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.
tl;dr repealing Section 230 would lead to websites greatly reducing what they allow to be posted, stifling the internet.
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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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).
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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.
This whole thing is just so Trump can file more frivolous lawsuits like he’s done his entire life isn’t it?
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.
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.
Not even a little bit Victor.
As someone who started an ISP in 1996 and was heavily involved in all of this, I can assure you the internet in the US would be absolutely fucked.
Like I said, the legal profession would eat well off of it, that is about it.
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Okay, keep the protections for ISPs as they are truly akin to a utility. But we have tremendous moral hazard from all these social media companies that profit from shitposting without being responsible for it. And to make it worse, they Lean In to the moral hazard.
It is possible to post news/online content in a responsible manner, every news publication does it under the threat of libel lawsuits and vast majority of them are able to do so without getting sued out of existence. Even places like Breitbart.