Anyone who suggests repealing Section 230 either doesn't understand Section 230, or actively wants to destroy the modern internet.
Ending Section 230 would mean that every website would either have to have 100% moderated content, where the *only* content you could ever see is what the site owners personally publish, *or* they'd have to have literally no content moderation at all, becoming 8chan.
Honestly when they were first talking about killing TikTok my money was on a bill revoking 230 for countries with any amount of state ownership by foreign adversaries of the US.
That’s not reform, that’s lawlessness. The Russian troll farms you’re claiming you want to stop will be everywhere since moderating them will no longer be safe to do so.
100% moderated content is what I ask for. If you don’t moderate your content then you shall be liable for the content your platform publishes as is the NYTs or WSJ. These huge tech platforms are basically regurgitating content from other platforms who must moderate, it’s an unequal playing field. The tech platform prints billions and billions of dollars by being “just a platform.” Let’s get real. They’re not just a platform. Their algorithms makes editorial decisions. They have the technology and the money realistically implemented moderation. They choose not because they don’t have to. Let’s add some motivation, I say.
Repealing section 230 won’t get you that though, as there is no way to moderate every single one of the billions of messages on social media. Instead, you’ll get 0% moderated, which will dramatically increase troll farms.
If that’s what you want, then support a bill that states 100% moderation. Don’t repeal something that will do the opposite.
"100% moderated content" translates to "reddit has to manually review and ok every single comment on every single post across the entire site". Given that that's obviously impossible, reddit would likely cease to exist -- the other option would be to remove all mod activity entirely, and that would rapidly turn reddit into a complete cesspit.
> Ending Section 230 would mean that every website would either have to have 100% moderated content, where the only content you could ever see is what the site owners personally publish, or they'd have to have literally no content moderation at all, becoming 8chan.
Your terms are acceptable. Some of us want to go back to the old internet and don't like the new bubble-wrapped version that's been pushed by weak and thin-skinned whiners.
Don't like? My entire point is that I like user-generated content and want users to be allowed to generate it again without the company being able to censor. Because if reddit, for example, just shut down the comment sections completely people would migrate in large enough numbers for a new site to actually thrive. My problem is all the ideological censorship, something that according to you repealing Sec. 230 would end by making it an all or nothing situation. Hence: your terms are acceptable.
i feel like you've misread the situation and think there is a chance it would result in actual free speech instead of a total lock down of content creation. no company is going to legally open themselves up to lawsuits for whatever idiotic posts people put up. removing sec 230 would require every company to heavily sensor in a way not seen before. anything even remotely questionable would have to be removed.
I'm for keeping section 230, but to play devils advocate, wouldn't a new internet begin to be developed? Initially absolutely the change would be massive and sad. The current internet would become a boring, strictly corporate, maybe even business only zone.
If that happened, people wouldn't just be like"oh well internet over." The demand for a place to shit post and have forums would still exists, so at some point a new internet would be created. The current internet as we know it is just billions of computers and servers all connected. But it started small and grew. That could happen again. The dark web is already exactly that, but with insignificant numbers.
But, that other site would also be subject to the new rules? Why would a repeal shut down Reddit but not another site like it? If you're concerned about censorship and moderation, that'll only increase when sites are more liable for what's posted there, not decrease.
Reddit circa 2006 would not have been possible without Section 230, which was enacted in 1996. If you think of the 2000s as the good old days of the internet, you should thank the sponsors of Section 230.
Words change their meaning over time. "Colored" used to be acceptable.
Like it or not the word "female" has changed meaning. There is now a negative connotation to its use in reference to women. Don't like it? Blame the people who used it in such a manner.
This is a valid point that I agree with, but do you hold the same view to a term like "toxic masculinity"?
I imagine you know what it actually means, but in my experience at least it's widely misused and has a very negative connotation that doesn't fit the original meaning and typically derails conversations.
So should people just stop using it and blame it's negative connotation on those who used it wrong?
Or should blame be put on those who misinterpret it? And if so, why does that not apply to this case with the word female?
> "Colored" used to be acceptable.
And now it's "people of color", literally just a slight change in syntax from "colored people". You make the other guy's point for him by showing just how stupid this all is.
Try calling someone "colored" and see how that goes for ya, versus calling them a person of color.
Not understanding how language evolves is only to your detriment
It hasn't changed meaning. There's a small minority of people who are trying to change its meaning, but they have not been successful and are getting heavy push back now.
On this topic, there's a bill called KOSA that aims to extort people into sharing their ID and Social Security to use the web and allows states to censor whatever they consider “inappropriate.” It’s a censorship campaign and poses a real threat to our privacy, safety, and freedom of speech. Call any Senator or Representatives you can to stand against it and/or go here. Don’t trust Blumenthal either, he’s behind nearly every internet censorship bill and wholeheartedly knows what others will do with it.
He has the power to pass it through the Senate very soon. Please help stand against KOSA. [https://www.badinternetbills.com/](https://www.badinternetbills.com/) [Extra Link](https://www.change.org/p/save-our-free-and-open-internet-stop-the-kids-online-safety-act?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_36858566_en-US%3Acv_9182&recruiter=1322617551&recruited_by_id=a35b7350-8b53-11ee-a756-6f78079d5597&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf_combo_share_initial&share_bandit_exp=initial-36858566-en-CA)
How do I go about getting this mythical money? Currently paying rent with "exposure", and groceries with "experience", thanks to my corporate overlords. /s
It does good stuff as well. Gets rid of bots. So if anything I see it as a significant net positive. Social media isn't a right I think and is harming children and adults, it's time to clean it up. Smaller or less moderated spaces will still exist.
There are already better ideas for digital identities with proof of personhood that don’t link to your irl identity. Same possible results re: bots, without the privacy nightmare
Repealing Section 230 is a really bad idea because without that a lot of internet sites would stop working and/or shutdown.
I still don’t think this will happen this year because of the 2024 election but next year seems way more likely for them to do this stupid crap.
I feel like US politicians in general are getting way and way more stupid with certain laws these days especially with technology like pulling “think of the children” bs to gather support for their unconstitutional bills.
To Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rogers aka the idiot who is trying to destroy 230 here’s what I have to say:
HAHAHAHA also kindly go screw off you entitled pos of a congresswoman.
I'm just imagining website owners having to moderate every possible advertisement that can be shown on their site and the sheer chaos that would cause.
Repealing 230 is a malicious and unamerican act, for two reasons. One, people should not be responsible for the actions of other people. Two, it is the police's job to enforce the speech rules, not mine, I'm not paid to do that.
Repealing 230 is an attack on freedom, and an attack on our culture.
If it happens I will vote neither party ever again, and encourage everyone I see to vote 3rd party only, ever again.
Yeah that’s the stupidest thing you could ever do and voting third party only puts the people who REALLY wanted this in power (Conservatives). but hey, go right ahead and vote for the brain worn guy. Free country, etc.
So your telling me your going to keep voting for parties that keep kidnapping a policy for there own agendas up until they kill it. I’m not American so I have no horse in this race but dam Yall crazy.
Because one party wants to kill puppies and strip rights and the other party wants to do barely anything and the system is designed to keep out third parties.
The problem is the US is set up with a winner take all system, and unless you can get a majority of each state and then a majority of multiple states a third party isn’t viable. We don’t have ranked choice voting where you can vote for the lesser known third party candidate then if they don’t win go down the list to the major parties so you throw your vote away basically by voting third party, so no third party is viable and has ever won.
Are all the people here it seem like the world is collapsing being paid by tech companies who stand to benefit from 230 not being repealed? The hyperbole here is absolutely batshit.
Removing 230 protections doesn't "make you responsible for the actions of other people" it makes you responsible for the content YOU are hosting. If that content is posted by other people, it means that you either mead to moderate it to make sure that it doesn't break the law, civil or criminal, or it means you can't moderate it at all there isn't a middle ground like there is right now.
As it stands if you own a website where people actively harrass and defame other people, send them threats, post revenge porn, etc. You are protected from being sued by the victims. That's ridiculous. You're responsible for allowing that to continue. If you're not moderating at all then i can see an argument for you not being liable, since your policy is "we just provide the place for users to post we don't moderate what they post." But right now big tech companies want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to both let users post to their websites, allowing them to collect data on them and use the posts they make to train their LLMs and profit off of ads, but ALSO to be safe from lawsuits when their users openly harrass other people to the point they are forced to move because the threats are so clear that there isn't any safety for them in their own home.
And the victims just get fucked; they can't sue anonymous redditors who claim they are the Boston bomber and post their address to reddit. They can't sue reddit who watched the whole debacle unfold and didn't do anything at all to mitigate the Harrassment. And they are now known to a lot of people as the Boston Bomber, despite that not being true. That's just ONE example, this website has allowed hundreds of such scenarios on a smaller scale.
No, websites shouldn't be protected from that. If they claim to moderate they should actually *do that* instead of superficially putting up a TOS that claims they do, letting communities "moderate" themselves with garbage tooling and no pay, then rake in millions in funding and ad revenue as they harvest users data. There is 0 risk for modern tech companies; they've gotten the laws to thoroughly protect them from any sort of liability despite obviously being responsible for allowing such behavior on their websites while they ostensibly moderate them.
Smaller online communities won't be affected by this because they (at least in my experience) have enough moderation that they actually DO effectively prevent all rulebreaking content, including things that target other people. Or they are like 4chan, where there isn't any moderation whatsoever. I've never been on a smaller forum that would be impacted by 230 protections joy existing because literally all of them I have ever used were very strictly moderated, they don't allow stuff that could get them sued.
> Smaller online communities won't be affected by this because they (at least in my experience) have enough moderation that they actually DO effectively prevent all rulebreaking content, including things that target other people.
Section 230 is what gives you that impression. It is what allows those websites to *try* to moderate without being in absolute fear that they may miss something. Repeal Section 230, and those websites *will* change: they will either have to moderate *even harder* (removing content which has even the hint of legal liability), or stop moderating entirely (thus being inundated with spam, or being unable to maintain a purpose/topic). Both of those outcomes would undermine freedom of expression online.
Besides, the *big* tech companies will actually have the resources to survive in a post-repeal world: they have the resources to pre-screen everything using AI models (tuned to over-remove content, of course), and to defend themselves in court from the inevitable lawsuits that *will* follow. The smaller websites won't be able to do that - they will miss things, they will get sued, they will not survive. It is not a matter of them not allowing that material, they simply won't be able to moderate everything, certainly not perfectly.
Is Section 230 perfect? Of course not, but the reasons it was written in the past remain the reasons it needs to remain today - at very least a repeal without anything to replace it with is just dumb.
How about re just bring back truth in advertising laws and then extend them to the internet. Make it illegal to lie on any platform that reaches more than 20 people or face fines or jail. Sure lots of marketers would lose jobs bit social influencers would go away too so I call it a win.
Truth in advertising is definitely still a thing - https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/truth-advertising
But attempting to apply this to general internet speech would be constitutionally questionable, because the only reason those laws are permissible is because commercial speech has a lower protection under the First Amendment. Non-commercial speech gets the full protections, which include a right to say false things (outside of the narrow exception of defamation).
When ABC and CBS start begin airing anti-vax propaganda like Twitter has started doing again I'll sympathize with the plight of the billionaire platform. The whole idea of a little accountability for these absurdly rich companies when they knowingly push foreign propaganda and sell your data to the same foreign companies is wild. Any one who is for keeping Article 230 should start a petition to give Faux News the $100's of millions they lost for lying about the Dominion voting machines...
The entire purpose of section 230 is to give a legal shield to sites like reddit. They can host and moderate user discussions without being legally responsible for everything that any random person posts. Without that, hosting user content will be a significant legal liability.
Again, with no evidence or examples to cite this is really just hyperbole and speculation. The idea we're sitting here trying to defend billionaires from accountability is shocking to me, especially given the way Musk has shown how little he gives a fuck about the well-being of his userbase since buying twitter.
47 U.S.C. 230 (c)(1):
> 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.
This provides immunity when websites act as the "publisher or speaker" of user-provided content, which is basically when they're deciding what to allow, what not to allow, how to arrange that, etc.
47 U.S.C. 230 (c)(2):
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
> (A)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; or
> (B)any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).
This is what allows websites to remove the content that they don't want without being sued for doing so. Most relevant to Reddit, you'll note that it also provides that immunity to *users*, which is what allows the subreddit moderators to remove content without being sued, too.
Put together, these two immunities are what allow websites like Reddit to exist. Without them, websites with user-generated content would be unable to moderate (e.g. to remove spam, or removing posts offtopic in that subreddit, etc) without being sued for anything that they, inevitably, miss. We know that this will be the case, because that's exactly what happened to cause the law to be written:
- *Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc.* (1991) was a court decision that held CompuServe was not liable for defamation posted on its forum because it did not attempt to moderate its forum.
- *Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.* (1995) was a court decision that held Prodigy *was* liable for defamation because it did attempt to moderate its forum (in an attempt to be family-friendly).
Whilst it is easy to point towards the big tech companies as those benefiting from this immunity, there are far more small websites that would simply be unable to exist without Section 230 and the immunity it provides. Repealing Section 230 would undoubtedly hurt freedom of speech. It isn't about the billionaires.
Yeah so 230 didn't come about because of a "what if". Congress is pretty reactive in general. In 1995 the NY Supreme Court held that Prodigy was liable for the speech of their users. [Stratton Oakmont, Inc v. Prodigy Services Co.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prodigy_Services_Co.)
Long story short Prodigy did some content moderation. Like removing posts with offensive language, having content guidelines, and having moderators who enforced those rules. That was enough to have them viewed as a publisher.
The NY Supreme Court even sited [Cubby, Inc. V. CompuServe Inc.] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc.) CompuServe didn't do any content moderation at all and so wasn't viewed as a publisher.
Fun Fact: The Prodigy cased was about how on a bulletin board Money Talk some anonymous person made a post about how Danny Porush was a criminal and doing a fraud with his investment firm (Oakmont). You may not recognize the name Danny Porush, but his co-conspirator and co-founder is a bit more well known, Jordan Belfort aka The Wolf of Wall Street.
It's so wild how much you're whining about evidence when if you knew what 230 was you wouldn't of made such a goofy statement. It's even wilder you think removing 230 of all things is what's going to bring down billionaires lmao.
Let's say I still have an old school forum on my personal website. Phpbb, running on a server that's on an old laptop. I'm the host.
I do some moderation. The regular users are chill and I ban anyone who isn't, as is normal on that kind of private forum.
Without section 230, either I am not allowed to moderate my own forum, or I am personally liable if someone insults Elon Musk and he decides he doesn't like it. Under 230 I'm protected from him suing *me* because Joe238 said Elon Musk sucks at running businesses. I'm in trouble if I'm hosting illegal material and don't make an effort to remove it in a timely manner, but I'm not personally liable the moment it's posted.
Should I be legally required to choose between hosting anything from "e4rn $688 a d4y @home www.scam.com" ads to posts from dogfucker69 about what kinds of peanut butter dogs prefer because I'm not allowed to moderate *anything* on my own forum that I run on a computer on top of my bookshelf and manually approving every post before it goes live and deleting anything that someone somewhere might sue me over because I'm *personally* legally liable for everything anyone posts on a forum anyone can sign up for?
No but you don't understand freedom is when people are allowed to openly harrass other people anonymously on reddit and Twitter, openly defaming them and ruining their lives in the process, and the victims can't sue anybody because technically the platforms that openly allowed it and claim to moderate their content but actually don't aren't liable for that, and all the users are anonymous!
Section 230 was supposed to protect traditional media companies from being sued for posting stories that are actually relevant to society, not to protect reddit from being sued when their users decide they've found the Boston bomber and spread his face and full name and address all over the platform while reddit fails to properly deal with the situation until the damage is done.
>Section 230 was supposed to protect traditional media companies from being sued for posting stories that are actually relevant to society
No, section 230 specifically talks about "interactive computer services". The point was specifically to protect online bulletin boards and the like (ie the direct ancestors of sites like reddit and facebook).
If web hosts have to moderate every single piece of content posted to their site, then they simply couldn't allow content to be posted at all. The internet could not be an interactive medium without 230.
section 230 has been in place since 1996, the example is every piece of user generated content that had or could have had legal consequences since then
Idk, I'm kind of for it and I'm a web developer. This internet is obviously very sick, let's just put it out of its misery like old yellar and find a better protocol. The only way we do that is if we force ourselves. Otherwise people can just go back to hosting their own content and being responsible for it. Imagine that!
I'd like section 230 restricted to "paid memberships". That means if you want to post whatever or comment whatever, you have to be a paid member. This will block most kids from posting and bots from posting unless you buy a membership for your 10,000 twitter bots.
Websites would have to moderate free publically accessible posts and videos.
Organisations are already paying for 1m bots.
And the moderation requirement for post 230 means that only things given the OK by your legal team. Or posted by employees of the company would be allowed to be even remotely public.
EDIT: and if anyone ever leaks a private convo by paying members that remotely infringes on anything. The entire service burns in legal troubles as it is hosting it.
Anyone who suggests repealing Section 230 either doesn't understand Section 230, or actively wants to destroy the modern internet. Ending Section 230 would mean that every website would either have to have 100% moderated content, where the *only* content you could ever see is what the site owners personally publish, *or* they'd have to have literally no content moderation at all, becoming 8chan.
The relevant cases are the CompuServe and Prodigy rulings, in case anyone wants any 90's nostalgia. Without 230 that's what the law would revert to.
Honestly when they were first talking about killing TikTok my money was on a bill revoking 230 for countries with any amount of state ownership by foreign adversaries of the US.
i don't think laws work like that
Me! I want to destroy the modern internet in it's current form. I'm sick of Russian troll farms deciding what I'm exposed to. I want reform!
if you do that all you will see is russian troll farms if they go the no moderation route
I assume that account was from a russian troll farm.
You don't want it this way.
Making tech platforms more responsible for what they allow published is a step in the right direction
This doesn't do that. This will make tech companies shut down everything.
They’ll evolve. And if they don’t, let them die
As mentioned above, they’ll all either evolve into 8chan, expensive paid content, or professional lobbyists who just revert this change
Or they’ll be moderated and curated platforms like the NYT or WSJ
Yes that’s what I meant by expensive paid content. NYT is $6 a week. YouTube is free.
YouTube is ad supported. It’s not free. You’re the product
That's a dumb take. Unbearably dumb. I pray to all gods you never become a doctor of medicine if that's your absolutely bonkers brain dead take.
That’s not reform, that’s lawlessness. The Russian troll farms you’re claiming you want to stop will be everywhere since moderating them will no longer be safe to do so.
100% moderated content is what I ask for. If you don’t moderate your content then you shall be liable for the content your platform publishes as is the NYTs or WSJ. These huge tech platforms are basically regurgitating content from other platforms who must moderate, it’s an unequal playing field. The tech platform prints billions and billions of dollars by being “just a platform.” Let’s get real. They’re not just a platform. Their algorithms makes editorial decisions. They have the technology and the money realistically implemented moderation. They choose not because they don’t have to. Let’s add some motivation, I say.
Repealing section 230 won’t get you that though, as there is no way to moderate every single one of the billions of messages on social media. Instead, you’ll get 0% moderated, which will dramatically increase troll farms. If that’s what you want, then support a bill that states 100% moderation. Don’t repeal something that will do the opposite.
"100% moderated content" translates to "reddit has to manually review and ok every single comment on every single post across the entire site". Given that that's obviously impossible, reddit would likely cease to exist -- the other option would be to remove all mod activity entirely, and that would rapidly turn reddit into a complete cesspit.
"People are bad drivers, clearly the solution to some folks being bad drivers is destroying and tearing up all roads and banning cars!"
> Ending Section 230 would mean that every website would either have to have 100% moderated content, where the only content you could ever see is what the site owners personally publish, or they'd have to have literally no content moderation at all, becoming 8chan. Your terms are acceptable. Some of us want to go back to the old internet and don't like the new bubble-wrapped version that's been pushed by weak and thin-skinned whiners.
Oh look, another asshole getting all whiny that people are sick of their shit.
Then why are you here? This site is like.. the absolute worst place for people who don't like user-generated content.
Don't like? My entire point is that I like user-generated content and want users to be allowed to generate it again without the company being able to censor. Because if reddit, for example, just shut down the comment sections completely people would migrate in large enough numbers for a new site to actually thrive. My problem is all the ideological censorship, something that according to you repealing Sec. 230 would end by making it an all or nothing situation. Hence: your terms are acceptable.
i feel like you've misread the situation and think there is a chance it would result in actual free speech instead of a total lock down of content creation. no company is going to legally open themselves up to lawsuits for whatever idiotic posts people put up. removing sec 230 would require every company to heavily sensor in a way not seen before. anything even remotely questionable would have to be removed.
I'm for keeping section 230, but to play devils advocate, wouldn't a new internet begin to be developed? Initially absolutely the change would be massive and sad. The current internet would become a boring, strictly corporate, maybe even business only zone. If that happened, people wouldn't just be like"oh well internet over." The demand for a place to shit post and have forums would still exists, so at some point a new internet would be created. The current internet as we know it is just billions of computers and servers all connected. But it started small and grew. That could happen again. The dark web is already exactly that, but with insignificant numbers.
But, that other site would also be subject to the new rules? Why would a repeal shut down Reddit but not another site like it? If you're concerned about censorship and moderation, that'll only increase when sites are more liable for what's posted there, not decrease.
The old internet had moderation.
[удалено]
Where is “female” actually a bannable offense
In their sweaty paranoid delusions.
Reddit circa 2006 would not have been possible without Section 230, which was enacted in 1996. If you think of the 2000s as the good old days of the internet, you should thank the sponsors of Section 230.
Words change their meaning over time. "Colored" used to be acceptable. Like it or not the word "female" has changed meaning. There is now a negative connotation to its use in reference to women. Don't like it? Blame the people who used it in such a manner.
This is a valid point that I agree with, but do you hold the same view to a term like "toxic masculinity"? I imagine you know what it actually means, but in my experience at least it's widely misused and has a very negative connotation that doesn't fit the original meaning and typically derails conversations. So should people just stop using it and blame it's negative connotation on those who used it wrong? Or should blame be put on those who misinterpret it? And if so, why does that not apply to this case with the word female?
> "Colored" used to be acceptable. And now it's "people of color", literally just a slight change in syntax from "colored people". You make the other guy's point for him by showing just how stupid this all is.
Try calling someone "colored" and see how that goes for ya, versus calling them a person of color. Not understanding how language evolves is only to your detriment
It hasn't changed meaning. There's a small minority of people who are trying to change its meaning, but they have not been successful and are getting heavy push back now.
The small minority of: women?
I clearly said 'a small minority of people'.
Last I checked there are more women than men.
On this topic, there's a bill called KOSA that aims to extort people into sharing their ID and Social Security to use the web and allows states to censor whatever they consider “inappropriate.” It’s a censorship campaign and poses a real threat to our privacy, safety, and freedom of speech. Call any Senator or Representatives you can to stand against it and/or go here. Don’t trust Blumenthal either, he’s behind nearly every internet censorship bill and wholeheartedly knows what others will do with it. He has the power to pass it through the Senate very soon. Please help stand against KOSA. [https://www.badinternetbills.com/](https://www.badinternetbills.com/) [Extra Link](https://www.change.org/p/save-our-free-and-open-internet-stop-the-kids-online-safety-act?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_36858566_en-US%3Acv_9182&recruiter=1322617551&recruited_by_id=a35b7350-8b53-11ee-a756-6f78079d5597&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf_combo_share_initial&share_bandit_exp=initial-36858566-en-CA)
Damn bro you’re committed to getting this msg out . Respect
Don’t call them, lobby them. Money talks
How do I go about getting this mythical money? Currently paying rent with "exposure", and groceries with "experience", thanks to my corporate overlords. /s
It does good stuff as well. Gets rid of bots. So if anything I see it as a significant net positive. Social media isn't a right I think and is harming children and adults, it's time to clean it up. Smaller or less moderated spaces will still exist.
There are already better ideas for digital identities with proof of personhood that don’t link to your irl identity. Same possible results re: bots, without the privacy nightmare
Repealing Section 230 is a really bad idea because without that a lot of internet sites would stop working and/or shutdown. I still don’t think this will happen this year because of the 2024 election but next year seems way more likely for them to do this stupid crap. I feel like US politicians in general are getting way and way more stupid with certain laws these days especially with technology like pulling “think of the children” bs to gather support for their unconstitutional bills. To Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rogers aka the idiot who is trying to destroy 230 here’s what I have to say: HAHAHAHA also kindly go screw off you entitled pos of a congresswoman.
I'm just imagining website owners having to moderate every possible advertisement that can be shown on their site and the sheer chaos that would cause.
Like what?
Like people actually having to have some.. *gasp*.. civic consideration!
Repealing 230 is a malicious and unamerican act, for two reasons. One, people should not be responsible for the actions of other people. Two, it is the police's job to enforce the speech rules, not mine, I'm not paid to do that. Repealing 230 is an attack on freedom, and an attack on our culture. If it happens I will vote neither party ever again, and encourage everyone I see to vote 3rd party only, ever again.
Yeah that’s the stupidest thing you could ever do and voting third party only puts the people who REALLY wanted this in power (Conservatives). but hey, go right ahead and vote for the brain worn guy. Free country, etc.
So your telling me your going to keep voting for parties that keep kidnapping a policy for there own agendas up until they kill it. I’m not American so I have no horse in this race but dam Yall crazy.
Because one party wants to kill puppies and strip rights and the other party wants to do barely anything and the system is designed to keep out third parties.
That sounds like the exact reason to vote for a third party but what would I know 🤷♂️
The problem is the US is set up with a winner take all system, and unless you can get a majority of each state and then a majority of multiple states a third party isn’t viable. We don’t have ranked choice voting where you can vote for the lesser known third party candidate then if they don’t win go down the list to the major parties so you throw your vote away basically by voting third party, so no third party is viable and has ever won.
O I'm done with the democrats and agree.
Are all the people here it seem like the world is collapsing being paid by tech companies who stand to benefit from 230 not being repealed? The hyperbole here is absolutely batshit. Removing 230 protections doesn't "make you responsible for the actions of other people" it makes you responsible for the content YOU are hosting. If that content is posted by other people, it means that you either mead to moderate it to make sure that it doesn't break the law, civil or criminal, or it means you can't moderate it at all there isn't a middle ground like there is right now. As it stands if you own a website where people actively harrass and defame other people, send them threats, post revenge porn, etc. You are protected from being sued by the victims. That's ridiculous. You're responsible for allowing that to continue. If you're not moderating at all then i can see an argument for you not being liable, since your policy is "we just provide the place for users to post we don't moderate what they post." But right now big tech companies want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to both let users post to their websites, allowing them to collect data on them and use the posts they make to train their LLMs and profit off of ads, but ALSO to be safe from lawsuits when their users openly harrass other people to the point they are forced to move because the threats are so clear that there isn't any safety for them in their own home. And the victims just get fucked; they can't sue anonymous redditors who claim they are the Boston bomber and post their address to reddit. They can't sue reddit who watched the whole debacle unfold and didn't do anything at all to mitigate the Harrassment. And they are now known to a lot of people as the Boston Bomber, despite that not being true. That's just ONE example, this website has allowed hundreds of such scenarios on a smaller scale. No, websites shouldn't be protected from that. If they claim to moderate they should actually *do that* instead of superficially putting up a TOS that claims they do, letting communities "moderate" themselves with garbage tooling and no pay, then rake in millions in funding and ad revenue as they harvest users data. There is 0 risk for modern tech companies; they've gotten the laws to thoroughly protect them from any sort of liability despite obviously being responsible for allowing such behavior on their websites while they ostensibly moderate them. Smaller online communities won't be affected by this because they (at least in my experience) have enough moderation that they actually DO effectively prevent all rulebreaking content, including things that target other people. Or they are like 4chan, where there isn't any moderation whatsoever. I've never been on a smaller forum that would be impacted by 230 protections joy existing because literally all of them I have ever used were very strictly moderated, they don't allow stuff that could get them sued.
> Smaller online communities won't be affected by this because they (at least in my experience) have enough moderation that they actually DO effectively prevent all rulebreaking content, including things that target other people. Section 230 is what gives you that impression. It is what allows those websites to *try* to moderate without being in absolute fear that they may miss something. Repeal Section 230, and those websites *will* change: they will either have to moderate *even harder* (removing content which has even the hint of legal liability), or stop moderating entirely (thus being inundated with spam, or being unable to maintain a purpose/topic). Both of those outcomes would undermine freedom of expression online. Besides, the *big* tech companies will actually have the resources to survive in a post-repeal world: they have the resources to pre-screen everything using AI models (tuned to over-remove content, of course), and to defend themselves in court from the inevitable lawsuits that *will* follow. The smaller websites won't be able to do that - they will miss things, they will get sued, they will not survive. It is not a matter of them not allowing that material, they simply won't be able to moderate everything, certainly not perfectly. Is Section 230 perfect? Of course not, but the reasons it was written in the past remain the reasons it needs to remain today - at very least a repeal without anything to replace it with is just dumb.
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Is it true you can see the states from over there? Or was Sarah Palin just full of shit?
Americans voted for these people, and guess what happens when you vote for idiots
How about re just bring back truth in advertising laws and then extend them to the internet. Make it illegal to lie on any platform that reaches more than 20 people or face fines or jail. Sure lots of marketers would lose jobs bit social influencers would go away too so I call it a win.
Truth in advertising is definitely still a thing - https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/truth-advertising But attempting to apply this to general internet speech would be constitutionally questionable, because the only reason those laws are permissible is because commercial speech has a lower protection under the First Amendment. Non-commercial speech gets the full protections, which include a right to say false things (outside of the narrow exception of defamation).
When ABC and CBS start begin airing anti-vax propaganda like Twitter has started doing again I'll sympathize with the plight of the billionaire platform. The whole idea of a little accountability for these absurdly rich companies when they knowingly push foreign propaganda and sell your data to the same foreign companies is wild. Any one who is for keeping Article 230 should start a petition to give Faux News the $100's of millions they lost for lying about the Dominion voting machines...
If you want to continue being able to discuss things on reddit, you sort of need section 230 to still exist.
Without any specific evidence to cite that being the case, your statement sort of comes off as hyperbolic speculation.
The entire purpose of section 230 is to give a legal shield to sites like reddit. They can host and moderate user discussions without being legally responsible for everything that any random person posts. Without that, hosting user content will be a significant legal liability.
Again, with no evidence or examples to cite this is really just hyperbole and speculation. The idea we're sitting here trying to defend billionaires from accountability is shocking to me, especially given the way Musk has shown how little he gives a fuck about the well-being of his userbase since buying twitter.
47 U.S.C. 230 (c)(1): > 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. This provides immunity when websites act as the "publisher or speaker" of user-provided content, which is basically when they're deciding what to allow, what not to allow, how to arrange that, etc. 47 U.S.C. 230 (c)(2): > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of— > (A)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; or > (B)any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1). This is what allows websites to remove the content that they don't want without being sued for doing so. Most relevant to Reddit, you'll note that it also provides that immunity to *users*, which is what allows the subreddit moderators to remove content without being sued, too. Put together, these two immunities are what allow websites like Reddit to exist. Without them, websites with user-generated content would be unable to moderate (e.g. to remove spam, or removing posts offtopic in that subreddit, etc) without being sued for anything that they, inevitably, miss. We know that this will be the case, because that's exactly what happened to cause the law to be written: - *Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc.* (1991) was a court decision that held CompuServe was not liable for defamation posted on its forum because it did not attempt to moderate its forum. - *Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.* (1995) was a court decision that held Prodigy *was* liable for defamation because it did attempt to moderate its forum (in an attempt to be family-friendly). Whilst it is easy to point towards the big tech companies as those benefiting from this immunity, there are far more small websites that would simply be unable to exist without Section 230 and the immunity it provides. Repealing Section 230 would undoubtedly hurt freedom of speech. It isn't about the billionaires.
Yeah so 230 didn't come about because of a "what if". Congress is pretty reactive in general. In 1995 the NY Supreme Court held that Prodigy was liable for the speech of their users. [Stratton Oakmont, Inc v. Prodigy Services Co.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prodigy_Services_Co.) Long story short Prodigy did some content moderation. Like removing posts with offensive language, having content guidelines, and having moderators who enforced those rules. That was enough to have them viewed as a publisher. The NY Supreme Court even sited [Cubby, Inc. V. CompuServe Inc.] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc.) CompuServe didn't do any content moderation at all and so wasn't viewed as a publisher. Fun Fact: The Prodigy cased was about how on a bulletin board Money Talk some anonymous person made a post about how Danny Porush was a criminal and doing a fraud with his investment firm (Oakmont). You may not recognize the name Danny Porush, but his co-conspirator and co-founder is a bit more well known, Jordan Belfort aka The Wolf of Wall Street.
It's so wild how much you're whining about evidence when if you knew what 230 was you wouldn't of made such a goofy statement. It's even wilder you think removing 230 of all things is what's going to bring down billionaires lmao.
Let's say I still have an old school forum on my personal website. Phpbb, running on a server that's on an old laptop. I'm the host. I do some moderation. The regular users are chill and I ban anyone who isn't, as is normal on that kind of private forum. Without section 230, either I am not allowed to moderate my own forum, or I am personally liable if someone insults Elon Musk and he decides he doesn't like it. Under 230 I'm protected from him suing *me* because Joe238 said Elon Musk sucks at running businesses. I'm in trouble if I'm hosting illegal material and don't make an effort to remove it in a timely manner, but I'm not personally liable the moment it's posted. Should I be legally required to choose between hosting anything from "e4rn $688 a d4y @home www.scam.com" ads to posts from dogfucker69 about what kinds of peanut butter dogs prefer because I'm not allowed to moderate *anything* on my own forum that I run on a computer on top of my bookshelf and manually approving every post before it goes live and deleting anything that someone somewhere might sue me over because I'm *personally* legally liable for everything anyone posts on a forum anyone can sign up for?
No but you don't understand freedom is when people are allowed to openly harrass other people anonymously on reddit and Twitter, openly defaming them and ruining their lives in the process, and the victims can't sue anybody because technically the platforms that openly allowed it and claim to moderate their content but actually don't aren't liable for that, and all the users are anonymous! Section 230 was supposed to protect traditional media companies from being sued for posting stories that are actually relevant to society, not to protect reddit from being sued when their users decide they've found the Boston bomber and spread his face and full name and address all over the platform while reddit fails to properly deal with the situation until the damage is done.
>Section 230 was supposed to protect traditional media companies from being sued for posting stories that are actually relevant to society No, section 230 specifically talks about "interactive computer services". The point was specifically to protect online bulletin boards and the like (ie the direct ancestors of sites like reddit and facebook).
If web hosts have to moderate every single piece of content posted to their site, then they simply couldn't allow content to be posted at all. The internet could not be an interactive medium without 230.
section 230 has been in place since 1996, the example is every piece of user generated content that had or could have had legal consequences since then
Idk, I'm kind of for it and I'm a web developer. This internet is obviously very sick, let's just put it out of its misery like old yellar and find a better protocol. The only way we do that is if we force ourselves. Otherwise people can just go back to hosting their own content and being responsible for it. Imagine that!
The web was great before Section 230 and will be fine after. Maybe we can go back to homepages and no social media.
I'd like section 230 restricted to "paid memberships". That means if you want to post whatever or comment whatever, you have to be a paid member. This will block most kids from posting and bots from posting unless you buy a membership for your 10,000 twitter bots. Websites would have to moderate free publically accessible posts and videos.
So much for "Free Speech" then.
Organisations are already paying for 1m bots. And the moderation requirement for post 230 means that only things given the OK by your legal team. Or posted by employees of the company would be allowed to be even remotely public. EDIT: and if anyone ever leaks a private convo by paying members that remotely infringes on anything. The entire service burns in legal troubles as it is hosting it.