[guscost]

Congress should revoke immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, for any online community the size of YouTube that imposes their own "code of conduct" independent of US law. This is a very controversial idea but anything else will lead to censorship, as we're seeing again and again.

[xenadu02]

You're arguing for unbounded trolls, spam, and the complete destruction of all online communities.

I don't understand what worldview leads to the conclusion that any moderation of a private platform by a private entity is equivalent to government censorship.

[guscost]

Maybe we need to have a discussion about what kinds of trolling and spam should be legal. And if you have a problem with that stuff, why doesn’t the current state of YouTube comments bother you just as much as this idea?

> I don't understand what worldview leads to the conclusion that any moderation of a private platform by a private entity is equivalent to government censorship.

I didn’t say “government censorship”.

[marcinzm]

I prefer the current state to having the government literally kick down my door for "trolling" someone online.

[guscost]

Swatting, doxing, and harassment are all forms of trolling. It can have lethal consequences, and these are already variously illegal for good reasons.

[akersten]

You are more comfortable with the government regulating what kind of trolling is legal (an actual, on its face violation of the 1st Amendment), than you are with YouTube removing a gore video for violating their community guidelines?

This is the most bizarre take on libertarian free speech absolutism that I've heard all week.

[guscost]

Hey, I said it was controversial.

[apostacy]

> You're arguing for unbounded trolls, spam, and the complete destruction of all online communities.

Nonsense. The Internet in general, and YouTube in particular did quite well for themselves for most of their existence, without any significant moderation.

You would have to pretty new to the internet to think that it would all collapse without heavy handed censorship.

I remember very clearly that up until about 2015 there was almost no moderation outside of spam, copyright infringement, or blatantly illegal stuff.

It would probably benefit these online communities to stop moderating and censoring stuff so much.

YouTube clearly is trying to gentrify their platform, and turn it into a sanitized short-form Netflix.

They pay media companies like MSNBC and Fox News to post clips of their shows, and heavily promote them.

They've driven many of the best content creators off of their platform. I used to really enjoy YouTube, but my favorite channels are constantly having to worry about their videos being deleted. They've been removing their old videos for fear of getting too many strikes, and moving to other, less good platforms.

> I don't understand what worldview leads to the conclusion that any moderation of a private platform by a private entity is equivalent to government censorship.

Well, when a platform becomes ubiquitous and powerful enough that only government can restrain it, then the question of people's general welfare comes up.

America has had these discussions before. We used to let oil companies, coal companies, rail roads, and phone companies become aggressive and destructive monopolies.

I think that at this point, calling YouTube "private" is not really correct. Not just do they heavily benefit from many government protections, but they are so big that they are not bound to market forces, and are essentially unaccountable to the public.

Corporations have no right to exist. And corporations that do not follow the rules certainly should not enjoy Section 230 protections. I don't think it is too much to ask that we be allowed to sue them if they don't follow the law.

[krapp]

A code of conduct doesn't have the force of law to begin with, in what way is Youtube having one independent of US law?

And if you're suggesting every instance of moderation on Youtube's platform should be a civil or criminal matter, and that a court or some other agent of the state should decide on each matter rather than Google, how would that not still be censorship?

[downerending]

The point isn't that moderation should be a crime or tort. The point is that exercising editorial control for political reasons should exclude them from 230 protections. That is, they'd be considered a publication rather than an open forum.

[guscost]

It would be censorship only with the consent of the governed, as it should be.

Also folks, keep in mind that I am absolutely not saying that the government should regulate every video on YouTube, I am only saying that YouTube should lose its special privileges if it wants to play that game itself. It is a critically-important distinction that I feel is being missed here.

[krapp]

And if the government decides Youtube has to censor anti CCP comments, you'd be fine with that?

[guscost]

No, I would vote those morons out of office. As it stands I don't have nearly enough money to vote the Alphabet CEO out of office.

[krapp]

You probably don't have enough money to vote a government out of office, either.

[guscost]

Unfortunately I don't, but I hope you understand the meaning behind this facetiousness.

[akersten]

So you're ok with porn on YouTube? What about ISIS beheadings and recruitment? Just to be clear, that is what you are proposing.

[guscost]

It is exactly what I’m proposing, yes. These companies should be forced to participate in the making of laws about free speech, they should not effectively be able to decide what free speech is by fiat.

[gonehome]

This is both bad policy and politically untenable.

It also adds noise to the discussion which detracts from the very real bad behavior that’s happening here.

[guscost]

I would probably call your position on this issue "noise", too, but that's unfair.

[dahart]

You know that porn and beheadings are already explicitly not protected speech in the US and elsewhere?

You know that comment moderation on a privately owned website is both legal and protected by law, and in no way affects your free speech protections?

[guscost]

> You know that porn and beheadings are already explicitly not protected speech in the US and elsewhere?

OK cool, that resolves the parent's objection. I did not know that.

> You know that comment moderation on a privately owned website is both legal and protected by law, and in no way affects your free speech protections?

Read up on the CDA and the special privileges granted by Section 230. I'm not at all suggesting that online moderation should be made illegal.

[dahart]

Okay, I’ve now read the full code of section 230. It doesn’t seem to be impeding free speech. It specifically lists more or less the set of things that are currently not protected by US freedom of speech law, and makes ISPs not liable for attempting to automate moderation of those things. What - exactly - is the problem with section 230? What do you think it’s doing wrong, and which subsection is problematic? The title of the section says it relates only to “offensive material”, which is already not protected speech. You might, in turn, want to read up on what speech is actually protected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Limitations

> I’m not at all suggesting that online moderation should be made illegal.

Maybe I misunderstood. What are you suggesting then? What is the problem, and how is tearing down section 230 going to solve that problem? You said you wanted porn and beheadings to be allowed, and made a claim above that moderation is censorship. That did sound to me like you’re against moderation, so help me understand what you meant.

BTW, what is making you think that section 230 has anything to do with YouTube's comment deletion here? It sounds like they claimed it was a mistake. Whether true or not, it doesn't sound like section 230 is being used as a defense. So is this discussion about section 230 a red herring?

[guscost]

The problem is that YouTube can do this kind of thing on purpose, with no consequences, whenever they want to. We have no legal recourse according to precedent, our only option is to stir up a PR backlash big enough that they "notice the error" (which in fairness is probably what happened here).

[pchristensen]

I agree that any recommendation algorithm should be considered a publisher. But won't revoking the immunity these publishers to editorialize (or censor, if you prefer) even more in order to protect themselves from liability?

[guscost]

I don't think so, because immunity would not be revoked across-the-board, but rather it would be conditional on their censorship policies. I think these companies would rather deal with the consequences of unsavory-but-legal content, than hire an army of moderators and still get sued every other day.

[chimeracoder]

> Congress should revoke immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, for any online community the size of YouTube that imposes their own "code of conduct" independent of US law.

The EFF is one of the strongest champions of freedom of speech online, and they disagree with you. https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230

[downerending]

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, the key item on that page is a link "makes editorial judgments" to another page and is 404. Ha.

[thejynxed]

It's 404ing because the key cert for the page has expired.

[downerending]

That's awesome. :-)

[guscost]

Yes, and they could be right, but this is a very complicated issue, and the size of the platform matters a lot. In this case Section 230 effectively enables a monopoly on "mainstream" video content, where the monopolist in question has been given a blank check to control speech on their platform. That's a big problem too.

[tboyd47]

The EFF is a shill for Google and it's no surprise they disagree on this.

[tboyd47]

Congress should revoke immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

FTFY.

[shadowgovt]

Clearly, we should trade out corporate censorship for government censorship.

Wait.

[spamizbad]

Sounds like a great way to lay the legal foundation for declaring FAANG a government-sponsored monopoly like AT&T prior to United States v. AT&T.

[guscost]

YouTube is not one of these already? Regardless of whether you agree with net neutrality, it has the effect of tilting the market for net traffic in favor of video streaming services.