no liability from moderation that they've taken, other than implicit liability of violating constitutional rights (which would need new case law to establish, if it's 1st ammendment speech)