[ch4s3]

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act makes no designation or distinction of “platforms”. You have deeply misunderstood the law.

What it does is to make clear that people or organizations who run internet sites that allow 3rd party submissions will not for the purpose of the law be considered the “speaker” of the content in those submissions. It also states that this hold even if they moderate including editing the content to conform to internal standards.

The law specifically allows censorship, algorithms, banning, and editing or anything users submit. The whole purpose is to clarify that content hosts are allowed to do this without being held liable for the content of the speech they are moderating.

[ethbr0]

Parent and link speak to should, not must. I'd assume that they start from a position that current laws are unsatisfactory.

[ch4s3]

The parent seemed to imply that there should be no permissible moderation at all, which strikes me as undesirable. Also the use of “provider” is common to factually incorrect descriptions of the law.

I would also add that no one prevents the original poster, or anyone else from using other services. I mean, here we are on a narrow social media site discussing the topic.

[raxxorrax]

I think moderation has become far too strict on the net and I have seen countless examples of censorship due to bipartisanship. I don't think all people want that. If people prefer it that way, there need to be separate spaces.

But I believe this is at the core of the issue when people complain about moderation. I think it is very true, even sites like Wikipedia are negatively affected on political topics while paid external editors are free to roam to push up articles about themselves or their companies. This is the worst kind of moderation I can imagine.

If we talk about moderation against spammers and scammers, a vast majority would agree on the other hand. But these are two separate issues in my opinion.

> I would also add that no one prevents the original poster, or anyone else from using other services.

I think there is concerted effort to purge alternatives in the current market situation and I think this nothing else than an excuse to justify certain content moderation. I think platforms have this freedom, but there are also consequences to that.

[ethbr0]

Parent said that presentation of originally-submitted content should be 1:1 and neutrally ranked (e.g. by timestamp).

That seems a fairly modest proposal.

[ch4s3]

It's a great proposal for a product roadmap, or building a competitor but an awful proposal for legislation. Why should the government dabble in deciding how social media builds its product? You'll just crate a mat that entrenches FB and the like.

I think people VASTLY overestimate the influence of things like the FB feed on the real world. The best evidence they ever seem to have for any claimed effect is the number of people FB say saw/interacted with a post. They have a long history of inflating those numbers, yet the critics are all too happy to use them. The activity on social media that seems to actually result in real world outcomes seems to generally be the boring work of community building.

Also, how do you deal with spam or noisy posters in a "1:1 and neutrally ranked (e.g. by timestamp)" feed?

[uselesscynicism]

Who said anything about Section 230? The GP was describing what he thought the law should be, not what it is.