Sorry but you are incorrect. Platforms have protections while they act as a free and open forum. This protection ceases to exist the time you start fiddling with the content. Obviously, Terms of Service are there to filter the garbage out but any double standard can end up with your Platform credentials revoked and your business down the drain.
Your comment doesn't even slightly reflect the law. I don't know why people keep spreading this.
Section 230(c):
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
Furthermore section 230 (c)(2) states:
> any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected
So to be clear, it's not that the law is unclear on this, it's very clear on this: The publisher has no responsibilty to consider whether speech is constitutionally protected at all. Not only is there no qualification that these platforms need to meet in terms of moderation, but the law actively states that the platform can moderate speech.
Yes, and the debate is whether or not the companies are acting in bad faith and abusing this 1996 law by selectively altering their users posts and presenting their information thus acting like a publisher.
Yes this is the current state, but the question is whether it's morally right and should we update it to reflect the current situation of the social media behemoths, this law was designed for small bulletin boards at the time.
Yes, I believe the discussion is to update Section 230 to make those distinctions as the law was created in 1996 to protect bulletin boards, not the social media giants we have today.
It's a discussion we should all want to have to preserve our freedom of speech from being infringed on by these (very very few) social media companies.
I don't think anyone is arguing they don't currently have these powers, it's whether they should and whether they've been abusing them.
> It's a discussion we should all want to have to preserve our freedom of speech from being infringed on by these (very very few) social media companies.
Why? Twitter is not infringing on people's freedom of speech. Trump's comments are proof of that because he's continued to have a platform on the site. People keep saying that their being oppressed by the site they're using to say they're oppressed. No one is being oppressed by Twitter.
You take away 230(c) from Twitter and one of two things will happen:
- they'll cease to exist becase they will become legally liable for all content their users post
- they'll automate moderation much more aggressively and "censor" 10x times more than they do currently.
Also, it'll make it harder for competition to exist because the government will increase the burden on creating a site that hosts user generated content. It will be a contraction of speech online.
Really, if you're not happy with the moves these companeis are making, you should be advocating for more competition so you can switch to an alternative.
I can want more competition as well as more accountability for Twitter when they choose to target specific tweets/accounts.
Facebook has for the most part stayed out of it and they are being attacked for not providing a Ministry of Truth like Twitter does.
So the little bit of competition that Twitter has is being coerced to do the same.
If Twitter continues down the route it's going and continues to publish it's thoughts and link them to other's thoughts then I think they should have their 230 protections revoked and that will probably shutter them. Good.
Hacker News should be all about breaking up monopolies and regulating companies, what gives? Ah yeah, the elections.
You're arguing that the US government should be able to force companies to publish content that it doesnt want on it's site.
> Ah yeah, the elections.
I'm not american, so i have no horse in the elections, apart from wanting twitter to continue to exist.
Twitter is a private company, it should be able to moderate its platform as it sees fit. If it see's content that it feels is dangerous, they should be completely within their right to remove it from their site. Preventing them from being able to do that is the government restricting twitters speech.
If you don't like how twitter moderates it's platform, you should have alternatives to go to that moderate differently. That's basically the whole premise of subreddits and, well, a "free and open market", rather than the government forcing companies to publish content it doesnt want on it's site.
Yeah, at best it's an outdated law. At worst it's an excuse for companies with immense wealth and power to enforce their political will on millions if not billions of people. I would be fine if there was some remote form of competition at scale with these platforms, but no one can make an honest argument that these are not dominant players who are quickly pulling up the ladder behind them. We need to update our laws to reflect modern reality
> Platforms have protections while they act as a free and open forum. This protection ceases to exist the time you start fiddling with the content
This is a popular belief among people who feel some viewpoints are being "censored" but it has no basis in law or reality. My cynical perspective is that if enough people spread this lie, it will become true in the court of public opinion, which is what the people being "censored" are hoping for. (the scare quotes are because "censorship" is a scary word used in place of "moderation" or "community management" or "spam removal")
Platforms are 100% allowed to take down material that they find objectionable for whatever reason.
Those protections afford immunity to civil claims related to copyright and infringing content. It does not apply to matters of decency. Many online platforms have booted their bigots and hate speech without any consequences to their ability to continue hosting content.
Please do not conflate civil torts with criminal hate speech
Not only have they booted the bigots and hate speech it's only because they booted it that they florished. That's also the reason alternative "public spaces" exist without that kind of moderation... think 4chan,8chan etc. It doesn't matter where you draw the line or anyone of us it matters that the line is there for everyone. When twitter bans an experiment of an account that was just tweeting Trumps tweet s as onces from themself. They should also ban Trump if they are not banning him but other people for the same choice of words it leaves a bad taste. Facebook is on another level in myanmar facebook was used as a tool to organize an ethnic cleansing. Free Speech is the modern "we just followed orders" of tech companies.
