Re:State bill would let you sue social media giants for poli...
by dragonwriter on Saturday January 16, 2021 @06:15PM
(#25806442)
> Am I completely misreading this?
I don't think so. If it actually did anything on its face, it would violate the Constitution and and also the explicit safe harbor for moderation in Section 230. It's seems to have been written specifically to avoid hitting the Section 230 moderation safe harbor, so it does nothing. But it provides the sponsor the ability to pretend to be doing something, and to xpoint to having sponsored a bill on the issue in campaign material, while conveniently ignoring that the bill would do nothing at all.
Oh, wait, reading it myself, it gets a bit worse on the “intentionally does nothing" front in Section 1, para. 2: “This section only applies if the
interactive computer service provider:
a. Is immune from civil liability under federal law;”
“We are going to make them civilly liable under state law only if the feds have expressly preempted our ability to do that.” Oh, okay then.
I don't think so. If it actually did anything on its face, it would violate the Constitution and and also the explicit safe harbor for moderation in Section 230. It's seems to have been written specifically to avoid hitting the Section 230 moderation safe harbor, so it does nothing. But it provides the sponsor the ability to pretend to be doing something, and to xpoint to having sponsored a bill on the issue in campaign material, while conveniently ignoring that the bill would do nothing at all.
Oh, wait, reading it myself, it gets a bit worse on the “intentionally does nothing" front in Section 1, para. 2: “This section only applies if the interactive computer service provider: a. Is immune from civil liability under federal law;”
“We are going to make them civilly liable under state law only if the feds have expressly preempted our ability to do that.” Oh, okay then.
This legislation is purely performative.