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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @06:19PM (2 children)
So to be clear here, the party line is that having the United States FBI (the group sworn to protect the constitution and the people and everything) investigating foreign calls and contacts with the Trump campaign is evil and wrong and terrible... however, withholding federally allocated money to Ukraine (who have no particular loyalty to the people of the US) to get them to investigate and badmouth a political opponent is good?
As a quick check, what would you think if Hillary Clinton had done this against Donald Trump? Would that also be okay?
(Score: 1, Redundant) by VLM on Wednesday January 29 2020, @07:56PM (1 child)
I believe you made a typo in
As nobody is making any claim that there was any investigation to do; Everyone in both countries accepts completely that the previous administration of which Biden was a part, accepted bribes from Ukraine sources.
Complaining about that gets the lefties all wound up about it. Its their old white male privilege to participate in organized crime; as St Greta would say "How dare you?"
AFAIK Bernie and AOC and frankly most of the left didn't accept bribes and was not under investigation.
It seems the easiest strategy to avoid an organized crime investigation is simply not to accept bribes and otherwise get involved in organized crime. Biden is no "above the law" Hillary, thats for sure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @11:11PM
Evidence, motherfucker. Do you have any?