Reddit’s Defense of Section 230 to the Supreme Court | Hacker News Reader

Reddit’s Defense of Section 230 to the Supreme Court

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I'm pretty suspicious of this. Reddit seems to be couching this in terms of "Oh no! Our poor moderators are going to be held legally liable for moderating sub-reddits". But that doesn't seem to even slightly be true here. The claim in the original case is that Youtube is liable not because they publish the content, but because they promoted the content. Moderators don't have that power, they can remove stuff (clearly protected by section 230) but generally don't promote stuff (with the 1 exception being pinning posts, which arguably yes, they should be liable for). The real people at risk here are... reddit who design the algorithm to decide what shows up on the reddit homepage and which content they promote.

I'm pretty neutral on the argument of whether reddit should be liable for content they promote, I can see an argument both ways, but I am strongly against Reddit trying to whip up their users into a mob to protest about this by misleading them.

This isn't my area of expertise, but on first blush I don't view it as misleading. The Supreme Court has literally never ruled on 47 U.S.C. § 230 before. What if they rule that the safe harbor provision for moderation isn't severable from the anti-pornography provisions that were already struck down? Certainly Congress enacted them as part of the same statutory scheme and intended them to be complementary.

Filing as amici curiae "to impress upon the Supreme Court the importance of Section 230 to the community moderation model" isn't inconsistent with the fact that Section 230 allows community moderation. They are, in effect, asking the Supreme Court to consider the real-world ramifications, in case they might consider striking down the safe harbor provision you yourself note is so important to this issue.

If it's not severable then the entire section 230 collapses and it's not the moderators that have to worry, Reddit's entire business model is done.

  > (with the 1 exception being pinning posts, which arguably yes, they should be liable for)

I don't believe that is the only way they promote posts, because many of them clearly manipulate the up/downvotes to sway where posts show up.

They also randomly shadowban content (not just users) which you can see looking at a user account, but not in the discussion thread. So a particularly salient point that changes an argument is simply hidden from the rest of the discussion.

Kinda hoping this passes just so Reddit is forced to take moderation into their own hands and remove the bunch of cranky internet janitors who ban people or delete posts for no reason.

I wonder what that would mean for their IPO, which they have been gearing up for to happen later this year.

If Reddit ends up getting slammed by this ruling and still end up deciding to IPO this year, I will have a really difficult time convincing myself to not stock up on their puts.

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