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Comment by Dalewyn | Hacker News Reader

I'm not about to read the article or concern myself with the minute details of the cases, but I will say I hope SCOTUS throws out section 230 protections for the likes of Google, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Hacker News, et al.

If you engage in editorializing (read: controlling) content beyond what is necessary to comply with laws and regulations (eg: no child porn, no tangible death threats), then you should be liable for the content you subsequently publish.

Paper media abides by this, there is no reason why internet-based media cannot abide by the same.

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I think that's a pretty sledgehammer-y view.

Like, I make a website for pregnant women and someone comes and rants about American politics. What the fuck am I supposed to do if I can't delete their comments? Let my project dwindle to shit because I'm "editorializing" content by deleting this obvious off-topic discussion?

Am I now responsible for the opinions of other people because, according to your logic, I now endorse them by not deleting their messages? You've basically reduced all forms of discourse by introducing liability into an open discussion. Someone gives incorrect advice that someone else takes on my forum. They kill their baby. Whops, time for me to go to fucking jail for someone else's opinion.

I think you have a problem with platforms and monopolistic behavior that's designed to colonize your attention.

The fact that searches on the internet are dominated by one private for-profit entity is a problem. The fact that the majority of internet traffic gets siloed into a few websites, which aggressively (and honestly sometimes borderline illegally and definitely morally reprehensibly) snuff out competition is a problem. The fact that registering a domain, setting up an internet connection, and trying to host a website, are all for profit, private driven workflows is a problem. The fact that all of the above can easily be taken away from you, due to a denial of service, which has nothing to do with the legality of the content you host or your opinions, is a problem. All of these are serious problems that require more than a band-aid, sledgehammer solution aimed at section 230.

>I make a website for pregnant women and someone comes and rants about American politics. What the fuck am I supposed to do if I can't delete their comments? Let my project dwindle to shit because I'm "editorializing" content by deleting this obvious off-topic discussion?

Yes; do nothing and assume no liablity. If you don't want to assume any liability you don't involve yourself beyond providing a platform. Simple as that.

>I now endorse them by not deleting their messages?

You endorse nothing because you assume no liability by doing nothing (abiding by applicable laws notwithstanding).

>Someone gives incorrect advice that someone else takes on my forum. They kill their baby. Whops, time for me to go to fucking jail for someone else's opinion.

You are not liable for the "incorrect advice" if you did not involve yourself in its creation and publication, beyond providing a platform.

>I think you have a problem with platforms and monopolistic behavior that's designed to colonize your attention.

I have a problem with publishers pretending to be platforms and enjoying the benefits of being both a publisher and a platform while evading all liabilities thereof.

>The fact that searches on the internet are dominated by one private for-profit entity is a problem.

It is, but it is neither here nor there.

>The fact that the majority of internet traffic gets siloed into a few websites, which aggressively (and honestly sometimes borderline illegally and definitely morally reprehensibly) snuff out competition is a problem.

It is, and the removal of section 230 protections would serve to partially alleviate the problem.

>The fact that registering a domain, setting up an internet connection, and trying to host a website, are all for profit, private driven workflows is a problem.

Hosting a website /should/ be a private endeavour for the sake of ensuring free speech. Once upon a time, making your own website (and assuming all the liabilities that entailed) was how you voiced your thoughts on the internet instead of posts on Twitter and Reddit.

>The fact that all of the above can easily be taken away from you, due to a denial of service, which has nothing to do with the legality of the content you host or your opinions, is a problem.

That is a structural problem with how the internet is formed. Tangientially related it may be, it is not directly relevant to the question of free speech.

>All of these are serious problems that require more than a band-aid, sledgehammer solution aimed at section 230.

Removing section 230 would only address some of the problems the internet faces, but it would be a start.

>Yes; do nothing and assume no liablity. If you don't want to assume any liability you don't involve yourself beyond providing a platform. Simple as that.

So your solution is to actually do nothing and let the project die? What an awful non-solution.

Worse than that: their "solution" is that all platforms should be 8chan.

So if I run a chess forum and delete posts that are not about chess, and I delete 10 legal but off topic posts about baby care that give advice that will kill some babies, but I happen to miss one of those baby care posts and some babies die, I'm liable because I was actively deleting some legal posts?

But if I don't delete posts (other than those I'm legally required to delete), so let all the baby care posts remain I'm free from liability?

So the net result is that my chess forum (and all other forums run by entities that don't have the resources to review every post before allowing it to go public) becomes a topic-free general forum.

And you think this is a good thing!?

>If you engage in editorializing (read: controlling) content beyond what is necessary to comply with laws and regulations (eg: no child porn, no tangible death threats), then you should be liable for the content you subsequently publish.

So how do you propose forums deal with spam?

Some reasonable terms of service might be required. Punishing political opinions or criticisms of corporations or governments, allowing government agencies to spread misinformation and censor people, etc., is certainly not necessary for dealing with spam though.

…and what happens when spammers realize they can mix in a political opinion with their Canadian pharmacy spam in order to gain immunity from the filters?

Prepare for a world of spam like: "Your car's extended warranty is about to expire unless you act NOW. Press 1 to connect to a specialist, or press 2 to acknowledge that the FCC should be dismantled."

All of a sudden, removing spam is stifling political speech and is forbidden.

Still looks like spam to me. Arguing minutiae about what exactly spam looks like or the technical details of how it would get filtered is putting the cart before the horse though, and pretty pointless to get bogged into here.

First you agree on the principles, and then you can talk about how they might be implemented and regulated. Do you agree in general that political opinion should not be punished or censored? If not you can just say that, no need to come up with increasingly byzantine ways that it couldn't be made to work.

I think people should be free to make spaces where they exclude some things as off-topic, flamebait, trolling, etc. eg If I want to run a forum about woodworking then I should be free to remove posts about abortion, guns, CRT, or whatever political hot button issue people might post about.

In principal, I think the 1st amendment protects us from the government censoring speech, not from private parties doing so.

>people should be free to make spaces where they exclude some things

They are. The problem is such people want that freedom with none of the liability.

Okay. No need to support your position with flimsy hypotheticals about spam then.

I led with the spam hypothetical because I think it seems (from my perspective) to be inevitable and doesn't depend on us sharing the same (rather American) axioms around free speech.

It's not productive to get bogged down into technical minutiae about how you might and might not cope with examples of spam.

And it's not depending on us sharing those axioms, the point was to establish what the fundamental stance is on the point being debated. Presumably we're commenting on American courts, American laws, affecting Americans and an American corporation, so it seems like a good thing we're using a rather American frame of reference.

If it still looks like spam to you then we are right back where we started, with people disagreeing about what counts as essential speech to protect and what doesn't.

You don't.

Seriously.

That is the price for avoiding liability: To be able to say you had nothing to do with it beyond providing a platform and abiding other applicable laws.

So I have to allow my resources to be clogged up by others who have no skin in the game? It is my harddrive, I get to choose the ones and zeros on my private property. You do not get to fill them up with spam that I have to maintain forever.

You're welcome to control what goes on your hard drive, but the price is (or at least should be) you're assuming liability.

If that came to pass, then the only recourse the companies would have is to either let everything stay up (and if you showdead on here you'll see what kind of garbage that is) or they make every single submission sit in a queue until a human can review it.

This site would basically die.

But that's what people want. If they can't spread lies and untruths without being fact-checked, then we all lose whatever platforms are tolerable only because of moderation.

>or they make every single submission sit in a queue until a human can review it.

Even worse, it would be practically necessary to have the review done by a team of lawyers versed in all possible areas of law that might be open to liability for posted content.

In other words, only Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other tech giants would have the capability to safely moderate user content.

> Paper media abides by this

It's a meaningless comparison.

Traditional media produce and own their content. Online media is user generated.

Paper media also has user generated content. Such content has been the liability of the publisher and things have worked just fine for at least the last two centuries if not more.

Again: There is no reason internet-based media can't act like their paper counterparts. The only plausible reason is because nobody wants liability, but hey: You modify user generated content in any way, /you the publisher/ are now liable for it.

I've worked for a large News Corp paper before.

The amount of user generated content in comments, letters to the editor etc is tiny and was moderated by a single person.

It is simply incomparable to the estimated 500 million tweets a day by Twitter:

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2020/04/14/twitter-statis...

Why is it my problem that their business model is stupid and doesn't work when treated equally to traditional publishing?

Equality before the law. If your business can't adapt it should die.

Ahh yes, the old "we're too successful to be able to operate responsibly" argument.

Here's a thought: there's nothing that says that Twitter and friends have to exist. There was a time when being able to comply with the law was part of the business model, not a minor obstacle that needed to be worked around.

As a (purely hypothetical) heroin dealer, I can't run a business if I keep getting thrown in jail. What's the solution?

Here's a thought: I am purely hypothetically able to sell some previously unknown and unforeseen (therefore legal) opioid agonist that is just as addictive and dangerous as heroin with no issues of legality. Or maybe it isn't even an opioid agonist and has some novel mechanism of action that is yet unknown.

What's the solution? New legislation that adapts to such a threat to societal welfare. And this is what is effectively happening here with litigation over Section 230 et al. (worth mentioning that it's not even the case that Twitter's business model involves working around the law; Section 230 _is_ the law and it shields Twitter from liability. So there is really no case here like you are describing to begin with.)

The end of society and government is more or less to identify and avoid bad societal outcomes, and an evolving legal system is necessary to keep up with technological and social changes in the world. Maybe you are correct and Twitter shouldn't exist to begin with, alas Twitter exists and other things like Twitter exist. They aren't currently in grave violation of any law to my knowledge, and any law that is to be enacted regarding things like Twitter should be written in light of the current state of the world, which is that Twitter exists and that things like Twitter are easy to create.

Maybe it's fitting that this thread— in its consideration of the balance between freedom and benevolent force— invokes an analogy involving a subject of the war on drugs.

Where I live psychoactive drugs are blacklisted by law. If you want to sell a new one legally you need to apply to get it put on the whitelist.

They did this so that hypothetical you can't dodge the law by tweaking molecules and that new legislation doesn't have to be enacted every time you come up with a new recipe.

I'm not saying that twitter shouldn't exist, I'm just saying that it and platforms like it don't have to exist in their current state. Section 230 _is_ the workaround that didn't have to be created just so that the platforms could operate outside of the regulations that other publishers are bound by

Ok, so Twitter and Facebook go out of business, only to be replaced by offshore businesses outside the legal reach of what replaces section 230.

Honestly what you've done there is present a good case for why dealing heroin should be legal.

> "we're too successful to be able to operate responsibly"

No. I am simply pointing out that comparing print media to online makes no sense.

yes, because print media's business model allows it to operate responsibly

Newspapers are default-deny. The editors decide which letters to the editor to publish.

Social media platforms are default-allow. If they were default-deny, it would take months to get your newsfeed posts approved.

Newspapers were also not designed to be a way for readers to express themselves. Social media platforms exist so that users can express themselves.

I'm not saying that social media companies are doing a good job, or that their moderation practices are good, or that their quest for increasing engagement above all else is good. In fact I wouldn't mind if FB, Twitter, etc. just disappeared tomorrow. But comparing them to newspapers is just not a reasonable thing to do.

With the current state of AI text processing, checking if the contents of a user submitted text would be approved really shouldn't take months but instead seconds.

Sentiment analyzers which take bug reports as toxic but consider beyond the pale statements like "I hope you enjoy eating your family." the opposite of toxic?

Paper media does not produce the advertisements, the customers or ad agencies do that. For decades the classifieds section, entirely 'user generated' was of massive import to society, to the degree that sunshine laws still frequently require governments to publish important announcements in the classified section of the local "paper of record."

In other words, traditional media produce and own content, but there has always been a tremendous amount of user-generated media mixed in.

Sure, but my impression is that readers submit classified ads, someone at the paper says it's ok, and it gets published in the classifieds.

A social media platform would not be viable if someone had to approve every post before it went live. (Maybe that means that social media platforms should just not exist, but that's not really the specific point we're arguing here.)

What is the specific point? That ownership of content implies slow production? What if a social media network established a contractor relationship with each user, and paid them for their content at a rate of, say, one cent per million posts, with a maximum of one hundred billable posts per day?

The content would be coming thick and fast, the company would have more standing to enforce its terms of service, and you've dodged whatever moderation rules might apply to user-generated content, since it's all work-for-hire by our vast cadre of contractors.

I'm just not convinced that "traditional media own and produce their content" is indicative of anything particularly important, and just muddies the waters surrounding the actual problems at play.

> Traditional media produce and own their content.

Phone companies don't. The traditional choices were "have full control of the content, and take full responsibility for that content" (e.g., newspapers) or "don't attempt to control content, and bear no responsibility for that content" (e.g., telephone companies). Newspapers were legally responsible for what they published, phone companies weren't. The phone company (and other so-called "common carriers") weren't held responsible even if someone used the phone to plan a murder. In exchange for that immunity, they were required to give access to anyone with enough money to pay the monthly bill.

> Online media is user generated.

As are phone calls.

With Section 230, tech companies both have a) full censorship powers and b) no responsibility. Absolute power with no responsibility has always been a recipe for abuse.

Problem is there won't be any sites which actually refrain from editorializing because they'll all be open to lawsuits over content on their site. That would be bad enough on its own, but a site which had that kind of content policy would be one that advertisers and financial institutions don't want anything to do with either so they won't have the funding to adequately defend themselves in court.

Do you believe that websites should be able to delete spam and bot accounts?

Posting 10,000 links to a shitcoin ICO is not illegal.

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