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Comment by godmode2019 | Hacker News Reader

godmode2019

Maybe this is a ploy, maybe the tech companies want to be publishers and 230 to be changed. They have already invested the huge sums to set up a moderation infrastructure.

Then they won't have to worry about up-starts because they will first have to deal with the huge burden of creating a expensive content moderation system.

VC decks will have a section on content moderation plan. How they will solve this.

To me this seems like the tech companies are lobbying for regulation.

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IANAL but in my understanding 230 is based on providers being proactive themselves and taking reasonable steps. They have very clear ToS laid out, and they are expected by same 230 to act on them. And bear with me, if they consider somebody does call for rioting using their platform, why's so unexpected from them to enforce said ToS? You could argue if you want to whether there was a call for riots or not, but if for the sake of argument we can pretend there was, they had to react precisely like this.

All ToS have a power imbalance, they are updated often without the ability to decline. But let's think about governments for a bit, they are in their very nature violent forces. Not too long ago Trump was treating to bring death and destruction on north Korea and they ended up as friends and "fell in love". People need to express themselves.

Let's say he was calling for violence.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-tell-supporters-stor...

Is the act of calling for violence the crime or is it measured against the impact. Because calling for violence, or at least encouraging protests that often end in violence is something that the American left has been doing since June.

In my country you can't discriminate based on political opinions, all ToS need to be equally enforced or you have a human rights case on your hands.

> Because calling for violence, or at least encouraging protests that often end in violence is something that the American left has been doing since June.

Accounts that were calling for violence were closed regularly, especially during protests. Both twitter and on youtube. I am not aware of left wing equivalent of Parler that would emerge as results, the mainstream left seemed to be ok with those missing, through some grumbled a bit and called it unfair.

Note that encouraging protests was not censored, but the fact is it is not censored for right wing either.

If this is their ploy it's a bad one. The US is currently a convenient place to base tech companies, but if the law makes it too difficult then people will just start tech companies outside of the US and block US users if necessary.

I think that was OP:s point. Making it harder for any competition to get established.

I think the point is US based companies would have to compete with less regulated foreign social media platforms.

The EU has the GDPR, which protects consumer's privacy. And, yes, some tech services don't serve EU citizens.

Repealing 230 would have a similar effect, but with the focus on protecting people from corporate censorship. If this means Facebook/Twitter/TikTok et. al. become unprofitable, I'd consider that a double win.

What I find funny is that something like Apple News that does have moderation in place (seasoned editors manually curating cross-sections of news sources)—you can actively read whatever Trump says there as his press releases will be widely covered by all forms of media from every corner of the political spectrum.

Not to say I think there's any ploy.

But I find it just a little funny that there seems to be a great deal of overlap of those who are decrying what they call censorship by online chat platforms—who they previously praised as the new alternative to "censorship" traditional media (who haven't "censored" anything).

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