[tboyd47]

There were internet companies before the CDA came along. I don't consider actively moderated, special interest forums like this one to be dependent on the CDA for survival. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and any company with a business model that precludes active content moderation would be threatened. Those are exactly the companies that everyone complains about.

[qtplatypus]

Before the CDA came around there was real fear that Internet forums getting sued for libel as a publisher. This was before the internet was a mainstream thing. Any comment on HN could be libel and ycombinator would risk being sued over it.

[tboyd47]

Right, but we really don't know if that fear was justified or not. The CDA came very early on and created a legal shield around these companies that prevented these problems from reaching the court system. We don't know how courts would have dealt with forums like HN, nor do we know how forum moderators would have operated in that legal environment.

There's something slightly disturbing about the idea that a group of businesses who feel threatened by the public can rely on Congressional diktat to protect them from the law.

Speaking in 2020, I think we can say that giving all internet companies blanket immunity to lawsuits from the public was clearly not a good decision. Everything people complain about today on the internet, from censorship, surveillance, addictive design, and centralized control, is being implemented by companies that would never exist without the CDA.

With all the bitching and moaning people do about large internet companies, it's not a fair assumption that the internet we have now is the only internet possible or even the best internet possible. Sure, HN may not exist without the CDA. But we don't know that for sure, and it's shortsighted to limit our thinking to just one website or subculture of society.

[qtplatypus]

Given both Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc. and Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. we know that courts would have held moderated environments as publishers.

[tboyd47]

Do you think moderators could have adapted to the situation, by pre-filtering content instead of after the fact?

Also, weren't those cases about certain types of content (defamatory or libelous claims)? Don't you think AI technology could be developed to help moderators detect that type of content?

You haven't addressed my most important point: isn't there something wrong with the expectation that businesses feeling threatened by the public they serve can run to Congress for protection?

[qtplatypus]

I don't think pre-filtering vs post filtering effects the decision. Basically the pre-CDA law was "If you apply any form of content based moderation then you are a publisher and therefor you can be sued for the libel people have posted". I was active in the anti-spam community at this point in time and one of the large concerns at that time was to build spam detection methods that where not content based in order to avoid the danger of losing the common-carrier status.

You said "Also, weren't those cases about certain types of content (defamatory or libelous claims)? Don't you think AI technology could be developed to help moderators detect that type of content?"

I do not think that you could build AI technology that would be able to do that. In US law (IANAL this is not legal advice) one of the things that separate libel from non libel is the truth of the statement. We are no where near the sophistication of AI to be able to determine the truth of statements. For example how would an AI be able to permit "Jeffrey Epstein is a child molester" but block the same statement made about another person?

Then you said "isn't there something wrong with the expectation that businesses feeling threatened by the public they serve can run to Congress for protection?"

I am of the view that one of the roles of a government is to provide a way when the rights and privileges of different groups come into conflict to resolve those conflicts. In a democratic republic the political process is entirely the correct place for businesses and other stakeholders to establish that balance.

I think that it is the correct balance that the actual author of the content should be the one who is held responsible for the content that they produce.