Dear EFF,

Is this seriously your official position? That far from taking a hardline stance against censorship, you're instead in agreement and commend this coordinated censorship and slippery slope?

If this is the case, you are not the EFF that I or the internet know or loved.

This is not about whether or not we like Donald Trump or anything. This is about the fact that social media platforms just censored the President of the United States of America for no other reason than their own political views.

We saw this happen before with the stasi.

> This is about the fact that social media platforms just censored the President of the United States of America for no other reason than their own political views.

Pretty sure it's because they think his usage of his platform contributed to a violent insurrection on the US capitol building that killed 5 people and, had it not been managed, likely included assaults on US representatives.

But they said, in not so many words, that if the platforms are going to hold normal users to a standard, they should hold public figures to an equal (or IMO, greater) standard instead of letting them have more privileges. I don’t really see a problem with that, except for how deadpan the delivery is.

They don’t because pandering pays the bills. But if pandering doesn’t bother you, there are more lucrative forms and you can just do away with the pretense and get to the pandering.

You seem to be taking the stance that they're a left leaning organization, but criticizing them for framing their point of view in politically neutral terms.

What if the apparent political leanings of their thinking is a second order effect of the EFF's goal and not the root cause?

Did their political views change over the last day or so? Did the President's? No? Then perhaps you should consider that there may be other possible reasons that they have banned these accounts.

Are you really comparing the actions of East German secret police with being banned from social media? This is ridiculous.

The left used to defend free speech in the public square. Such as when neo-nazis marched in Skokie where many Jewish Holocaust survivors lived: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...

There's nothing wrong with the opinion of being against free speech, it's just quite sad how far we've fallen. Only allowing the speech you agree with is not free speech.

Free Speech has to do with the government hauling you off for saying something, it has nothing to do with being able to incite riots, or convey viewpoints of fascism on the property of a 3rd party.

Do you understand the difference between free speech and conspiracy? Between opinions and inciting?

If not these are all just words you found that when strung together elicit an emotional response from yourself, and from others. A strong reaction doesn’t mean something is true, or makes sense. It just means your monkey brain reacted to it. Wisdom is separating the two.

I can't tell if you're spreading misinformation on purpose. You're referring to the American Nazi party as "the left".

From your link: "his Neo-Nazi group, the NSPA, would regularly hold demonstrations in Marquette Park".

Firstly: you're mislabeling the radical right wing. Secondly: they they're right wing goes against your point.

Are you confused because "national socialist" (which is what nazi stands for) has the word socialist?

The example was that the American Nazi Party wanted to march through a neighborhood with several Holocaust survivors. Many non-Nazis, including groups like the ACLU, defended the Nazis’ right to hold the march.

Thanks for the clarification.

Well, their political views and his attempt to overthrow a democratically-elected government by inciting a mob to storm the Capitol building.

> This is about the fact that social media platforms just censored the President of the United States of America for no other reason than their own political views.

First they came for the most powerful person on the planet, and I said nothing...

Trump’s “political views” include inciting violence to overturn the election.

So this is how Mozilla and EFF go down. All to dunk on a president that was already leaving in 11 days (miss me with your conspiracy theories about how a bunch of random people taking over one building would be a successful coup to keep Trump as the president lmao, children). Looks like these companies don't really stand for anything.

We’re fortunate the coup attempt wasn’t successful.

There have been ridiculous coup attempts in other countries in the past, and some of them have been followed by serious and successful coup attempts.

We really need to take this event seriously.

yet both 2020 candidates have spoken of an outright repeal of Section 230.

Biden has said it should be "revoked immediately."

2021 is not going to be a good year for internet freedoms.

We had a free internet (as much as it ever was) before Facebook and Twitter though.

Is section 230 really about internet freedoms? Walk me through your thinking if you would? In my mind the major effect of 230 is promoting centralized sites that really don't seem to have any good effect on society.

Section 230 protects all entities with user-generated content, that includes Facebook and Twitter as well as Uncle Frank's Model Train Forum. The repeal of 230 would essentially cement those centralized sites as the sole platforms however, as Uncle Frank doesn't have paid moderation teams or a legal department, and only makes $7.44 ad revenue each month. Frank won't be able to afford the legal costs if someone starts spamming it with libelous content and he's busy and doesn't get around to taking the posts down for a couple days.

People said that about sales tax too. Somehow things sorted out afterwards and online sales survived.

A violation of sales tax law can only be addressed by the government. The protections provided by Section 230 are from everyone who might not like something about you, your site, or your users. It's the difference between the government having tanks and all your neighbors having tanks.

Beyond that, I'm not saying online discourse won't survive, I'm saying that repealing Section 230 could lead to things being sorted out afterwards with the closure of the few remaining independent platforms and the cementing of the current centralized players who can afford to operate without the protections of Section 230. Arguably the complexity of inter-state sales tax has contributed (to a much smaller degree) to the centralization of online sales in the same way that a repeal of Section 230 would contribute to the centralization of online discourse. When was the last time you purchased anything from a truly independent store (meaning someone with their own independent site, not using Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Shopify, etc)?

I've bought from standalone independent web stores within the last couple weeks for RC and bike stuff. Aside from that the services you mention (exception of Amazon) are aggregations of independent stores (some actual and some as individuals) and Amazon has an amazing variety of sellers within it. It is very rational for indy stores to behave as a virtual collective within those services, very similar to a shopping district of similar products or storefronts in a mall. It is also very rational for large retailers like Amazon and WalMart to include them since they act as a long tail that can carry NOS or custom goods or final stock at higher prices.

Additionally I would challenge the concept of the "truly independent store" in that all organizations represent a particular collection of services and dependencies. It's turtles all the way down.

The point about sales tax is that many said the sky would fall down if sales taxes were imposed on Internet sales. Things did change, but not for the worse on the whole. As you note, it is hard to tell if seller web front consolidation had to do with tax treatment change or other reasons. In the larger picture, the change increased fairness in tax treatment, something that especially hurt local independent stores, and missing revenue from states.

The protections of Section 230 don't protect you, your site or your users. They protect large companies who are free to silence you to support their agendas and cannot be sued for the disagreeable content they don't silence. Section 230 is as much a farce now as sales tax was then. Post-Sect 230, will those same large companies and organizations silence indy outlets they disagree with? Yes, and they already do even with Sect 230. Even in the absence of Section 230 any plaintiff will have a hard row to how against the their unlimited pockets but there will at least be a sporting chance to advance the most important issues of the day.

Putting the whole sales tax discussion aside, as it's really an entirely different issues, I'm not sure what you think Section 230 does exactly.

Yes, it does explicitly protect me and my sites. Without Section 230 I'm potentially (and personally) liable for any libelous or illegal content a user posts to the small forums I operate. I can be sued for damages or charged even if I take the content down when I see it. I wouldn't have to worry about being shut-down by a large deep-pocketed company, as I'd get sued into oblivion by every litigious person who didn’t like what someone on my forum was saying about them, or charged with facilitation when some trolls decided to start spamming it will illegal content. The legal and financial risks would permanently shutter most open forums and smaller social media sites. Only those big deep-pocketed companies you're concerned about would be able to continue operating, as they have the financial means to defend themselves, and individuals in the company are protected from direct prosecution by the corporate structure.

It also explicitly protects users, as without Section 230 a user forwarding or 'liking' content that turns out to be libelous can be construed to be a publisher of that content. I know this one sounds a bit insane, but it's already happened, see Barrett v. Rosenthal [1].

If you're worried about the "disagreeable content they don't silence" then you WANT Section 230. In Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy [2] the judge ruled that since Prodigy did moderate it's message boards, that meant it would be liable for anything it left up. Section 230 overruled that judicial decision. It’s impossible for any public forum to be moderated perfectly, small ones due to limited funds/manpower and large ones due to scale. So, without Section 230, the only way for one to avoid liability is to NOT moderate at all and leave up all that "disagreeable" content unless ordered to remove it by a court.

The whole issue of large companies who use the legal system to shut down small competitors and silence people is a huge problem, but is has little to do with Section 230 other than the fact that revoking Section 230 would just give those big companies yet another tool to do so. Imagine the simple case of a forum that is created as a place to discuss problems with some big company that actively does this kind of silencing. Without Section 230 the operator of the forum would either need to (a) not moderate and allow the site to be overrun by spam and fake posts from the company saying how it's all lies and the company is great, or (b) carefully fact-check every post someone made before allowing it, or get sued for libel the first (and every) time a post contains a false negative statement about the company.

It's written a bit rudely for dramatic effect, but this is a great resource to really understand what Section 230 does and the implications of revoking it. It goes into more detail on the issues and court cases I mentioned: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_v._Rosenthal

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....

Section 230 was used to defend a public library from a lawsuit after a kid used its computers to look at porn. It protects hobby websites where members share knitting tips. It protects Hacker News. Repealing it would be disastrous.

230 protects all intermediaries equally.

Well, I won't be donating to the EFF again.