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Comment by andrewjf | Hacker News Reader

I agree with what OOP said. But it’s not my intent to “shut sites down.” I have this view to try to increase diversity of media consumption and break people out of echo chambers. If your business model is so shit you have to exploit weaknesses in human brains to keep people viewing ads and can’t adapt, then that’s your problem.

If you have an algorithm whose sole purpose is to “engagement” with your own platform (by intentionally and purposely pushing clickbait, ragebait, and media that keeps reinforcing your clicks) you should no longer get section 230 protections - you are no longer a neutral party. These algorithms exist to create echo chambers and keep you clicking so you can consume more ads.

I would love to hear other ways of solving the problems of social media.

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> I have this view to try to increase diversity of media consumption and break people out of echo chambers.

Making sites liable for all user-posted content would do the reverse of this. Every platform that lets people submit content would have to stop doing that, because it’s an impossible liability to manage.

You’d have to host your own site. You wouldn’t be able to share anything about it on a social media site because its user-generated content. No visitors unless you advertise it through paid contracts with companies that can review it and decide to accept the liability.

Newspaper "Letters to the Editor" manage to do this. Users "submit" things to the newspaper, the editor curates and decides what to keep and what not to, and then the newspaper publishes the user generated content. Just like social media: Users submit things to the site, TheAlgorithm curates and decides what to keep and what not to, and then the site publishes the user generated content.

If web sites and social media can't "scale" to do this, then maybe they should scale down. "Making sites liable for all user-posted content" would not kill social media, but would definitely scope it down to what can be effectively curated.

I don't think there are enough dangs to effectively curate much of the internet, and scaling it back by how much would be the result? 95%? That is before settling on definitions of effectively curate I suppose.

"Effectively curate" here simply means "willing to take legal responsibility for" (although in practice I assume there would be an insurance policy involved because that's just how things are done).

>Every platform that lets people submit content would have to stop doing that, because it’s an impossible liability to manage.

This is a huge assumption that is offered constantly, and always, without any evidence at all.

"letters to the editor" curated by employees would become a part of their business model and regular contributions would go away? Why would that assumption be incorrect? I wouldn't run a website where a casual user having a moment could result in my imprisonment. I would only allow non-lbtq content that didn't mention race or immigration, as the chilling effect there is real. A DA would for sure come after me if my site became influential.

Was hoping for a more reasoned opinion from OP

I notice that parent describes "engagement" algorithms and you somehow jump to "all sites". So I think we'd see "engagement" algorithms disappear and very primitive approaches with prominent transparency measures in place would replace them. I expect we'd all be better off were that to happen.

Ban third-party advertising.

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