[adinisom]

There's some logic to wanting to assign responsibility for other's actions upon those who enable it. Like you say, to incentivize intermediates to police their users and those they do business with.

But the problem with deputizing intermediates is that it's too effective. It creates incentives to over-police and we have less rights against corporate policing than we do government policing. We would not have the internet we have today without the user generated content and moderation that section 230 enabled.

[ocdtrekkie]

Like, as someone who grew up in the formative years of the Internet, I get it, but also, what we have is incredibly bad and it's very possible we'd be better off without it. The tech crowd does not want to admit that every single effing website that lets you post images has CSAM. Every one! The tech crowd doesn't want to admit an entire generation of our kids are screwed beyond belief by social networking. The tech crowd doesn't want to admit that Donald effing Trump got elected because our population is incredibly easy to manipulate.

Our society is very, very screwed up right now and it's very likely the principle cause is that we gave Google and Facebook complete blanket immunity, and that was an incredibly moronic thing to do.

If something needs Section 230 to exist, it shouldn't exist. Full stop.

[adinisom]

Appreciate you sharing that. Agree with the overall concern with children using tech and I'd start with banning smartphones in school classrooms. Two observations:

Why stop with image boards? After eliminating all photo uploads, awful people still produced and shared illegal content. So then we eliminated unlicensed camera use. 'Course the real problem still happened.

Hacker News is made possible by Section 230... should it not exist?

[ocdtrekkie]

> Hacker News is made possible by Section 230

This is false. Basically everyone that's argued this has been funded by tech companies. The reality is Section 230 is at best, an inconvenience for good actors, while being an incredible gift to bad actors. It lets a good actor avoid a possible lawsuit. (And law requires intent, Section 230 does not meaningfully protect someone who didn't intend to enable bad actors.) It guarantees a bad actor can profit off crime with impunity.

And I think the financial incentives in participating the Internet absolutely make it worth the risk for a well-run business, including one with UGC, to make reasonable risk decisions about their liability. (HN, selling no ads, nor hosting image or video files, probably has extremely minimal risk.) The marketing about the importance of 230 is crucially about protecting tech companies' immunity and ultimately, their bottom line, but it doesn't mean everything stops existing overnight.

But again, my position remains consistent: If it can't survive without Section 230, it shouldn't.

[adinisom]

In Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy, Prodigy ran a message board and would have escaped liability for defamation by a third-party save one problem: they exercised editorial control by moderating content.

Hacker News faces the same risk.

Respectfully I prefer a world where Hacker News exists.

[ocdtrekkie]

I'm well aware of the canon of using a single mishandled case from 1995 to justify allowing endless abuse of every part of society by tech companies.

If HN is worth all of the murdered immigrants to you, that's your value system to live with. shrug