This law needs to be re-written not repealed or else someone could come on here, post a picture of child porn, and the owners of the site would be criminally liable. That's not something we want either so both sides need protection.
230 doesn't protect this way it does carve out exceptions to 230 for violations of these laws.
Title 18. Code 1595/1591 and Title 18 Code 2421A is what you're looking for. If you're cooperating with LE then you will have a good defense. Keep records and cooperate. That bein said, we've seen government abuse of these laws to take down sites that said they were cooperating.
The same should apply to censorship. If you act on good faith and do not persecute groups of your users then you should keep your protections, otherwise you should be open to litigation from your users.
You shouldn't have to default to cooperating with law enforcement (outside of nonviolence, I'm talking about being forced into giving up your constitutional rights. in order to "protect" yourself). That's a huge problem.
When it comes to hosting materials like that, there's a fine line between ignorance and being an accomplice. I think if you're aware of a crime that severe, and you don't report it, you're an accomplice after the fact.
That’s not how 230 works. 230 exists to allow websites to moderate their comment sections without being held liable as a publisher. Removing criminal content was already allowed, this just allows them to remove things like obscenities without being responsible for the content that isn’t removed. Worst case scenario, comment sections across the internet become more like 4chan
Yeah section 230 is better left alone than solely repealed, I am very fearful of politicians who start talking about regulation of speech on the internet, the consequences, whether intended or not, can be astronomical.
Something needs to be done for sure, I just don’t have any idea what changes we can make through legislation, the best case scenario would just be the people waking up to this shit and turning away from these “platforms” that censor “wrong think”
The solution is simple. 230 should be conditioned upon the platform abiding by the restrictions of the First Amendment. We already have 230 years of case law on it. Everyone knows the rules.
I don’t agree. Worst case scenario, if 230 is repealed, comment sections across the internet would be filled with obscenities. Just like how it was back in the early 2000s
Having clear rules that are regularly followed would be a good start. Like here, Trump supporters only. The issue with Facebook and Twitter is that they're constantly deleting accounts for no reason with no explanation, deleting content that they admit doesn't break their rules, but will leave up other content that clearly does - they're not simply adhering to a set of established community rules across the board.
Like reddit I'm sure they have a rule about "keeping communitie safe, civil, and true to their purpose." Enforcing vague rules is their forte, what you're proposing would change little to nothing overall.
You could host all your comments and tweets and posts from your own computer or phone, and you could subscribe and get other people's comments and tweets directly from them. You'd apply your own moderation and block people you don't like so you don't see things you are offended by. If you want to delegate that to subscribe to 'block lists' you can, but it doesn't stop anybody else from seeing it.
This is how social media should work, and how it did work in the 90s with USENET - decentralized, with no moderation other than what individuals chose personally for themselves (mostly).
The only actual problem doing social media today without 230 is the level of service. A centralized server is faster, more resilient, everybody sees the same thing at the same time, etc. This service aspect is what 230 was meant to protect, but ended up creating a propaganda machine instead.
Without 230, the software would have to change a lot basically from aggregation to caching (already protected by other sections), and a lot of work would be involved to make it happen, but you could absolutely make a Facebook, reddit, The Donald, Twitter, etc with the same moderation and focus except when they ban somebody you can personally override the ban for yourself or you can personally block people you don't like.
Canceling 230 immediately would cause lots of problems, but canceling it effective 4 years from now would basically fix social media entirely.
The main problem Usenet had is that it was still somewhat hierarchical. It depended on a system of administrators who cooperated to forward posts to each other and somewhat police each other. Ironically, as access to the internet became more publicly available, flaws in the design of Usenet became more apparent. Disruptive people were allowed access and often not checked, access to upstream posting was very cliquish and hard to access (downstream too). Administrators were starting to have to take authoritarian, censorious actions to control particular bad actors by faking cancel posts (previously considered poor practice).
In the end, this hierarchical system brought an end to usenet as it relied on these administrators and with the rise of the web, ISPs who mostly supported it and ensured that the data was local to users decided it was something they couldn't justify anymore and just stopped providing it to users. I still have Usenet access but I have to pay for it and that's very far from decentralized.
I do think the issues of Usenet are solvable with crypto and something along the lines of what you state in your first paragraph. Usenet 2.0 would have to be fully decentralized and peer-to-peer and rely on a web-of-trust type network. I have some ideas about how to put it together but it would face some fairly huge inertia. Though it's looking like the tech giants are about to stumble so might be worthwhile.
Is it censorship to prevent a handful of ultra-wealthy corporations from grooming our children?
Social Media companies have twisted this "protection" in order to create platforms designed to boost their own preferred messaging at massive scales while suppressing the speech of average citizens. This is a new form of propagandizing and it must be considered exactly this. The modern publishers are hiding behind "scale" and "innovation" while masquerading as fair arbiters.
This is a system of cartels engaged in monopolistic public thought control.
it would be infeasible for online intermediaries to prevent objectionable content from cropping up on their site
It would be infeasible to allow these companies to continue to operate with two Terms of Services, one public and one private. Social Media companies must be held accountable for their publishing choices. While there can be some liberal interpretations of what they can and cannot control from the public there is no reason to allow them to manipulate user behavior patterns without sharp clarity on exactly what they intend to do.
Social Media companies are operating on a system built around a fraudulent idea: that users can connect and share media with each other. This is not how these systems are built.
Facebook and Twitter should be forced to open source and open their platforms to 3rd party developers, and allow everyone to see exactly what their "algorithms" are doing to their participation. These "American" corporations should face severe consequences for any and all collusion with foreign state actors.
All those positions and not a single one does something productive (ie wealth parasites). Probably 50% of our economy is filled with shit like this. These people have no idea whats coming down the pike.
SECTION 230
This law needs to be re-written not repealed or else someone could come on here, post a picture of child porn, and the owners of the site would be criminally liable. That's not something we want either so both sides need protection.
230 doesn't protect this way it does carve out exceptions to 230 for violations of these laws.
Title 18. Code 1595/1591 and Title 18 Code 2421A is what you're looking for. If you're cooperating with LE then you will have a good defense. Keep records and cooperate. That bein said, we've seen government abuse of these laws to take down sites that said they were cooperating.
The same should apply to censorship. If you act on good faith and do not persecute groups of your users then you should keep your protections, otherwise you should be open to litigation from your users.
You shouldn't have to default to cooperating with law enforcement (outside of nonviolence, I'm talking about being forced into giving up your constitutional rights. in order to "protect" yourself). That's a huge problem.
When it comes to hosting materials like that, there's a fine line between ignorance and being an accomplice. I think if you're aware of a crime that severe, and you don't report it, you're an accomplice after the fact.
That’s not how 230 works. 230 exists to allow websites to moderate their comment sections without being held liable as a publisher. Removing criminal content was already allowed, this just allows them to remove things like obscenities without being responsible for the content that isn’t removed. Worst case scenario, comment sections across the internet become more like 4chan
Yeah section 230 is better left alone than solely repealed, I am very fearful of politicians who start talking about regulation of speech on the internet, the consequences, whether intended or not, can be astronomical.
Agree, but our message has been destroyed off all mainstream platforms
Something needs to be done for sure, I just don’t have any idea what changes we can make through legislation, the best case scenario would just be the people waking up to this shit and turning away from these “platforms” that censor “wrong think”
The solution is simple. 230 should be conditioned upon the platform abiding by the restrictions of the First Amendment. We already have 230 years of case law on it. Everyone knows the rules.
Exactly. You act as a publisher, you are held liable like one. No more getting platform protections while acting as a publisher.
^This
I don’t agree. Worst case scenario, if 230 is repealed, comment sections across the internet would be filled with obscenities. Just like how it was back in the early 2000s
We need to remove the subjectivity and make it "not illegal"
Having clear rules that are regularly followed would be a good start. Like here, Trump supporters only. The issue with Facebook and Twitter is that they're constantly deleting accounts for no reason with no explanation, deleting content that they admit doesn't break their rules, but will leave up other content that clearly does - they're not simply adhering to a set of established community rules across the board.
Like reddit I'm sure they have a rule about "keeping communitie safe, civil, and true to their purpose." Enforcing vague rules is their forte, what you're proposing would change little to nothing overall.
You could host all your comments and tweets and posts from your own computer or phone, and you could subscribe and get other people's comments and tweets directly from them. You'd apply your own moderation and block people you don't like so you don't see things you are offended by. If you want to delegate that to subscribe to 'block lists' you can, but it doesn't stop anybody else from seeing it.
This is how social media should work, and how it did work in the 90s with USENET - decentralized, with no moderation other than what individuals chose personally for themselves (mostly).
The only actual problem doing social media today without 230 is the level of service. A centralized server is faster, more resilient, everybody sees the same thing at the same time, etc. This service aspect is what 230 was meant to protect, but ended up creating a propaganda machine instead.
Without 230, the software would have to change a lot basically from aggregation to caching (already protected by other sections), and a lot of work would be involved to make it happen, but you could absolutely make a Facebook, reddit, The Donald, Twitter, etc with the same moderation and focus except when they ban somebody you can personally override the ban for yourself or you can personally block people you don't like.
Canceling 230 immediately would cause lots of problems, but canceling it effective 4 years from now would basically fix social media entirely.
The main problem Usenet had is that it was still somewhat hierarchical. It depended on a system of administrators who cooperated to forward posts to each other and somewhat police each other. Ironically, as access to the internet became more publicly available, flaws in the design of Usenet became more apparent. Disruptive people were allowed access and often not checked, access to upstream posting was very cliquish and hard to access (downstream too). Administrators were starting to have to take authoritarian, censorious actions to control particular bad actors by faking cancel posts (previously considered poor practice).
In the end, this hierarchical system brought an end to usenet as it relied on these administrators and with the rise of the web, ISPs who mostly supported it and ensured that the data was local to users decided it was something they couldn't justify anymore and just stopped providing it to users. I still have Usenet access but I have to pay for it and that's very far from decentralized.
I do think the issues of Usenet are solvable with crypto and something along the lines of what you state in your first paragraph. Usenet 2.0 would have to be fully decentralized and peer-to-peer and rely on a web-of-trust type network. I have some ideas about how to put it together but it would face some fairly huge inertia. Though it's looking like the tech giants are about to stumble so might be worthwhile.
I'm sure that they have a brand new "230" waiting to replace the abused "230". Trump wouldn't waste tweet for no good reason.
One of the problems is that section 230 also applies to ISPs
Is it censorship to prevent a handful of ultra-wealthy corporations from grooming our children?
Social Media companies have twisted this "protection" in order to create platforms designed to boost their own preferred messaging at massive scales while suppressing the speech of average citizens. This is a new form of propagandizing and it must be considered exactly this. The modern publishers are hiding behind "scale" and "innovation" while masquerading as fair arbiters.
This is a system of cartels engaged in monopolistic public thought control.
It would be infeasible to allow these companies to continue to operate with two Terms of Services, one public and one private. Social Media companies must be held accountable for their publishing choices. While there can be some liberal interpretations of what they can and cannot control from the public there is no reason to allow them to manipulate user behavior patterns without sharp clarity on exactly what they intend to do.
Social Media companies are operating on a system built around a fraudulent idea: that users can connect and share media with each other. This is not how these systems are built.
Facebook and Twitter should be forced to open source and open their platforms to 3rd party developers, and allow everyone to see exactly what their "algorithms" are doing to their participation. These "American" corporations should face severe consequences for any and all collusion with foreign state actors.
Yes exactly! I like they way you describe it Pede
You are right.social media played along the grey areas of the law.
You are being generous. I believe that their executive teams and much of their operational staff are overtly seditious and covertly treasonous.
no worries! :)
Well EFF would probably say they are standing up for freedom of website owners to act as they see fit in managing their own property.
The problem comes when people start conferring rights to corporations.
All those positions and not a single one does something productive (ie wealth parasites). Probably 50% of our economy is filled with shit like this. These people have no idea whats coming down the pike.