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Re:You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Sect... by michaelmrose on Saturday January 09, 2021 @04:32AM (#25698919)
Can you explain the society wide manipulation of information and what positive results can be obtained by allowing the kind of actions that are currently blocked by 230 which could be brought were it to be repealed.

Most users who want 230 repealed seem to believe that Facebook would have to give up moderation of their offensive comments/posts to be treated as a common carrier somehow to avoid liability. This is of course completely imaginary. Liability wouldn't be avoided by simply publishing everything.

Others assert that Facebook has had a shitty net effect on society and could be punished if not for 230. This is a little closer to reality but provides no conceptual framework for deciding what obligations Facebook has or how it meets them.

I don't believe that any reasonable solution starts with repealing 230 because fixing the internet one lawsuit at a time is horribly expensive, intractable, suffers from challenges as to jurisdiction and anonymity, unavailable to 90% of the planet.

Instead if you do not like the current state figure out how to articulate Facebooks obligations to society.

Re:You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Sect... by matwood on Saturday January 09, 2021 @11:08AM (#25701485)
The right wants to repeal 230 because they think it will make FB/Twitter keep up all their Q-anon insanity. The left wants to repeal 230 because they think it will punish/harm/shut down the FB/Twitter cesspool.

The reality is probably closer to regulatory capture where only the existing large platforms can afford to moderate leaving us with a heavily moderated, but stronger/permanent FB/Twitter. /shrug

Re:You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Sect... by cblconfederate on Saturday January 09, 2021 @04:46AM (#25698989)
I believe the understanding is that without 230, facebook would be liable just like the rest of the press is, and thus be essentially forced to disallow free-for-all posting.

This is a different mode of manipulation, where the people who own the media can shape the public discourse, but isn't that what the whole world had for decades and decades before social media?

Re:You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Sect... by ghaff on Saturday January 09, 2021 @08:33AM (#25700190)
In general, the understanding (right or wrong) is that without 230, a platform has to choose one of two actions: No moderation (modulo moderating for illegal content--whatever that is exactly) or moderating all posts (which is clearly not an option in general).

It may or may not make a big difference as a practical matter. Most things Twitter would moderate today are arguably threats, incitement to riot, etc., all of which could in principle be prosecuted as crimes. But it's at least a difference in principle.

ADDED: On the other hand, there's all the SPAM, link SPAM, astroturfing etc. which isn't actually illegal. Arguably some things could be handled through Terms of Service. But it's worth remembering that Section 230 didn't come about to address purely theoretical concerns given that Prodigy did lose a legal case after all.