[rhizome]

>Basically the social media company argument is... we think people are too dumb to figure out what is "real" or not so we are going to censor

Why can't "we don't want this trash on our site" be the reason? It's "funny" how those who want to propagate banned material always cast themselves as some repressed group subject to the tyranny of government power.

It can still be posted on Gab or Parler, right?

[hiram112]

> Why can't "we don't want this trash on our site" be the reason?

That's a perfectly fine stance, and it has worked well for traditional publishers like the NY Times and Washington Post for decades. They control all their content, and publish exactly the narrative they want. OTOH, if NY Times publishes an OP Ed that slanders and doxes me, causes me to lose my job, etc. then I have the legal right to sue them. See for example the Covington Kid[1].

Facebook and Google want to have their cake and eat it too. They want free rein to pretend like they're just aggregating content, but this election shows that they are definitely using both AI and humans to control what's published. So why should they enjoy all the rights of both a "tech platform" and also a traditional publisher, with none of the responsibilities and liabilities?

Section 230 was crafted explicitly for tech. It can be modified or removed, too.

[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=covington+kid+lawsuit

[joshuamorton]

Well no, the entire point of 230 was to allow content aggregators to actively moderate content.

As I see it, there are three options:

1. "platforms" are not allowed to moderate content (pre-section 230) without getting liable.

2. What we have now (sites can moderate as they see fit)

3. Some external board adjudicates on what it is acceptable to moderate

Of these, 3 seems by far the worst, and 2 seems better than 1 on empirical grounds.

> OTOH, if NY Times publishes an OP Ed that slanders and doxes me, causes me to lose my job, etc. then I have the legal right to sue them.

You also have the legal right to sue Google if they publish content that slanders you. You can even sue them for doxxing you. You wouldn't win either one. Nor would you win if you sued the NYT for doxxing you, or if an NYT article caused you to lose your job. Keep in mind that "the covington kid" didn't actually win any lawsuits, he sued a bunch of people for ridiculous amounts and settled out of court for, likely, a relatively trivial sum. It might have paid for his college, and that was mostly "make it go away" money. He's the free speech equivalent of a patent troll.

[srtjstjsj]

> 1. "platforms" are not allowed to moderate content (pre-section 230) without getting liable.

Pre 230, platforms were liable regardless of whether they moderated.

[joshuamorton]

That's incorrect. A platform that choose not to moderate anything was not liable for anything.

[rhizome]

Neither the NYT nor WaPo publish UGC, which is a nuance (the nuance, perhaps) that necessitates a middle ground and a recognition that the dish in play is not cake at all.

I didn't like 230 at the time, and frankly we wouldn't be having so many (IF ANY) Facebook headaches over the past 10 years if it had never been born. FB et al didn't want to choose between editorial and common carrier status and the government acceeded to that whine. 230 is what we got, and now we find that 230-protected companies want to exercise editorial control. I don't know what the perfect solution is, but reversing to the common carrier distinction ain't gonna be it.

[free_rms]

Is it 'trash' to be upset that Hunter Biden made 600k/yr from a no-show job that looks super crooked?

I understand that it's politically not helpful at this particular moment, and that the Trump kids are worse, but none of that makes it false, and it doesn't make me 'trash' for not liking it.

[rhizome]

>Is it 'trash' to be upset that Hunter Biden made 600k/yr from a no-show job that looks super crooked?

Yes, and it outs you as a blinkered rube. To be upset about Hunter Biden is 110% turnip truck.

It doesn't look super-crooked unless you take the word of certain interest-conflicted sources, because sinecures happen all the time, every day, for centuries, and $600K isn't that much for something like that in this day and age. It's simply not a big deal, and thus trash.

And yeah: now do Jared.

[HelloMcFly]

> Is it 'trash' to be upset that Hunter Biden made 600k/yr from a no-show job that looks super crooked?

No, because that's clearly verifiable facts summarized by an opinion. Now ask "Is it trash to acknowledge that Hunter Biden had his dad use his influence to replace a straight-laced Ukrainian prosecutor with a corrupt stooge so Hunter could enrich himself?"

That's trash. Or:

"Is it trash to point out how Soros-funded Democrats are involved in a global pedophilia conspiracy that American conservatives are secretly working to take down?"

That's also trash.

[free_rms]

It gets into the realm of speculation with partial facts, but you can make a pretty good case that Biden was involved with replacing one corrupt stooge with another one, who then just happened to drop all investigations into Hunter Biden's shady employer. Matt Taibbi has done some good reporting on this lately.

You could cast doubt on Taibbi or an any narrative that fills in the blanks in some places, but compare to the fevered Russia-conspiracy talk that got mainstream credibility, Rachel Maddow features, WaPo editorial references, etc for years. Is one so much worse than the other? Or is it just a matter of which side it favors in the short-term?

[HelloMcFly]

I do not cast doubt on Taibbi. I think the work he is doing is great, and should have been where the effort was in the first place. But so much of that particular topic is just circumstantial chum in the water that either few people actually investigated, or those that did could find little real supporting evidence.

But let me use Taibbi's own words here: “If something comes in and we don’t know the exact providence of it, that doesn’t mean we can’t publish it. All we have to do is establish that it’s true, and a lot of important stories have been broken that way.”

Ironically, Taibbi seems to say this as a criticism for Twitter reacting to the NYPost story. Except the NYPost did no work to establish it was true and even hired a Hannity employee to publish it since their own journalists wouldn't do it. That to me is the problem.

Twitter and Facebook, through action or inaction, now impact our democracy. Their action or inaction gives them responsibility whether asked for or not, conferred or not. I think this creates a need to act responsibly. I don't know how this should best be done, but I'm categorically against a complete "hands-off" given the expertise we've seen at creating and spreading manipulated content.

[free_rms]

I'll just say, if you're gonna put your thumb on the scale, you need to not fuck it up.

They streisand-effected the whole story, and made themselves look bad and unfair in the process -- how many unsourced claims about Russian interference have they let stand? This was a fiasco all around.

Cheers and solidarity.

[srtjstjsj]

The Burisma investigation was dropped by the shady prosecutor before the prosecutor was replaced. The opposition to the previous prosecutor was multi-national