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Comment by bsdetector | Hacker News Reader

Without section 230 you'd get a few large publishing outlets moderating all content and you'd also get distributed media where the aggregation is done by each individual.

There just wouldn't be that middle area where social media sites get to choose what you are allowed to say or read just because they have a monopoly on the data.

For instance, you could run your own individual Hacker News site that collects the data and creates the same thing you see today - except you could choose to only view posts and comments by sources verified as humans. Or you could turn on 'show dead' on a grander scale - your choice.

Section 230 isn't required for social media.

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> For instance, you could run your own individual Hacker News site

It’s baffling how many people think repealing Section 230 would make it easier for small people to host user-submitted content.

It would do the inverse: It would make hosting user submitted content legally untenable for all but the biggest players with the biggest ad budgets to comply with the laws.

You host your own content, and non-230 telecom rules protect a pure cache so bandwidth and always-on internet needn't be an issue.

It shouldn't be baffling to you; it's not even a hard problem to solve, and the only reason why things like ActivityPub aren't done more today is because of 230. A monopoly on data gives centralized social media an unfair advantage that's only possible through legal immunity.

> You host your own content, and non-230 telecom rules protect a pure cache so bandwidth and always-on internet needn't be an issue.

You can already host your own content. Bandwidth is a non-issue right now.

You’re ignoring, or don’t understand, that the benefit of social media is sharing and distribution. The repeal-230 people always have some fanciful ideas about an alternative system appearing to fill the void and that it will be better for reasons, but the bottom line is that without some protection for services to share content it’s going to be negligible exposure.

Only the few with access and connections to the well-connected large media outlets would have distribution. It would be a total self-own for small people who want to share something.

Some people run their own Mastodon servers, where they share and participate in social media, so there's a proof by example that your fears are unfounded.

They would be legally responsible for anything federated into their feed, anything anyone who logs in via their server posts, etc.

You're already responsible for everything you would be on a private server (one user). If you go to 8chan and see illegal content then good luck telling the authorities you're not responsible because it's 'just' in your browser cache.

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