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I've sent a message to my district representative, encouraging a change to the law: > In Green v. AOL (2003), the court established: > There is no real dispute that Green's fundamental tort claim is that AOL was negligent in promulgating harmful content and in failing to address certain harmful content on its network. Green thus attempts to hold AOL liable for decisions relating to the monitoring, screening, and deletion of content from its network — actions quintessentially related to a publisher's role. Section 230 "specifically proscribes liability" in such circumstances. Zeran, 129 F.3d at 332-33. > There is immediately a question why this "quintessential relation" only works in one direction, i.e. why even when "monitoring, screening, and [deleting content]", a provider should not be considered a publisher, and thus ineligible for immunity under Section 230. The courts may not agree with that argument, but I would say that it highlights a serious deficiency, and the law needs to be changed in a similar manner as Josh Hawley's bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/191... > In fact I would argue that his bill does not go far enough. Getting an FTC rubber-stamp certifying "no political bias" seems like a vague and squishy system that will be easy to game. Perhaps the law should state that any provider above a certain size which takes action to "monitor, screen, or delete content" that is not illegal, and does not respond to an appropriate claim by reversing this decision, should forfeit immunity under Section 230. This would be very controversial, because it effectively bans e.g. YouTube from having their own "code of conduct" independent of US law. But I think that is exactly what needs to happen - YouTube is far too big for a "community standard" to make sense, and any attempt to do this will be abused for censorship. These companies should be forced to engage with all of us in the making of laws about free speech, they should not effectively be able to declare what free speech is by fiat. |