Re:The rule says, “No vehicles in the park”
by nonethewiser on Saturday June 24, 2023 @08:00AM
(#36457933)
If you take moderation far enough you become a publisher
Re:The rule says, “No vehicles in the park”
by timdev2 on Saturday June 24, 2023 @03:31PM
(#36461930)
That's not true. As far as the law is concerned, users/providers are shielded so long as they don't take part in authorship. You be as despotic or biased as you want, and you're still not considered the publisher of content provided by another user/provider.
Re:The rule says, “No vehicles in the park”
by schoen on Saturday June 24, 2023 @04:10PM
(#36462261)
Further to that, the idea that "if you take moderation far enough you become a publisher" is the situation prior to §230, that §230 was enacted in order to get rid of (so that there would no longer be a disincentive for intermediaries to choose to moderate!).
https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230#Background_and_pas...
Are you suggesting that section 230 is meant to discourage Internet intermediaries from moderation?
The original intent of this law was to stop requiring intermediaries to choose between adopting a passive conduit role and having legal responsibility for content. The legislators hoped that providing a general protection from liability for user-generated content would encourage more moderation by intermediaries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230#Background_and_pas...
That might not have been the most pro-speech policy option overall but it was notionally very pluralist (with different platforms potentially having very different standards, purposes, goals, rules, communities, etc.) and it did manage to temper the previous somewhat paradoxical incentives, as well as providing a lot of legal certainty to facilitate the creation of new platforms of various sizes and models.
Pretty much everyone on the Internet is frustrated by moderation and sees pathologies and biases of moderation, intermediaries putting their thumb on scales, and so on. On the other hand, what we haven't seen is the enormous volume of litigation against intermediaries that would occur without §230. I expect people would literally be suing Y Combinator over HN moderation decisions. I can think of HN moderation decisions that I really disagree with, but it's impossible for me to imagine that having had those turn into lawsuits would somehow have been better for anyone.