Sixty Minutes Episode Is Pure Misleading Moral Panic About Section 230

Re:Sixty Minutes Episode Is Pure Misleading Moral Panic Abou... by roywiggins on Monday January 04, 2021 @07:05PM (#25640090)

That's not true, though. Pre-internet bookstores could sell libelous books without being liable for their contents. You can't sue Barnes and Noble for selling books that defame you, you have to sue the author.

Section 230 extends that regime to websites that host other people's content.

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Re:Sixty Minutes Episode Is Pure Misleading Moral Panic Abou... by projektfu on Monday January 04, 2021 @07:16PM (#25640211)

You can sue them to have known libel removed from their shelves, but their exposure is not the same as the publisher unless for some reason they do not actually remove it.

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Re:Sixty Minutes Episode Is Pure Misleading Moral Panic Abou... by dasil003 on Monday January 04, 2021 @07:08PM (#25640136)

You could sue the publisher, which is analogous to suing social media companies. Suing B&N is like suing an ISP.

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Re:Sixty Minutes Episode Is Pure Misleading Moral Panic Abou... by roywiggins on Monday January 04, 2021 @07:10PM (#25640155)

B&N makes way more moderation decisions than an ISP, they promote books, they recommend books, they lay out a store so you can browse the different books on offer. They aren't a dumb pipe like a good ISP.

Specialty bookstores are even less like an ISP, they might restrict themselves to one or a handful of genres. Leftist bookstores have an ideological filter. And so on. None of them are like ISPs at all.

It would be weird to make Medium treated like a publisher for hosting a defamatory blog post while a bookstore selling a bound copy of the same content would not be. That's why section 230 is a thing!

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