It's hard not to see this as an authoritarian backlash to "speaking truth to power" when the President is arguing Twitter should lose 230 because they fact checked his tweet. Fact checking a President's tweet translates quite naturally to speaking truth to power.

It is not because they fact checked his tweet. This was in the works for quite some time before the fact checking.

This was a few days before: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/23/21268433/president-trump-...

And this was from last year: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/15/18626785/white-house-trum...

It's also editorializing Twitter...ergo Twitter is no longer a neutral platform and should be subject to all the same liabilities that Fox, CNN, etc are including libel and defamation.

What? Not only does the legal concept of a "neutral platform" not exist, the examples you cite (Fox, CNN) are certainly not "neutral platforms." They aren't responsible for what their commenters post on their sites either (and it is certainly... eye-opening to check out their comment sections sometimes).

Twitter already does have libel liabilities, just like Fox and CNN, if they were to themselves post something libelous - just like if Fox were to produce a segment themselves that is libelous.

No they don't. Twitter cannot be sued for something someone tweets that is false or defamatory about someone else. That individual tweeter is responsible. Unlike Fox or CNN who are responsible for what their reporters and commentators say. If Twitter ventures against the spirit of 230 protection, which was designed to protect neutral platforms like a utility, then they deserve to lose it. It's not about who produces a segment, Twitter is clearly the publisher and distributor. 230 was designed to protect free speech not to allow unlimited corporate intervention into speech.

Here's section 230, it's very short: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 Please can you explain how this was "designed to protect neutral platforms like a utility", given that the text contains none of the words "neutral", "platform" or "utility"? It also doesn't contain "editorialise" or any variant that I can see.

Here's the whole bill it was attached to, it's very long: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_19...

Note the original TCA created the FCC. That entire bill was packed with legislation to regulate cable and phone companies as well as providers of internet services...ergo utility.

Section 230 was developed in response to a pair of lawsuits against Internet service providers in the early 1990s that had different interpretations of whether the service providers should be treated as publishers or distributors of content created by its users.

Note, it is my strong opinion that Twitter selectively fact checking and blocking tweets or shadowbanning particular users that do not violate any laws or TOS means they are venturing into the publisher role more and more.

Section 230 was clearly designed to preserve free speech not to encourage its destruction by homogeneous corporations.

If Twitter themselves posted a tweet defaming someone, they'd have the exact same liabilities as those reporters at CNN, who are employed by CNN to create content for CNN.

Twitter can't be sued for a libelous tweet that someone else posts. Just like Fox can't be sued for a libelous comment that someone else leaves on a story. Well, you can sue anyone for anything, the point is neither of these suits would be successful.

I mean, this is just a common sense way of things working. In fact, the liability following-through to whoever actually did the bad thing was the entire motivation behind why S230 was created.

> 230 protection, which was designed to protect neutral platforms like a utility,

The text of section 230 has none of the words "neutral platform" nor "utility," nor are they legal concepts that exist in this context.

Fox has been photoshopping a man with an assault rifle onto pictures of a peaceful protest for the last week.

What legal consequences have they faced, or are they going to face for these blatant lies?

In addition to the they other comments, we know from history that section 230 was written to encourage sites to moderate content.

The historical revisionism around platform neutrality and section 230 is all made up.

No of course they're not a neutral platform - I assume they ban spam and they have a terms of service and require adult content to be marked and all sorts of things. Isn't the point of 230 that they're allowed to moderate without taking on those liabilities because otherwise they obviously wouldn't exist?

Yes, that's the entire point of Section 230. Should those protections be removed, most of these sites would increase their moderation, and remove anything potentially libelous. A huge chilling effect on speech.

There is an ongoing effort to upend those protections and bifurcate the internet into locked-down, heavily-moderated walled-garden sites, and sites that have no moderation at all. The motivations behind this movement range from malice (wanting the internet to become an unproductive wasteland) to political revenge (their favorite user got banned from Twitter and they want to lash out). I suppose "misunderstanding" of what S230 actually does is another motivation, but at this point if someone is still making an argument against it from that perspective, they're not arguing in good faith.

The result of removing S230 protections is not "the internet becomes a wonderful place where all 'political opinions' can be expressed equally," the result is "all Internet sites become 4chan or Nickelodeon, pick one."

You’re free to make an argument that they should be liable, but they are not actually liable under the law as it exists today.

why should twitter be responsible for user content? Certainly libel and defamation already apply to any material that twitter themselves post.

These arguments are always full of motivated reasoning; they start with the desired goal (Twitter shouldn’t be allowed to block people I like, usually), then they try to work backwards from the law to that outcome. This produces some fairly hilarious misinterpretations of how Section 230 works, along with the occasional misreference to State Action by the better read.

Because they are supposedly active in moderating content (I am not talking about taking down illegal stuff here). Moderating content to fit their narrative arguably makes them a publisher with all the consequences.

I guess what they are saying (entities that are meddling with 230) is either be totally neutral with the exception of taking down illegal stuff and spam or face the outcome.

> Moderating content to fit their narrative arguably makes them a publisher with all the consequences.

The problem being that there is no proof that this happens. Despite all attempts to construct some kind of "one side gets moderated stronger than the other" narrative this stays a conspiracy theory.

The other problem is that moderating content doesn’t make them the publisher. That is literally the point of section 230, giving platforms the ability to moderate without becoming responsible for the content.

It's a double standard if Joe Sixpack can sign up for an account and claim the moon is hollow and made of cheese without it getting flagged

Maybe if Twitter decided all verified accounts will be subject to fact-checking?

That’s a prudential argument against twitter fact checking, but it’s not a legal argument.

I guess that’s the truth to power bit - Joe Sixpack isn’t powerful and nor are most verified accounts imo, the President is.

> they fact checked his tweet.

They're now "fact checking" obvious satire. That's not merely moderation, but applying a false context that changes the meaning of the tweet.

I dunno. If readers can see that it is obviously satire, then Twitter just looks silly and no harm has been done. If readers can't tell though, then Twitter is providing a useful service here.

If readers can't tell, then Twitter should label it "satire" not "manipulated content".

EDIT: just speculation, but by mislabeling the tweet, I wonder if Twitter could be exposing itself to a libel lawsuit.

No, they have not. Even without 230 this wouldn’t be libelous for a huge number of reasons. The bar for libel is not “someone is offended”, even if that someone is the president.

The contortions that people keep going through to find a way to make Twitter liable is both getting old, and frankly it’s embarrassing.

My point has nothing to do with being offended or with section 230. The point is: if Twitter is labeling something as "manipulated content" (implying an earnest attempt deceive) when the content is in fact satire, then Twitter is itself making misleading claims.

It's like when Snopes was "fact-checking" the Babylon Bee (a satirical news website). They initially labeled some of their articles as false, but then re-labeled it more appropriately as satire after receiving push-back.[1]

I'm not even saying Twitter should be sued here. But Twitter is now engaged in speech of their own, rather than just moderating a platform for other peoples' speech.

[1]https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/georgia-lawmaker-go-back-c...

You’re changing the subject. You argued that Twitter might be liable for libel. In order for that to be true, then the speech in question must be libelous.

So, even ignoring 230, is mislabeling a satirical argument as false libelous? It is without a single doubt not libelous.

First of all, defamation (the larger category that includes libel) usually requires a statement of fact, whereas something being satire vs. just plain wrong is a matter of opinion. It is very hard to sue over matters of opinion, by design. This is why saying “the president is stupid” or “the president is racist” aren’t libelous; those statements are opinions and not objective statements of fact.

Second, defamation either needs some form of harm, or it needs to be in a narrow category of statements that are defamation “per se”. The latter category is very narrow and not relevant here, so we can focus on the former. What, pray tell, harm did the president suffer?

Finally, the president is a public figure, and the bar for defamation against a public figure is very very high. The standard is “actual malice”, which requires that Twitter knew that they were lying and did it anyways. If Twitter genuinely believed that the video was not satire, even if you think that’s dumb, then they have a rock solid defense against defamation.

So no, this was not libel. Nowhere close.

> You’re changing the subject.

Um, no? I agree the subject of this conversation is whether Twitter is liable for libel.

> So no, this was not libel. Nowhere close.

OK, so that's a an answer to my question as to whether it exposes Twitter to libel. Thanks!

I’d rather the sites themselves decide than the US government decide. You can always go to a different site. But once we have the government intervening and saying “this is what is acceptable speech online, this is what isn’t”, that’s a whole nother level of censorship I’d rather avoid.

> this is what is acceptable speech online, this is what isn’t

But that isn't what they're saying. They're saying, "if you are deciding what is acceptable speech, you're now responsible for it." And for the record, I absolutely agree.

I only consider sewing-related posts acceptable on my sewing message board. If I moderate anything else, I'm suddenly responsible for any libel that gets posted while I'm asleep?

That position is absurd.

I think he meant that people posting instructions on how to see country flags or how to make a swastika or gay rainbow flag should not be moderated, of you do moderate then you are liable (for example if someone post instructions to sew a KKK hood and you refuse to remove that, but you remove other things, then you get sued for condoning hate speech)

The problem is that it’s very hard to write a law that both bans the moderation of political speech, and would allow the hypothetical sewing forum operator to ban non-sewing content.

How do you define political? How do you handle extreme political ideologies that advocate for violence too? Who has the power to decide which speech is moderation proof? How do you avoid abuse when politicians eventually control such a system? And how do you survive legal challenges to the fact that you’ve created a third type of extra protected speech?

Right? And even if there were some magical law that could distinguish between "off-topic" and "on-topic," that would still prevent me from running my little sewing site - because if I truly don't want the KKK hoods on there and I remove them, I'm suddenly still responsible for anything else that gets posted. So I'd either get no sleep because I'm constantly reviewing every post, have to hire a dedicated moderation team, or give in to the trolls entirely.

S230 is not just a "big tech" shield, it literally enables internet communities as we know them to exist.

That interpretation doesn't follow from GP's position of "if you are deciding what is acceptable speech, you're now responsible for it."

Removing off-topic posts is just as much "deciding what is acceptable speech" as is removing on-topic posts that happen to be posts I don't like. That is to say, the consideration of what is on-topic vs. off-topic is at its core a decision of what is acceptable.

If you'll look at the DOJ proposal, it's not requiring you to turn your message board into 4chan. You can moderate whatever you like, you just have to be clear in the TOS what content you are moderating.

That would have the opposite effect you’re hoping for.

If the bar for Twitter becoming responsible for every yahoo’s tweet is set that low, they will have a hair trigger on what it takes to get banned. Why risk it?

I guess the alternative is to ban all moderation and let every site turn into Gab, which sounds pretty awful to me.

I actually believe that and the fact that a "fact checking" button sparked this is evidence of that. It's not liberal or conservative - its government attempts to limit information and discussion. And it should be fought.

These sites remove doxxing and hate from many angles. Look at the subreddit communities reddit has banned - they're not all right wing - many are just bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...

Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, etc. all are right leaning individuals who have a massive following via these platforms.

Logan Paul was deplatformed and he's not right wing.

And both sides have a ton of people being trolls. Did you ever read r/theDonald or r/Conservative or comments sections on Sargon of Aakaad?

Fox News' Tucker Carlson segments are routinely recommended by the youtube algorithm to me despite me having no interest in him and rarely or never clicking on them.

Does anyone actually believe this is an authoritarian attempt to squash speech that is "speaking truth to power"?

Yes - this speaks to my lived experience and my understood experience of the trend in authoritarian countries.

> This is the result of years of work to remove any dissenting voice from the generally Left-leaning sites of the Internet

Not a single one of the big sites is left-leaning, they are centrist (at most) and behave accordingly. The problem is that so many people believe the center is farther on the right than it is, so every centrist argument becomes left wing extremism, what is called centrist is really right wing and what is called right wing is extreme right. With that in mind it's no surprise right wing content gets blocked more often - the left wing equivalent (e.g. kill everyone in the name of the class fight!) doesn't really exist on Twitter & co.

Libertarians are real free enterprise until it affects their lives...

But before I get thrashed for hurthing feelings, the real problem is these networks act like pubs and open networks. Paid amplification is almost certainly the problem in that it allows money to act as speech. by allowing it to reach more people that didnt seek it. Historically a wild fringe idea stayed that way because it was hard to convert people at scale. Now a fringe/bad idea coming from a group of power and "pump up the juice."

It would be interesting if they either limited the pay for audience equation or create hypertransperency around who is behind the message.

All in all, Facebook is going to be heavily regulated over the next decade and I hope they're diversifying somewhere. The newspapers were fractured, "The Bells," and it seems historically governments step in after about 10-20 years of abuse.

Paid amplification isn't the fundamental problem, but it contributes. The root of all evil on the Internet in the past 10-15 years is algorithmic timelines and algorithmic content curation whose goal function is to increase engagement.

What increases engagement? Fear, hate, conflict, and spectacle. The media has understood this for years: "if it bleeds it leads." People have a strong bias to stare at danger, probably a social adaptation to notice if a mountain lion is attacking your tribe. But when you apply it to user-generated free content, the result is the familiar "rabbit hole" and "filter bubble" phenomena and folie a deux at scale.

Back when humans directly curated content via curated lists, organic timelines that were actually just timelines, and organic non-spam-driven hyperlinking, everything was more rational and less toxic. (Even Reddit/HN style voting is better if it's truly organic and not biased by some algorithm, though it does lead to a different sort of "Borg" phenomenon sometimes.)

Even the fringe was far less toxic and more reasonable. Go find some conspiracy or other fringe topic sites from prior to 2010 on the Wayback Machine.

The problem isn't humans. The problem is that we stuck a middleman in front of human group communication and programmed that middleman to bias what messages are shown in a way that tends to amplify negativity, irrationality, and fluff as opposed to more useful and interesting but less dopamine-releasing content.

I like what you wrote here. I think you're right

What is "free enterprise" about the activities of monopolies like Google? Monopolies restrain trade an prevent free enterprise.

Google and the other monopolies do not deserve any special protection.

I'm not sure how this makes the internet better. So now sites have to host actual neo Nazis and the KKK for fear of losing section 230 protections? Oh and if you have a site focused on programming or motorcycling you have to host completely off topic content because otherwise you lose section 230 protections?

The whole point of section 230 is to make it so that sites can moderate user generated content without becoming legally liable for it. Removing this forces every site to become 4chan for fear of losing section 230 protections. This isn't a positive change in my view.

None of those sites are left-leaning

Reddit prohibits content which:

* Is illegal

* Is involuntary pornography

* Is sexual or suggestive content involving minors

* Encourages or incites violence

* Threatens, harasses, or bullies or encourages others to do so

* Is personal and confidential information

* Impersonates an individual or entity in a misleading or deceptive manner

* Uses Reddit to solicit or facilitate any transaction or gift involving certain goods and services

* Is spam*

https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy

A few of the banned subreddits are:

* Beatingwomen

* Braincels

* CreepShots

* CringeAnarchy

* DarkNetMarkets

* Deepfakes

* FatPeopleHate

* Gore

Your position basically insinuates that right-wing discourse is impossible without violating these rules.

But I think that’s pretty unfair considering the range and depth of conservative intellectual thought.

Maybe you should encourage the more moderate segments of conservatism to speak out against extremists who use the language of racist violence instead of defending them.

Also, /r/conservative is a thing, and they’re not exactly a bastion of the type of free speech they’re advocating; it’s super easy to get banned from that sub.