[gonehome]

This is unrelated to 230.

230 is specifically about giving protection to sites so they can moderate their content without being legally responsible for every thing users post.

It’s an update to older law that was written pre-internet for older style publishers (where they had more editorial control over what was published because the content wasn’t user generated).

It doesn’t have to do with recommendation algorithms.

Killing 230 would force YouTube to have zero content moderation beyond removing illegal content. It would be a bad outcome (which is why 230 was created).

[wahern]

> It’s an update to older law that was written pre-internet for older style publishers

Specifically, common law defamation. The two cases that the authors of Section 230 principally had in mind were Cubby v. CompuServe[1] and Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy[2].

> It doesn’t have to do with recommendation algorithms.

It theoretically could. Section 230 basically immunizes websites from defamation suits. The question in the above two cases was the degree of editorial control that CompuServe and Prodigy exercised. If you exercise insufficient editorial control, then you're not liable for defamatory statements made by users of your platform; you're just a passive entity, no more liable for libel than the telephone company is for slander. If you exercise sufficient editorial control, then you're directly liable for any defamatory statements as if you made them yourself in the first instance, much like a newspaper is liable.

There's no hard-and-fast rule for what constitutes sufficient editorial control, especially as it regards online interactive services. Section 230 stopped the evolution of the caselaw in its tracks. If the bar is relatively low, then some automated recommendation systems conceivably could trigger liability, presumably based on how sophisticated they are. I mean, that is the impetus for removing Section 230 protections afterall--recommendation algorithms that seemingly popularize "fake news", some of which is defamatory in nature. The selection of which user posts to popularize, and the manner in which they're presented, could constitute editorial control the same way a newspaper selects and frames statements taken or revealed by journalists. In fact, it might be worse for some websites--journalists and editors can interject weasel wording[3] to avoid liability, but algorithmic systems aren't that smart. And because defamation is a common law claim, the rules are likely to vary state by state.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....

[3] Or another way to put it: reasonable qualifiers and narrative structure that make it clear the publisher isn't affirming the truth of the matter asserted.

[gonehome]

Thanks for the clarification, that makes sense to me.

[alacombe]

> Killing 230 would force YouTube to have zero content moderation beyond removing illegal content. It would be a bad outcome (which is why 230 was created).

That actually sounds much better than arbitrary moderation.

[azinman2]

I think you’re underestimating how horrible the internet can be. Just go read some 4chan to see what no filter looks like.

[alacombe]

I don't see blood running down the street because of a few teenagers comments. The pre-moderated internet has never been a blood bath.

[azinman2]

I think you don't understand the role of 4chan and right-wing fringe: http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/arti...

The pre-moderated Internet was a small group of enthusiasts, and even then there was moderation (e.g. Prodigy). You cannot compare now versus 80s/early 90s to suggest in good faith that an Internet that's barely even 0.1% of what it is now would illuminate what it's like without 230.

[alacombe]

There has always been shady part of the Internet sub-culture. Nothing is new, as you so infer. People were just more open-minded. Nobody's forcing you to read 4chan.

If people hold a conspiracy theory gathering in a bar without causing disturbance, should the patron be judged for the behaviour of his guests ? If you do believe so, I really do not want to live in your world.

An argument could be made for allowing patron to deny service to the guests if he so desire, in which case, guests shall be discriminated for any particular reason, and the patron shall not have to justify himself for such or such decision. Unfortunately, the law says that "some class" of citizens are protected from discrimination (congratulations if they belong to multiple class!) while a lower classes of citizen have to be discriminated against (talk about equality !). I do not agree with this principle. Either any or no discrimination is acceptable, no in-between.

[saurik]

FWIW, I appreciate the problem of 4chan (and I have seen in person the pain of moot's face as he tries to grapple with what he accidentally managed to build)... but you can't exactly stop the existence of opt-in full-on 4chan: we don't have, and I will argue really wouldn't want, the technology required to do that, and it isn't like "with Section 230, 4chan became illegal". However, to the extent to which 4chan still works at all without Section 230, it doesn't pop up everywhere any more than it did before the Internet existed: the "dark corners" of the Internet are just as corner-y without Section 230 because most people avoid darkness when it is opt-in.

I frankly think the core problem in a lot of these discussions is "a lack of vision" with respect to what all the changes would be to get a website compatible with a complete lack of moderation. Like, look at comments on videos: I think in practice almost no videos would have comments (and I think this is great, as YouTube comments are well known to be extremely low quality, despite supposedly having moderation: we finally got to the point on the Internet where we realized that even comments on news sites are generally harmful, and have given people a weird expectation of a "right to be heard" as opposed to merely "a right to free speech").

The assumption--which makes no sense to me--is always "without moderation everything you see would be a cesspool", when I will argue that it should be obvious that that won't happen, because you will have to rethink how comments work entirely if they are unmoderated, and I think the result of this is that comments will just get turned off. When you follow some random channel, you will see videos from that channel and videos shared by that channel (the content of both of which the people who make that channel will be liable for, but not YouTube, as they exercised editorial control but YouTube did not) and that's it: you won't see videos from other channels (as YouTube won't take that liability unless they carefully hand-curate their selections, which maybe some website would but Google would never bother with ;P) and you won't see comments on any videos unless someone agreed to pre-moderate them (and accept liability for them).

Again: you won't see YouTube showing you random videos unmoderated, as that isn't a useful platform (ignore "horrible" for a moment: this would be 99% spam... even 4chan doesn't work once you truly reject Section 230; and again: maybe that isn't a bad thing ;P), and you won't see unmoderated horrible comments for the same reason: the feature set of the Internet changes once you change this law; and maybe you really really like those features and refuse to give them up... but trying to make arguments about what the content on the Internet would look like without first contemplating how the feature set changes is a nonsensical prediction and I think does a disservice to these discussions and forms a kind of strawman for the position against Section 230.

[gonehome]

It sounds like two general outcomes exist without 230.

1. No moderation and continuing to allow user created content.

2. Removal of all user created content (with some narrow exceptions like YouTube video channels).

I don’t think either of these is a better outcome.

Along the way we’d lose sites like HN and any others that do the best they can to moderate a varied user base.