> 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.