What does a Section 230 repeal look like?

Politics & News
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@■■■■■■■ suggested that this needed to be peeled off from the Bailout/Stimulus thread. I agree that there is enough potential discussion for this topic to merit its own thread.

For those who are unaware, Section 230 is part of the Communications Decency Act passed in 1996. The most relevant part is subsection (c)

(c)Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material

(1)Treatment of publisher or speaker

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

(2)Civil liability
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—

(A)

any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or

(B)

any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).

What would it look like if we repealed this section? We have at least two things to go on.

The first is the status ante quo. There are two relevant court cases from the 1990s. In Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc., CompuServe was treated as a distributor of content rather than a publisher because it made no attempt to moderate its forums, so it was not liable for any defamatory content found there. Meanwhile, in Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co., Prodigy was held liable for defamatory posts because it moderated its forums, thus acting as a publisher with editorial control.

This suggests three avenues for distributors of online content. They can be a Wild West of sorts where anything goes online. They can stop allowing user-generated online content, such as not allowing comments, or they can engage in heavy-handed moderation seeking to stamp out anything they might be liable for.

The other thing we have to go on is that we know what a partial repeal of Section 230 looks like. FOSTA-SESTA, which passed in 2018, repealed Section 230 as it pertained to sexual trafficking. Backpage, for example, fended off criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits by citing Section 230. This all went away with SESTA-FOSTA and, shortly afterwards, criminal indictments were unleashed against Backpage and its website was seized.

So, what do I predict from a Section 230 repeal? Defamation lawsuits from people with money to try and remove criticism from the Internet. Politically-motivated criminal prosecutions to try and stifle dissent. A removal of comment sections from places such as news sites where those comments are not critical to the business for the website.

This becomes trickier for things such as Twitter and Facebook whose business is based on user-generated content for other users to consume. I’m not sure what they do.

Will it kill 99% of user-generated content? Probably not, but it will kill a lot of it, certainly enough that the internet would look very different.

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But is losing the comment sections really a bad thing? I know, it would never be ONLY that happening, but man, comment sections are just absolute cesspools.

I hope this thread takes off, because it fascinates me.

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I think the big question here is what happens to porn? If it makes internet porn go away there’s no way anybody will stand for it.

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This is honestly pretty terrifying but it seems like no one besides Trump wants it to happen, so maybe the internet is safe.

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You ever use product reviews before buying something? Cause those are long gone if 230 goes away

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Something similar happened in Germany for many years. Operators of public wi-fi hotspots (eg. cafés) were liable for illegal downloads of their users. Guess how easy it was to find a free hotspot?

It took the government forever but they finally changed the law a couple of years ago.

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Is there any reason dems wouldn’t vote for 230 other than big tech being big donors? Seems like it would own the shit out of conservatives who would be banned at alarming rates if these companies could be held liable from the insane shit they post.

I don’t understand it much but repealing section 230 actually seems like a super good thing.

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tl;dr repealing Section 230 would lead to websites greatly reducing what they allow to be posted, stifling the internet.

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Without 230 there is no youtube, no 2+2, no Unstuck Politics

If the site can be held liable for anything users do then there will not be user generated content sites anymore

In fact, it also protects ISPs so without it I’m not sure your provider would even give you access to the internet.

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Repealing 230 would change the face of the internet as we know it. Companies being required to be responsible for user generated content means jo more facebook, twitter, youtube, twitch, message boards, chat services like Discord, etc etc etc. Anything that involves user created content is gone. Goodbye customer reviews, comments sections, etc.

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Hmm I figured it would be something that could be handled with more intense moderation and you just had to get rid of shit like hate speech and encouraging violence etc.

Certainly only clearly super bad shit could actually be taken to court to hold people liable right?

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This is a good point. If ISPs are responsible for everything you do online, any minor violation could lead to a suspension of your ability to access.

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  1. Even if you only get penalized for the really bad stuff, your moderation software has to be pretty good to catch everything, especially when the bad actors will be actively trying to figure out ways around the filter. Stuff still gets around the Great Firewall of China, so I’m sure it’ll sometimes get by Facebook (let alone smaller sites like 2p2). And while Facebook might be rich enough to hire people to back up the software, it’ll still be imperfect and it would really mess up the user experience if every post had to be reviewed before it could be posted (which would almost certainly be the default rule if sites faced liability for anything that got published).

  2. The real risk from a liability perspective isn’t Neo Nazi stuff, it’s slander and libel law. Imagine if Harvey Weinstein or Peter Thiel or Jeff Bezos could potentially sue any website for any user that posted something negative about them or their companies/products.

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Would you want to own a website where you can get sued because of something I posted on your website?

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I don’t either but look at what Thiel did.

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This whole thing is just so Trump can file more frivolous lawsuits like he’s done his entire life isn’t it?

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Yeah I am not sure people realize that these legal provisions were foundational to the internet becoming a widespread thing. Otherwise it would literally just be an online shopping mall. (Some may feel like it is that now).

It’s a pretty serious issue and a thoughtless repeal would have a near over night impact of massive proportions.

It doesn’t protect big tech companies it protects essentially everyone from being lawyered out of discourse.

Companies choosing to limit some types of content and being forced to limit almost all types of content

It’s a dumb battle by Trump. Congress is going to revisit it eventually where it is done on more than a whim. If it were repealed it would cause an amount of money dumped into the next election cycles to make anything previously like picking pennies off the streets. Because those companies have a lot to lose.

Many lawyers would love it though. Would be a boon for them for at least a little while.

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The likely outcome would be isps basically becoming online services of the 80s and everything would be limited and you could only access carefully whitelisted sites.

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Not even a little bit Victor.