I just don't see your logic that Google supporting 230 hurts the small fry. They're existing NOW. Google and Facebook having the marketshre was not because of content, it was because of anti-competitive practices.
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CNBC: McConnell ties $2,000 stimulus checks to unrelated Trump demands on tech and election
- Thread starter Saucycarpdog
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I just don't see your logic that Google supporting 230 hurts the small fry. They're existing NOW. Google and Facebook having the marketshre was not because of content, it was because of anti-competitive practices.
It's sad that they will break from McConnell in disputing the election results on the 6th but not when it comes to getting Americans extra stimulus money.
McConnell is the bizarre type of person that relishes in the negativity and hatred he draws onto himself. Trump (and most people like him) loves farming hatred and division but is far too thin-skinned to take the same treatment that he doles out. That's why McConnell is the leader, no one else in the GOP caucus wants to be the guy that allows them to be the evil shits that they are.
A lawyer may have told Trump that but they'd be wrong. Twitter is allowed to moderate Trump's posts (or in this case just tag them) by the 1st Amendment, Section 230 is what protects them from getting sued if someone was injured/killed because they refused to take down Trump's posts (I think... I'm still really not clear on 230 does that the 1st doesn't lol). But it's agreed that Section 230 makes life easier for tech companies which is still what I think is the real reason Trump wants it gone. He's a petty asshole always looking to settle grievances.
Ok, I looked through the article and I guess I missed it. This sentence doesn't seem to have anything to do with 230? In fact, I don't see how anything about privacy would relate to 230...
In fact, you seem to want some specific regulation, but I'm having trouble seeing what it is and how it would relate to 230 at all. So far, it seems completely orthogonal.
Senator Hawley announced earlier today that he is formally protesting the vote. Despite McConnell having already made it clear to the rest of the Senators that they should not do so.
Trump doesn't want to sue over the election disclaimers. He started whining about Section 230 when "Diaper Don" started trending over Thanksgiving and people were speculating that he is wearing Depends.
Ah OK, so he wanted to sue them for liable like he would any other newspaper? I misunderstood then, Section 230 would prevent them from being sued in that case but it wouldn't matter as their 1st Amendment rights would still protect them once the case went to court. That's the reason for my continued confusion about why Section 230 is so necessary, all it really seems to do in most cases is save the big tech companies money from by having to respond to every single little complaint about their content. I understand how important that is if you have billions of users but maybe the response to that is not to have tech companies get that big in the first place.
Republicans say they're gonna do a lot of things that they never do, we shall see. I remain skeptical.
And damn, Mitch really has us out here debating the merits of 230 🤦♂️
You keep getting hung up on 'big companies' but it's also literally any content platform: Steam? Yep, can be sued. Resetera? Yep can be sued. Mastodon instance? Yep, you got it, can be sued. Have a personal blog where you write about a company and it goes viral? Yep, you can be sued.
Bigger companies are more insulated than smaller companies, not less, because they can afford to fight back against potentially frivolous lawsuits. Smaller companies are the ones that could potentially be bankrupted just fighting a lawsuit even if they would win in the end.
If Trump sues Twitter than Twitter says "bring it on!" and the case goes on for years until eventually both sides settle for an undisclosed amount. If Trump sues Resetera then Resetera Admins say "We can't afford this battle. It is with great regret that we are closing shop." and the site goes away.
I don't want to diminish the concerns about this issue but it's difficult me to say this isn't alarmism rather than realism. Using this forum as an example sure, a lot of nasty things are said about Trump but Trump is a public figure and not shielded legally from having nasty stuff said about him. When nasty/liable stuff is said about non-public figures the moderation staff generally acts swiftly to correct it, even with the 230 protections. So smaller well moderated spaces don't seem to me to be in any more danger than other forms of media/communication that aren't protected by Section 230 when it comes to liability issues. Super large entities that can't keep up with what is being posted on their sites seem to be the ones getting the primary benefit.
What if we negotiate a lifetime supply of lettuce in there for Mitch? I'm willing to take a $20 cut from my 2k if it helps.
In a time when we have patent trolls i don't know how you can think of it as being alarmist. It' also easy to single out the bigger ones because well, that's where everyone is. Do you think Sarah Cooper gets a career with 230 gone?
Here's another thing, reps want to repeal 230 because of sex workers. They think it forces platforms to allow them to exist and operate which is some massive boogeyman to them.
I think this is somewhat backwards.
230 gives INCENTIVES to moderate.
Without 230:
If resetera chooses to moderate, it IS liable for what users post. So for you example: what happens if the moderators misses a libel post? Or, how fast do they have to respond in general to not be liable for a specific post? Does resetera really have enough moderators to provide any sense of guarantee?
If resetera chooses to not moderate at all, it is NOT liable for what users post.
Caveat: under certain rules. They have to not "exercise editorial discretion". So this is why Trump was yelling, he felt Twitter did this by labeling his post.
But Section 230 doesn't protect sex workers online, the 1st Amendment does. Ironically the original act that Section 230 was a part intended to censor sexual content before it was stuck down for infringing upon the 1st Amendment.
I just read up on the history of the case that sparked Section 230 and it sounds more like one of those situations where a judge made a decision based on a profound misunderstanding of technology but I get why it's necessary now at least. There's too much overlap between 230 and the 1st in my opinion which makes parsing the issue very difficult.
Like i said earlier, I'm happy to send you a PDF of a break down analysis of the various cases and where they've gone, and what it means now. 230 is extremely nebulous and took me multiple analysis to finally click on why it's good but also needs some shoreing up.
Well, we can just think about illegal content. Libel, threats etc.
The original cases were all about whether sites like this are publishers or distributors. When you moderate, you start to sound more like an editor (or publisher). Publishers are responsible for the content that they publish.
In contrast, when you don't moderate, you act more like a distributor who is just showing someone else's content to the masses.
Like, if the NYP posts libel, their distributor isn't sued. Just them.
230 makes it clear that these websites are not publishers.
I think the biggest problem is that 230 wasn't really written for the purpose it's being used for now. It was supposed to be a carrot to encourage websites to censor but now that the censorship was deemed unconstitutional all that's left is the carrot. I agree with you though that it needs to be left in place not repealed until a new, better law is written to replace it.
It doesn't really say that they're not publishers, it just says that they're not responsible for content that they don't generate. I understand now why publishers of printed content are frustrated by this because it allows entities like FB to dance back and forth between being a publisher or provider whenever it benefits them.
Uhm, it says exactly that:
Facebook admits it is a publisher | Scott Guthrie (sabguthrie.info)Uhm, it says exactly that:
This is what I mean. It's not that they're never a publisher, Section 230 allows platforms like FB to decide when it wants to be one.
I had a longer post written up, but I think it kind of got away from the point. Just from a brief look, it seems like FB is just claiming that they are the publisher of user data (which isn't generally available), with the implicit argument that they are not the publisher of user's posts.
I mean, whether or not you agree with the first part, something being a publisher in some respects and a distributor in other respects doesn't seem very strange to me. In fact, a lot of the big print publishers also act as distributors for others, right?
EDIT:
I think the is incorrect. They would be able to decide regardless. It's just that w/o 230, they would have to basically just allow people to post whatever to FB the website with no input in order to not be a publisher of user content. They could still gather data and publish that separately. I believe that would allow them to be both a distributor and a publisher.
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The thing is FB's definition of "user data" is stretched to be whatever they want to monetize and whatever they don't want to be responsible for is excluded. As much as I hate them they're a business so I would expect them to do exactly what they're doing, which is to exploit existing laws until they're amended to better fit the online landscape. The reason I brought up it up in the first place was because it was a specific complaint I'd heard about 230 before I fully understood (well at least I hope I understand now) what it was.
I'm not too familiar with FB and how they define 'user data', so I'm not too certain how it relates 230. But I'll be honest, even taking what you say is completely 100% true, I don't think that the benefits of removing their ability to do that justifies the harm done by repealing 230.
That's the thing, I did want it repealed before I was educated on what it really does (and I appreciate all the posts helping me find the right info) but I don't want it repealed now. I think that until something that better defines the roles of platform holders can be written Section 230 should stay. Maybe legislation can be drafted that retains the better parts of 230 while adding more clearly defined rights and protections for users.
I thought that the Dems would be better served by calling the GOP's bluff on this bill but I do think now that the GOP may want to repeal 230. Usually they wouldn't be in favor of making a move that would damage a big money industry like the tech sector but now that I understand the history of 230 and how it's the remnant of failed censorship efforts I can see how they may be pissed that the industry managed to get this sweeping protection for "free".
It's not difficult when the media and voters only expect reasonable behavior from Democrats. Republicans burn down the country and everyone shrugs.
A lot of user reviews have surfaced issues that could kill people. User reviews would be dead without 230.
It's going to be a lot more difficult to "both sides" this particular issue for several reasons, the biggest being that folks have come to think of the Democrats as the "solicalists" so convincing moderates that they're somehow against $2,000 payments is an uphill climb. It's the same reason that the GOP usually gets blamed for the government shutting down regardless of how they try to spin it. Even low info voters understand that the GOP is seen as anti-gov't so they take the lumps.
What news are you watching and reading? He's getting killed. They may lose Georgia now.
The issue, is that he already won re-election. What can you do?
The problem is that what the news says and what actually happens at the polls have not been lining up.
Chris Cuomo will come on CNN and shout that voters will remember these decisions and punish politicians at the polls. Then Mitch gets reelected and Republicans do much better than expected in the house, and arguably better in the senate.
My partner often shares her family's facebook posts to me (her extended family is conservative as all hell) and they eat up all the Democrat blaming shit. This is another case of that. It's probably not immediately clear to the general public why the poison pill(s) here are that bad, so it's really easy for it to be portrayed as the dems being unreasonable and holding up the cash.
I am genuinely shocked at the defense of 230 here. It is the single biggest enabler of the most dangerous editorial algorithms in the world, Facebook and YouTube. Because if 230 we have no idea how many radicals have been created by those algos and we have no right to even ask.
230 is not some perfect beacon of free speech to be protected at all costs.
230 is not some perfect beacon of free speech to be protected at all costs.
I'm shocked people are favor of removing what is by default the digital equivalent of the 1st amendment. Getting rid of it is would like setting yourself on fire for warmth.
230 is why sites have user generated content including reviews. If not for that, Naughty Dog could sue ResetEra for someone leaving a negative review due to disliking their crunch policy.
Someone hasn't read Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.
If it has problems, then the best approach is to deal with those problems. Throwing it out arbitrarily does not deal with those problems at all, and the resulting situation is not an improvement even if you're (probably unrealistically) imagining it's a temporary one.
Or to put it another way, throughout this thread there's been an implication that getting rid of it is somehow "regulation", which is just not true.
There are methods to reign in Facebook's shitty practices that don't involve tearing down the concept of user-generated content.
Democracy Doesn't Work
Then it is unanimous, we are going to approve the bill to evacuate the town -- wait a second. I'd like to tack on a rider to that bill. $30 million of taxpay...
youtu.be
I agree that getting rid of it is overkill but it is not a beacon on the hill of first amendment rights. Moderation via human or algo is editorialization and should be held to a higher standard closer to traditional media than the local deli's community board.
You caught me.
For anyone curious, 230 was created in response to Prodigy getting dinged for reasonable (by that era) moderations standards when something they left up was considered libelous, and Compuserv, who opted to not touch anything was in the clear.
230 was created to encourage moderation. Without it, things like Usenet would have been shut down at many universities.
Without something like 230 anything that enables user content would be in a catch 22, if you edit posts you are a 'publisher', but if you leave up horrible material (think illegal material) are you at risk of having legal risk as a 'distributor'.
Its not perfect, all of the negative things attributed to it have some truth. For example, aggressive algorithmic content presentation may not exist without the 230 protections. Its not a hard case to make that choosing content in any fashion other than chronological is publishing.
I'll also through in an addition, 230 does not cover distribution, a point made by Clarence Thomas in a ruling not too long ago. I'm surprised that there haven't been more cases against companies for their role in distribution since its been reasonably demonstrated that they "know" what content is fairly well by their own tools. Were I at a firm or an AG office, I would push to make this case.
As someone who hates the big social media companies and thinks they absolutely need to be held accountable, 230 sucks BUT should be heavily amended, not removed just to create a much worse situation. It's literally the best we've got, and removing it outright is using a hammer when we should be using a scalpel.
Nuking 230 nukes the internet as we currently know it. It isn't worth it, unless you specifically don't care about user content online.
He only started talking about it when DiaperDon started trending
Has trump tweeted his displeasure with McConnell blocking the $2k? I haven't seen anything where he's complained about it being blocked. It's pretty sus if he didn't immediately attack McConnell... He goes after everyone not in lock step, right?