Social Media businesses ought to lose the ability to censor users if Social Media expects to be immune from defamation.
The idea that Twitter can ban President Donald Trump is outrageous. Especially if Twitter can freely publish lies against President Donald Trump and say “Nyah, nyah, nyah I’m immune so I can say anything I want.”
“Social Media businesses ought to lose the ability to censor users if Social Media expects to be immune from defamation.”
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Yes, that is the real problem here.
The article summarizes 230 as “... as long as reasonable measures are taken to address illegal and objectionable material on their platforms, companies ... cannot be held accountable for that material.”
I totally would have been on board with this concept 20 years ago. In fact, I was a part of the first wave of ‘socializing’ the internet, taking websites from semi-static media pages to dynamic user driven content, and I learned very quickly that it is an enormous undertaking to moderate such content. The time developing such a site compared to the time needed to moderate it is absolutely minuscule.
These days we think of multi-billion dollar conglomerates like Meta or Alphabet, in the late 90s and early 2000s it was still the internet of the people. Speaking for myself, I wanted to do something creative and let people have fun, not to launch a juggernaut requiring thousands of people to function as editors. You have to do what you can, but in that spirit, section 230 enabled people to participate in the internet, not just passively ‘read’ it.
There in lies the problem, going back to what Clearcase_guy said. If you have to grow into a huge operation in order to moderate user driven content, even though you did not produce the content, then you DO become liable for that content. If you are augmenting your editing of user content from mere protection and safety to changing and censoring social and political messaging, then you are now the publisher, not the platform.
I repeat: if you become active in the kinds of content that you permit on your platform above and beyond good-faith public protection and you assist in controlling the message, YOU BECOME A PUBLISHER. You are no longer neutral. You are no longer a strict service provider.
Immunity should be employed and interpreted narrowly, especially where it is in derrogation of the common law. That has not happened with 230.
As I understand it, the platform has to act in good faith when curating the content it transmits. Their immunity makes themselves the arbiter of their own good faith because they administer the resolution process. The arbiter of good faith should be a jury.
Immunity should be employed and interpreted narrowly, especially where it is in derrogation of the common law. That has not happened with 230.
As I understand it, the platform has to act in good faith when curating the content it transmits. Their immunity makes themselves the arbiter of their own good faith because they administer the resolution process. The arbiter of good faith should be a jury.