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by dahart 2216 days ago
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?
1 comments
guscost 2216 days ago
> 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.

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dahart 2216 days ago
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?

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guscost 2216 days ago
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).
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dahart 2216 days ago
Isn’t that true with or without 230? What does rescinding 230 fix? Again, they didn’t claim exemption because of 230, so what does section 230 have to do with anything here?
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