Yes, I believe the discussion is to update Section 230 to make those distinctions as the law was created in 1996 to protect bulletin boards, not the social media giants we have today.
It's a discussion we should all want to have to preserve our freedom of speech from being infringed on by these (very very few) social media companies.
I don't think anyone is arguing they don't currently have these powers, it's whether they should and whether they've been abusing them.
> It's a discussion we should all want to have to preserve our freedom of speech from being infringed on by these (very very few) social media companies.
Why? Twitter is not infringing on people's freedom of speech. Trump's comments are proof of that because he's continued to have a platform on the site. People keep saying that their being oppressed by the site they're using to say they're oppressed. No one is being oppressed by Twitter.
You take away 230(c) from Twitter and one of two things will happen:
- they'll cease to exist becase they will become legally liable for all content their users post
- they'll automate moderation much more aggressively and "censor" 10x times more than they do currently.
Also, it'll make it harder for competition to exist because the government will increase the burden on creating a site that hosts user generated content. It will be a contraction of speech online.
Really, if you're not happy with the moves these companeis are making, you should be advocating for more competition so you can switch to an alternative.
I can want more competition as well as more accountability for Twitter when they choose to target specific tweets/accounts.
Facebook has for the most part stayed out of it and they are being attacked for not providing a Ministry of Truth like Twitter does.
So the little bit of competition that Twitter has is being coerced to do the same.
If Twitter continues down the route it's going and continues to publish it's thoughts and link them to other's thoughts then I think they should have their 230 protections revoked and that will probably shutter them. Good.
Hacker News should be all about breaking up monopolies and regulating companies, what gives? Ah yeah, the elections.
You're arguing that the US government should be able to force companies to publish content that it doesnt want on it's site.
> Ah yeah, the elections.
I'm not american, so i have no horse in the elections, apart from wanting twitter to continue to exist.
Twitter is a private company, it should be able to moderate its platform as it sees fit. If it see's content that it feels is dangerous, they should be completely within their right to remove it from their site. Preventing them from being able to do that is the government restricting twitters speech.
If you don't like how twitter moderates it's platform, you should have alternatives to go to that moderate differently. That's basically the whole premise of subreddits and, well, a "free and open market", rather than the government forcing companies to publish content it doesnt want on it's site.
It's a discussion we should all want to have to preserve our freedom of speech from being infringed on by these (very very few) social media companies.
I don't think anyone is arguing they don't currently have these powers, it's whether they should and whether they've been abusing them.