> One might say that if a law is so misunderstood by so many and has an outcome that so many would disagree with then it should be replaced based on that fact alone, as what is more dangerous to a society than laws which rule over them that are misunderstood to such a great degree (this might be said of many other laws too).
I agree that laws need to be coherent to the general public to work, but the problem here is that what people misunderstand is the pre-230 conditions that led to its creation, which we would return to if it were repealed and not replaced with something else. It’s a Chesterton’s fence.
I agree that Chesterton's fence is a nice thing to have in any discussion of law but I'd disagree that we'd return to the same conditions as pre-230, the internet landscape is very different now which is why the law appears to favour larger companies. In fact, repealing it altogether might favour them, it wouldn't have back then.
That’s fair, I think it’s safe to say nobody really knows what the second- and third- order effects of 230 repeal would be.
An optimistic take is that we would revert to a ~2008 internet where Twitter and Facebook are much less dominant and “the feed” is a self-curated list of RSS feeds (or ActivityPub subscriptions). A more pessimistic one is that we all run for cover in private self-moderated Slacks and WhatsApp groups.
I agree that laws need to be coherent to the general public to work, but the problem here is that what people misunderstand is the pre-230 conditions that led to its creation, which we would return to if it were repealed and not replaced with something else. It’s a Chesterton’s fence.