Gonzalez vs. Google: What’s at Stake for Wikipedia?

> According to Section 230, the host of a website is not treated as the publisher of anything uploaded by the website’s users and, therefore, cannot be sued over what users upload.

I fully support protections of Wikipedia, they are a gift to society.

Section 230 protects YouTube (Google) from the bad content users upload. There is a statistic floating around that 400 minutes of content get uploaded to YouTube every minute. This would obviously not be possible if Google had to be liable for the content, because its too much content to manually review.

I myself instinctively defend that this is how the internet works, and governments shouldn't intervene because we need this to be how internet businesses work. I don't think I've ever questioned if its a good thing that Youtube gets so much content that it's impossible to review. Obviously a lot of good has come out of it, like the entire YouTuber industry, and social media, but is it the "natural" way things should be? What would the internet look like if companies couldn't do mass aggregation? Surely people would still be social, so maybe they'd just use smaller services, would they be federated, or would there be more 1x1 chatting? Surely people would still share content and media, but would that mean more hosting instead of using Facebook et al? Or would people need digital mailboxes that they had at home and were always online?

I'm not saying this is the future we want or a good future, but as someone involved in the tech industry, I've never truly probed the question of what would be.

Part of the problem is the need to put something in front of people who go to Youtube and other such platforms. Perhaps if there was no "algorithm" to give you "suggestions" as to what to watch, there wouldn't be this need to consider the platforms to be liable for what users upload. Present a bare search bar to guests/new users, sort of like the main Google interface and as users view and subscribe to channels, just show them their actual subscriptions, instead of commingling suggestions with subscriptions, leading to confusion about which channels are actually subscribed to (I like to consider myself fairly savvy, and more than once I have found I wasn't actually subscribed to a channel that I watched quite regularly). Stop suggesting things to people based on what they've already watched, and maybe you could legitimately argue "we're not directing people to content, we're merely allowing them to search for content they wish to view". As long as a platform is making suggestions as to what to show users, it could be argued that they should use that power for "good" and be liable when videos are surfaced that are "bad", for various incompatible definitions of "good" and "bad".

It's not unprecedented for a privately-owned location to nonetheless be told "you may not censor anyone based on the message they wish to spread". There's no reason why a system couldn't be developed to make the actual uploader of the content the one that is liable, and few people have the wherewithal or the capability to have airtight opsec.

> While Gonzalez tries to distinguish “recommendations” from “publishing,” we argue that does not make logical sense. This is because Gonzalez’s definition of a recommendation is so broad that it covers nearly any attempt to arrange, curate, or organize content. However, without arrangement and curation, content on the internet would be disorganized, full of spam and irrelevant information, and useless to readers. Nobody would be able to find what they were looking for. It simply is not possible to publish things without also organizing and curating what you are publishing in some fashion.

No? It is very easy and possible. Domain registrars and web hosting providers can do that, but they cannot? Either you curate and endorse the content or you are free from liability. That sounds simple and reasonable. You can't have your cake and eat it.

The entirety of Section 230 defense is "blanket immunity is fundamental to us, because it would cost us money if we had to go to court when someone thought we did something wrong", like every other type of business industry in existence.

Yes, Internet companies will have to go to court more. That's a good thing. It means there will be more actual legal precedent around how content should be handled, and it will mean companies will be more careful about doing things that are legally defensible, rather than solely focusing on what's profitable.

Donald Trump was elected President because sensationalism and radicalization drives engagement, and hence, ad impressions. The waves of mass shootings from incels and other radical right weirdos is on Section 230s head. And every single tech industry funded outfit defending it has blood on their hands because of it.

All of these amicus brief defenses come down to "we're afraid we might get sued", and if that's the case, maybe companies should rethink how they operate. Contrary to the positions of Mike Masnick and his ilk, US law isn't arbitrarily and capriciously going to attack anyone who's comment box gets spammed one day. Intent is a core part of law, and you need it to find someone responsible for most wrongdoing.

Tech companies have ill intent. They've chosen profit over responsibility, because the immunity granted by Section 230 makes that decision too easy. The current Supreme Court is awful and will do a lot of awful things, but stomping down Section 230 with absolute indiscretion will not be one of those awful things.

Kinda a sidebar, but I always love to see who actually is behind these sorts of things: The law firm behind this brief, Cooley LLP, appears to be a business entirely focused around things awful for consumers: Mergers and acquisitions, private equity firms, defense against shareholder litigation, protecting healthcare companies from regulatory investigations, and filing patent infringement lawsuits. They are quite proud of all of this on their home page. Wikimedia picked great friends here.