Next Week, the Supreme Court Could Destroy Everything Good About the Internet
techdirt.com
techdirt.com
Ultimately, this case is really, really good. It has terrorism in it thus national security concerns. The law in question is fundamental to the success of the tech companies, so any change to it's interpretation shakes the foundations of an entire industry.
If the interpretation is significant, it could force congress to take the question on how to change the tech industry more seriously like after the right to abortion was struck down. That would be incredibly significant. The effects of the change would likely be in force by the 2024 elections, which the effectiveness of the social media arm of the presidential campaigns has been a decider in every election since 2008 (except 2012 since it wasn't competitive).
This case could set the course of history for the next 2 years at least
We have all seen what the effects of those platforms, and the smart an evil use of their rec engines, were around the world.
We didn’t have this effect pre recommendation engines because the dark content would stay hidden and you had to search for it, while today it is brought to you on a algorithm silver plate by youtube, facebook and tiktok. As long as you engage with the platform, whatever makes you happy/angry mate!
And note that the only people who can comply with the requirements in a post Section 230 world are gonna be Google and Facebook.
Without 230, it goes to "you are responsible for everything if you moderate anything" or "you are responsible for nothing nothing if you moderate nothing" options for a provider.
Google and Facebook would likely go to "nothing is moderated, no recommendations and here is a firehose of crap" since there is no way for them to moderate everything and they don't want to be responsible for anything.
In a no safe harbor for good faith moderation, the only sites with user generated content (UGC) that would survive are the ones where they don't moderate anything - 4chan and the like.
While that is not a future that I would like, I suspect that I could get some popcorn watching the sites that try to maintain an idealogical pure stance dealing with UGC that isn't something they want to host but not wanting to take responsibility for all of the extreme potions that they do host.
My crystal ball says that if 230 was stuck down, the remains of web2 (including all social media and blog comments) would fracture to small, invite only communities where moderation is unnecessary (e.g. got a 15 person slack that is unmoderated because everyone is an adult... while the 1000 person locale based community slack that occasionally deletes and bans spammers would close). The crystal ball says that TikTok and Twitter would try to comply by turning off their recommendation algorithms and "report" functionality, and would then promptly collapse as Sturgeon's law makes them unusable.
In other words, if the sites are going to profit off their users, they are clearly in a position of ownership of the content. They may not create it, but they sell it, as if they own it. Maybe they need to be reminded that they can't appropriate and profit off things they didn't create and then disclaim any responsibility for it.
YC runs Hacker News and invests its resources into promotion of YC companies' job ads, hoping to increase return on its investment.
Wikipedia pays high salaries to its executives, the money that it derives from its user's donations.
Strip them all of Section 230 protection?
When "platforms" editorialize content for the purposes of manipulating user behaviour, rather than merely to act in users' interests in helping them find what they want, then I'm in favour of them losing protection.
HN does the latter, so I think it'd be appropriate for HN to keep its protection.
1 The Attention Economy: Where the Customer Becomes the Product – https://journal.businesstoday.org/bt-online/2021/the-attenti...
2 Forget Data. Free Labor Is Facebook’s Lifeblood – https://mashable.com/article/free-labor-facebook-profits
3 Williams, James. 2018. Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4 The Scientists Who Make Apps Addictive – https://web.archive.org/web/20210416052902/https://www.econo...
5 A Call To Minimize Distraction – http://www.minimizedistraction.com/
6 Slow Tech – https://vimeo.com/240721308, transcript at https://www.interaxiongroup.org/sites/default/files/media/pd...
7 Ethics of the Attention Economy: The Problem of Social Media Addiction – https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2020.32
8 Odell, J. (2019). How to do nothing: Resisting the attention economy. Melville House.
Then, I guess, the intention is that the Internet will stay centralized, and we'll all just watch Disney+ on our DRM-only displays or whatever?
(I don't see the above tactics actually working, though I think they should either eliminate all of the DMCA or none of it. Otherwise, this is just corrupt courts trying to appoint economic winners and losers.)