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Re:U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate o... by bobthepanda on Saturday September 17, 2022 @02:37PM (#32880056)
230 is broad.

At the time, websites were mostly just hosts of content. The individual is posting on the website but otherwise the website is a tool.

This changes with recommendation algorithms. Nearly all social media is based on some kind of recommendation algorithm. Should that be covered by 230? It could be argued that it starts to get closer to an endorsement of certain content (and indeed, some of that recommended stuff is ads.)

Re:U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate o... by root_axis on Saturday September 17, 2022 @04:34PM (#32881312)
> It could be argued that it starts to get closer to an endorsement of certain content

But we know that isn't actually the case. The algorithms are designed to drive engagement, what they show you is a function of your behavior on the site, it's not an "endorsement" by the site creators, they're finely tuned machine learning systems optimized for ad dollars - that's it.

Once again, this is just another example of how the ad model incentivizes pernicious behavior. If these sites were under a subscription model they'd be happy to offer you the option to sort your feed with a purely chronological algorithm because they'd still be getting paid regardless of your engagement behavior.

Re:U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate o... by bobthepanda on Saturday September 17, 2022 @05:30PM (#32881778)
If people don’t explicitly look for recommendations and we shove it in their face anyways, is that not an endorsement? “We think you’ll like this.”

There are also active efforts to remove “bad” content from such recommendations, which is effectively un-endorsing it.

Re:U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate o... by 8note on Saturday September 17, 2022 @03:33PM (#32880689)
Chronological is still fits the interface of a recommendation algorithm.

You can take HN as an example of a recommendation service - while they remove things that are off topic, you'd have to argue that YC endorses whatever is in the #1 spot on HN.

Re:U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate o... by asdfasgasdgasdg on Saturday September 17, 2022 @04:11PM (#32881117)
And at any rate, #1 on HN is not the product of any simple rule like "most upvotes per unit time with some decay function applied." There is significant judgment in expressed in the way that stories are ranked. The source code as of 2012 was enough to demonstrate this, but in my understanding yet more judgment has been applied since then.

https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc

Re:U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate o... by kelnos on Saturday September 17, 2022 @04:04PM (#32881048)
Who is "they", though? Aside from the spam filters, posts largely make it to the front page (or not) due to community moderation. YC isn't the one making those endorsements, the moderating population of HN users as a whole are doing so.
Re:U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate o... by joshuamorton on Saturday September 17, 2022 @05:34PM (#32881811)
The HN mods routinely give posts they feel are interesting a second chance [0], and posts deemed "controversial" via a combination of human and automated factors are deranked.

HN has more active, hands on moderation than most social media sites, and there's a stronger argument that dang "endorses" the front page of HN than that Steve Huffman "endorses" the front page of reddit.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23239449

Re:U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate o... by kmeisthax on Saturday September 17, 2022 @08:41PM (#32883176)
Fun fact: The US Copyright Office wants to junk DMCA 512 protection for social media using this same logic.