
Republicans working on legislation to strip Twitter of liability protections - blhack
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/499814-republicans-working-on-legislation-to-strip-twitter-of-federal-protections
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snowwrestler
Friendly reminder that any member of Congress can write and introduce whatever
bill they want to.

My reading of the prospects for actual passage of this bill are approximately
a butterfly fart in a tornado.

This is most likely what is sometimes called a "message bill": legislation
that is not actually expected to pass but is introduced anyway in an attempt
to score political points.

~~~
tmaly
I am wondering if the Communications Decency Act is a violation of the 1st
amendment to begin with.

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Simulacra
I would agree with that. The CDA as a whole has been used to put far too many
people in prison, and stifle free speech.

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save_ferris
This needs to be applied universally to all companies or killed, because this
puts companies like Facebook in a position to be coerced by the White House
under threat of losing their protected status.

Applying this rule to single companies that act out seems so incredibly
dangerous.

~~~
nutjob2
It's funny you should mention that, the idea had its own clause in the
constitution (equal protection).

This legislation is a bit of a joke and aimed at a certain audience. It's
obviously illegal.

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bediger4000
I predict that we'll see a lot of such special cases in the next years.

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errantmind
I see a lot of people asking "wouldn't stripping section 230 protections
create more censorship on the platform?" That is the point. Shifting all
liability to Twitter would effectively kill the platform as there is no way,
even with the most sophisticated methods available, to police a platform of
that size to the point where the liability is acceptable.

~~~
nutjob2
Never mind Twitter, it would do the same to all websites if it held. The
internet would be destroyed overnight, at least in the US.

~~~
ncallaway
Yep. There's a million small forums that want to provide some levels of
political moderation (e.g. we don't want the KKK or overt Nazis posting their
rants).

Yet if you remove those posts, suddenly you become liable for _anything_
posted on the rest of your forum. It's going to kill every small community on
the internet.

I suspect HN would be included in that.

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dsl
It seems counterproductive to me to remove the legal protections of a platform
that prevent them from being sued to take your tweets down.

~~~
shadowgovt
Or, worse, to prevent them from being sued for medical malpractice because one
of their users tweeted medical advice without a degree, someone took it
seriously, and now they're being held partially liable by the victim's estate
because the drug they started taking in response to that advice exacerbated an
undiagnosed heart condition.

~~~
joncrane
Hmm, what an oddly specific scenario....

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Ididntdothis
I am actually OK with this despite the motives of the people who want to
introduce this legislation.

~~~
blhack
It's something that internet freedom advocates have wanted for a long time,
and it's unfortunate that these are the people introducing it.

edit: people seem to be misunderstanding what I'm saying, or maybe
misunderstanding what is being implied in the article.

Section 230 is GOOD, and it is something freedom-fighters have advocated for
for a long time. What I'm saying is that freedom-advocates have been in favor
of using the threat of losing 230 protection as a way of compelling platforms
not to censor speech that they don't like.

~~~
fzeroracer
I'm curious: What internet freedom advocates? Because the EFF seems to
believes in section 230 being a generally good thing.

And back during the Christchurch shootings when there were proposed
limitations to section 230 to make companies liable for hate speech on their
platform, there was an uproar from the internet freedom advocates that this
would result in censorship and less free speech.

~~~
Simulacra
Your curiosity is rewarded:
[https://disclosurespreview.house.gov/?index=%22lobbying-
disc...](https://disclosurespreview.house.gov/?index=%22lobbying-
disclosures%22&size=10&keyword=%22twitter%22&sort=\[{%22_score%22:true},{%22field%22:%22registrant.name%22,%22order%22:%22asc%22})]

Gosh what an ugly URL. It's the lobbying reports for Twitter. The biggest
internet "freedom" advocates are the paid lobbyists of the tech industry.

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fzeroracer
It seems to me that the threat is loud and clear. If you do anything to
respond to the Trump administration, we will destroy and censor you.

The great irony is that if you strip a company of their section 230
protections, doesn't that just mean that they're going to censor more things
on their platform since they're now liable? Why wouldn't they remove Trump
from Twitter entirely if they could be held liable for his rants? Of course
then you're said to be 'biased' against Trump, which then circles back to the
first step.

Which seems to me might be the endgame here. Get Twitter to ban Trump and now
you have a lot of red meat for his fervent fanbase.

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Spivak
What Twitter did was a stupid move and goes well beyond “responding.” They
used their privileged position on a platform to comment on Trumps tweets in a
way that nobody else can.

Like I get that Twitter employees are mad and frustrated but they undermined
themselves by throwing their weight around.

~~~
fzeroracer
Do you believe HN deserves to be stripped of its 230 rights if they choose to
ban people for violating the rules?

How far down the rabbit hole of moderation = abuse of power do we want to go?
Should platforms have zero control? What's stopping HN from becoming filled
with off-topic images of cats outside of HN abusing their power to censor low-
quality posts?

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3jckd
On one hand side, provided rationale is right and I agree. If Twitter wants to
play the policing game, they'd better bring out big guns and introduce a
mechanism to police and fact-check entire platform.

On the other hand, and maybe its due to my lack of knowledge on the 230, how's
report-and-remove of posts different? Twitter already has mechanisms to remove
flagged content so how's this incident different (apart from being blatantly
political).

Lastly, does anyone know if Facebook and YouTube are also protected under 230?
I imagine that GOP wants to make an example of Twitter but for the sake of
consistency Facebook and Youtube should get the same treatment.

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Goronmon
_Lastly, does anyone know if Facebook and YouTube are also protected under
230? I imagine that GOP wants to make an example of Twitter but for the sake
of consistency Facebook and Youtube should get the same treatment._

My understanding that any website on the internet that allows users to post
content is protected under 230. Including Hacker News, which then becomes
potentially liable for any content posted if its removed.

~~~
Simulacra
Facebook and Twitter should face the same liability as the New York Times. How
many companies do you know that have absolute immunity? That's how Facebook,
Google, and others have grown so large. They don't have to worry about what
goes out on their platforms.

~~~
imadethis
> Facebook and Twitter should face the same liability as the New York Times.

They already do? Comments on NYTimes articles are covered under Section 230
just as comments made on Facebook or Twitter.

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rsynnott
I mean, if this legislation were actually to go through (which seems doubtful)
Twitter would pretty much have to immediately remove Trump's account, given
the libel exposure.

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blhack
Twitter would have to immediately remove just about every account on the
platform other than disney.

~~~
giarc
Don't forget about @dog_rates :)

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mcphage
Bront might complain.

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giarc
My favourite exchange. For those unaware
[https://twitter.com/dog_rates/status/775408819274969089](https://twitter.com/dog_rates/status/775408819274969089)

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analyte123
I'm so mixed up about this whole Section 230 thing. It seems like it absolves
Twitter from liability about things that its users post. But due to various
pressure points or cultural factors or whatever, they act they're liable for
things posted and have invested a lot of money in moderation, fact checking,
trust & safety, "censorship" \-- whatever you want to call it. None of this is
illegal. Republicans seem to being missing the forest for the trees here, but
I'm not sure what the forest looks like. Section 230 is the very same law that
would prevent a conservative or right-wing site being liable for its users'
content.

The tweet "corrections" seem unwise, because those seem to _not_ be immune
from cvil liability under section 230 being that they fail the 3rd prong of
section 230 where "defendant (Twitter) must not be the 'information content
provider' of the harmful information at issue". So if someone posts libel on
Twitter, you can't sue Twitter, but if Twitter "corrects" someone's tweet with
something that is actionable libel, couldn't you sue them then?

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Analemma_
Have these people thought _at all_ about what they're doing, as opposed to
just reflexive spasms of anger? If this went through, it would accomplish the
exact opposite of what they want: if section 230 was removed and Twitter
became liable for the things right-wingers post there-- with their frequent
libel and thinly-veiled incitements to violence-- it would have to _increase_
the amount of censorship and banning it does, to save itself from constant
lawsuits.

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Spivak
This whole situation feels messy and gross but I think they’re absolutely
right that Twitter has massively overstepped what would reasonably be
considered moderation.

I’m reasonably mad at Twitter for this because they’ve punched a hornets nest
and opened the door to making the lives of every site massively more painful
and complicated because the pendulum feels like it’s about to swing the other
way where any form of moderation is going to be rebranded as editorial and
make the web worse overall.

~~~
ryguytilidie
I don't think I've ever disagreed with anyone more than, "Twitter has
massively overstepped what would reasonably be considered moderation."

This is all because they DARED fact check lie number 2129317?LOL

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Spivak
Look Twitter can be right but do the wrong thing.

I now know Twitter, the company’s, stance on the issue because they posted
their views on top of someone else’s tweet in a way that nobody bit Twitter
can do. Twitter can take a stance and even use their official Twitter account
to sing it loud and proud but they wielded their power in away that makes it
very clear that Twitter is in control.

~~~
ryguytilidie
Its so weird that a company would make it clear that theyre in control of the
platform they own and are responsible for.

You're really being duped here. Its not about "twitter posting their views".
This isn't a question of who's opinion may or may not be right. Trump is
continuously posting verifiably false information that could kill people. The
idea that a single person on earth could object to fact checking these things,
that again, will cause more deaths, is just stunning. Stop with the awkward
1984 act. You and I both know you're being completely disingenuous.

