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Comment by codeecan | Hacker News Reader

Not true for companies protected under Section 230, in order to maintain their liability shield they are supposed to remain platform neutral [1].

A company should not be able to act like a publisher and determine what stays on their service and when someone sues them for libel they claim they're not a publisher and hide behind the shield.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

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> At its core, Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an "interactive computer service" who publish information provided by third-party users

> 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.

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There is no requirement in section 230 that the platform has to remain neutral. Which is why there have been calls to repeal it.

You should read this: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

Thanks for the stereotypical reply to this issue. The linked article is condescending and smug, and nobody with anything better to do will read past the first few sentences with the author's "unique" opinion on Section 230.

Do you have anything reasonable that describes the position that Section 230 somehow doesn't mean what it plainly says?

The entire purpose for Section 230 existing is to allow sites to moderate their content. That’s why it was written. So a site moderating it’s content doesn’t cause it to lose any section 230 protection. I’m not sure where you got your opinion about it, but it is clearly false. Please stop repeating such falsehoods.

And you should understand the law, techdirt bases is "What matters is solely the content in question. If that content is created by someone else, the website hosting it cannot be sued over it.", which is only true as long as you "do not exercise significant editorial control" from Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy [1].

[1] https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/immunity-online-publishers-...

> the court held that because Prodigy was exercising editorial control over the messages that appeared on its bulletin boards through its content guidelines and software screening program, Prodigy was more like a "publisher" than a "distributor" and therefore fully liable for all of the content on its site.

That case was based on previous law. Section 230 was written to supersede that.

I’m really confused where you’re coming from, in that you’re aware of that case enough to cite it, and yet not aware that it is (and this is a direct quote from one of the first lines on Wikipedia about it)

> The result of the case is central to the rationale behind passage of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, aimed to allow internet service providers to avoid liability for user content on their services while still giving them the means for removing illegal content.

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