Why most free speech social media platforms don't support repealing Section 230

submitted by Drewski from (reclaimthenet.org)

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[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Paywall.

[–]Drewski[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

That's why I posted it as a comment.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This sub's CSS makes it too hard to read, unfortunately.

[–]Trajan 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Repealing 230 isn’t even a case of burning the house down in protest. Big tech companies are the only ones who’d be able to continue operating in an environment where platforms assume liability. While it’d hurt them, it’ll hurt smaller sites far more.

[–]Druullus 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

liability? Why not make the users liable, be a platform and only censor/remove what is illegal?

[–]Trajan 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

We already have user liability under the current interpretation of 230, and certainly I agree it should come with strings. The problem is that there are perfectly legitimate reasons to for sites to remove posts. For example, it would be reasonable for Stack Exchange, a developer oriented site, to remove legal and inoffensive posts that are off-topic (e.g. cooking, football, 70s rock). Their purpose is stated very clearly. Similarly, a site like thedonald is absolutely clear in their purpose, so it would be reasonable for them to remove anything critical of Trump - just like the same would be true of a Biden fan-site. Any reworking on 230 would need to prevent de facto publishers using 230 as a shield while still allowing platforms to manage content in a way that reflects their stated purpose. And none of this vague 'hate speech' nonsense to excuse removing people who criticise migration while allowing overtly racist left-wing content.

It's people smarter than me who'd come-up with a way to make this work.

[–]Drewski[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There is no doubt where Big Tech stands on the issue of repealing, or even amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA): giant tech companies mostly oppose any such idea, and have very good reasons for that, from the point of view of their own interest.

But the question that is almost never asked, as big politics fights big business over this piece of legislation, is what is the stance of those independent internet platforms that are just now emerging as alternatives to centralized media’s censorship – and how would an internet without Section 230 affect them.

This now antiquated but also increasingly politically controversial legislation, passed all the way back in 1996, shielded Big Tech in its early and vulnerable startup days by absolving it of any legal responsibility for content posted by users.

But Section 230 does more than that – when these now extremely powerful entities come under pressure from politics or media, or have internal reasons to do so, they can, and do censor those same users and their content with impunity.

Therefore, Section 230 serves Big Tech’s interest in full. But there are those, to put it mildly, who are less happy with it, one of them being US President Donald Trump, who has long struggled with censorship against him on leading centralized social networks.

Last spring, he launched an initiative to introduce changes to Section 230 in order to amend some of the provisions that allow suppression of information with impunity; but judging by his tweets on December 2, his stance has now shifted towards repealing what he calls a very dangerous and unfair legislation that provides tech giants with “corporate welfare.”

Trump announced at the time that unless Section 230 is “completely terminated” he would veto the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

In the end, the NDAA passed in the US Senate with a margin wide enough to make sure a veto would be overridden, but these and similar, previous comments by the president have prompted people behind free speech platforms to come out and state where they stand on the issue.

In an open letter to Trump, Gab CEO Andrew Torba declared that his small company has often come under attack by Big Tech as the giants enjoy their Section 230 immunity.

Gab is a social media site dedicated to political freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment, while running a legal business that aims to keep the platform free of participation from criminals, Torba writes.

Thanks to the way huge companies like Apple, Google, PayPal, Amazon, Microsoft, Medium, Twitter, and many others use Section 230, Gab has been deplatformed and banned, he continues.

Nevertheless, Torba makes a plea with Trump to keep Section 230 “exactly as it is” because it protects smaller players from lawsuits from activists and foreign governments who dislike the platform’s anti-censorship stance. As a way to ensure fairness on the internet, Torba instead recommends leaving corporate social networks and joining independent alternatives.

Parler – often seen as an alternative to Twitter, that has seen a rise in use and popularity after the contested US presidential election – agrees with this.

In comments made for Fox News shortly after Trump linked Section 230 with the NDAA, Parler founder and CEO John Matze said that complete repeal of the legislation would hurt small businesses by removing their protection from liability as they attempt to compete with Big Tech.

And while Matze said he “respectfully disagreed” with Trump’s idea to remove Section 230 in its entirety, describing it as a “nice” piece of legislation in the way it protects small internet companies and helps competition, he said the president was still “on to something” – that something being that Big Tech does abuse those same liability protections.

Matze’s point seems to be that even without Section 230, companies like Facebook, Google, and others are now financially powerful enough to legally protect themselves if sued over third party content – while smaller competitors would find it hard to survive.

The owner of Kiwi Farms, a US online forum, makes this argument explicit in defense of Section 230, explaining the high cost of lawsuits over content published on the site, even with Section 230 in place. Without it, he says the site would have to be shut down as having to be legally responsible for users’ posts would cause a legal nightmare for a small platform, a forum post announced.