Re:Repealing Section 230 won’t do what anyone wants
by AnthonyMouse on Sunday March 14, 2021 @01:45PM
(#26457162)
> While the first case is good to address, the second one has severally outgrown it.
The problem with all of the repeal proposals is that none of them actually address the problem.
Suppose you're a search engine. One of the search hits is making a factual claim. The search engine naturally has no way to validate the claim. That would require an investigation, giving the accused an opportunity to defend their claim and then having a neutral arbiter make a decision. This essentially describes a trial in court.
We already have civil litigation. If you prove a defamation claim, you can have the court order it to be removed by the host or search engine.
Anything Congress could do about this would be an attempt to end run around the First Amendment, i.e. de facto require private companies to operate a shadow court system and then pretend the First Amendment doesn't apply even though it's being instituted through legislation.
It should be obvious why we don't want this -- if the government is imposing penalties only for not censoring things then you're going to get one-sided suppression of dissent, but if you punish them for over-censoring too then you're just cloning the actual court system and might as well use the real one.
The root of the problem here isn't Section 230. It's that these platforms are too large, so that any mistake they make gets amplified across a billion people instead of a million. Break them up.
The problem with all of the repeal proposals is that none of them actually address the problem.
Suppose you're a search engine. One of the search hits is making a factual claim. The search engine naturally has no way to validate the claim. That would require an investigation, giving the accused an opportunity to defend their claim and then having a neutral arbiter make a decision. This essentially describes a trial in court.
We already have civil litigation. If you prove a defamation claim, you can have the court order it to be removed by the host or search engine.
Anything Congress could do about this would be an attempt to end run around the First Amendment, i.e. de facto require private companies to operate a shadow court system and then pretend the First Amendment doesn't apply even though it's being instituted through legislation.
It should be obvious why we don't want this -- if the government is imposing penalties only for not censoring things then you're going to get one-sided suppression of dissent, but if you punish them for over-censoring too then you're just cloning the actual court system and might as well use the real one.
The root of the problem here isn't Section 230. It's that these platforms are too large, so that any mistake they make gets amplified across a billion people instead of a million. Break them up.