[the88doctor]

The claim that EARN IT would make "prosecution of child sexual abuse crimes more difficult" is inaccurate.

The bill only creates a voluntary set of guidelines for companies, not a mandatory set of guidelines.

Companies would be motivated to adopt the voluntary guidelines in order to avoid a heap of legal liability, but this would only be a heap of liability by tech company standards and not by the standards of any other industry not protected by Section 230.

In other words, the fourth amendment argument doesn't really hold water. The data collection practices would still only be private actions, not state actions.

I'm not advocating for EARN IT. I still think the bill is terrible because it disincentivizes end-to-end encryption (or more specifically, it incentivizes bypassing it with client-side scanning). But the specific argument that it would make prosecuting child abuse more difficult doesn't hold water.

[Dalewyn]

>Companies would be motivated to adopt the voluntary guidelines in order to avoid a heap of legal liability, but this would only be a heap of liability by tech company standards and not by the standards of any other industry not protected by Section 230.

I think this really is the crux of the issue.

Whatever our various opinions, we can all seemingly agree that Section 230 gives internet publishers far too much cake that they also eat. And because the cake keeps being given out and eaten with no damns given to more finer attempts at reconciliation, we're moving on to responding with sledgehammers like this one.