SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Growing Threat to Free Speech Online:
There are times when vitally important stories lurk behind the headlines. Yes, impeachment is historic and worth significant coverage, but it's not the only important story. The recent threat of war with Iran merited every second of intense world interest. But what if I told you that as we lurch from crisis to crisis there is a slow-building, bipartisan movement to engage in one of most significant acts of censorship in modern American history? What if I told you that our contemporary hostility against Big Tech may cause our nation to blunder into changing the nature of the internet to enhance the power of the elite at the expense of ordinary Americans?
I'm talking about the poorly-thought-out, poorly-understood idea of attempting to deal with widespread discontent with the effects of social media on political and cultural discourse and with the use of social media in bullying and harassment by revoking or fundamentally rewriting Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
[...] In 1996, [Congress] passed Section 230. The law did two things. First, it declared that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." In plain English, this means that my comments on Twitter or Google or Yelp or the comments section of my favorite website are my comments, and my comments only.
But Section 230 went farther, it also declared that an internet provider can "restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable" without being held liable for user content. This is what allows virtually all mainstream social media companies to remove obscene or pornographic content. This allows websites to take down racial slurs – all without suddenly also becoming liable for all the rest of their users' speech.
It's difficult to overstate how important this law is for the free speech of ordinary Americans. For 24 years we've taken for granted our ability to post our thoughts and arguments about movies, music, restaurants, religions, and politicians. While different sites have different rules and boundaries, the overall breadth of free speech has been extraordinary.
[...] Large internet companies that possess billions of dollars in resources would be able to implement and enforce strict controls on user speech. Smaller sites simply lack the resources to implement widespread and comprehensive speech controls. Many of them would have no alternative but to shut down user content beyond minimalist input. Once again, the powerful would prevail.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday January 29 2020, @12:49PM
The article brings up Prodigy.
As I recall that Prodigy case, they specifically advertised a more sanitary Internet. Said they would keep their users "safe", through censorship. Then some kid saw something objectionable, and the mother sued. And won. Prodigy tried to shelter under common carrier status, but because censorship was an official policy of theirs, it made them liable. That defense worked for ISPs who weren't monitoring and censoring, but not Prodigy.
I used Prodigy for a brief while in the 90s. I'm sure they were monitoring me. 3 times when I was trying to complain about an issue, my usually good connection mysteriously dropped. It _could_ have been coincidence. I never logged into Prodigy again, never paid them another dime, and did not respond to the next year's worth of mail from them (through the postal service, not emails) whining that my account was seriously delinquent. They also had policies that made cancellation of service unreasonably hard, you see. You had to give them written notice, 30 days in advance. Written notice sent via email didn't count, had to be sent through the post office. Lot of ISPs were pulling that one. And who knows but that notice might go missing, like my complaints. They finally gave up. Took them long enough to figure that one out. I have zero sympathy for Prodigy, and laughed at them when they lost that case.