[briandear]

I’m not sure how they aren’t violating 230 when they clearly have gotten into the news/editorial business.

When a counterpoint to an argument is deemed “offensive,” then they’ve gone too far.

They have taken over the public square and sent out the Mutawa to enforce their idea of truth and virtue while hiding behind 230.

Violent content, threatening content, sure, moderate it. But factually inaccurate content? Or content that expresses an opinion that isn’t violent or threatening? That’s going too far. They even censor academic papers if those papers don’t conform to whatever they deem as true.

[commandlinefan]

> how they aren’t violating 230

So... I'm with you ideologically: I don't think anybody should be force-censoring anything (allow users to suppress content they themselves don't want to see, but don't suppress it for everybody). However, CDA section 230 says exactly the opposite of what I think you think it says:

"(c)Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material

(1)Treatment of publisher or speaker

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

(2)Civil liability

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—

(A)any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or

(B)any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1)."

In other words, section 230 (paragraph c) explicitly protects Twitter in this case.

[lwf]

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

> I regret to inform you that you are wrong. I know that you've likely heard this from someone else -- perhaps even someone respected -- but it's just not true. The law says no such thing. Again, I encourage you to read it. The law does distinguish between "interactive computer services" and "information content providers," but that is not, as some imply, a fancy legalistic ways of saying "platform" or "publisher." There is no "certification" or "decision" that a website needs to make to get 230 protections. It protects all websites and all users of websites when there is content posted on the sites by someone else.

also:

> First off, there is no "neutrality" requirement at all in Section 230. Seriously. Read it. If anything, it says the opposite. It says that sites can moderate as they see fit and face no liability. This myth is out there and persists because some politicians keep repeating it, but it's wrong and the opposite of truth. Indeed, any requirement of neutrality would likely raise significant 1st Amendment questions, as it would be involving the law in editorial decision making.

[function_seven]

Section 230 was written to allow platforms to do just this.

As an example, say I run a forum dedicated to flowers. Topics include Care & Feeding, Arranging, and Drying & Pressing.

As a moderator, I can choose to block all posts that deal with geraniums, because I hate the smell of those. If I then miss a post titled, "Hey, who's bringing the flowers to the cocaine and machine gun party next week?", I am not suddenly liable for that.

I moderate in good faith, but my FlowerForum has gotten really popular recently, and I am starting to miss some posts. Users didn't report it to me, I wasn't on my radar. My previous activity banning users that like geraniums will not cause me to become the "publisher" of all forum content.