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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: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday January 29 2020, @04:07PM (1 child)
I mean, they could in theory, but the market exists, and that means there are hosting providers out there willing to host everything from the Revolutionary Communist Party to neo-Nazis. I think you're underestimating the degree to which all money is money and businesses want money more than they care about ideology.
Again, they could, but they don't, because they want the money more than they want to censor you, and censoring you is a bunch of administrative headaches they don't want.
Then you post links on other relevant sites, or in online chats, and/or reach your audience via email or snail mail or in-person.
The First Amendment gives you a right to speak or write what you like. It does not give you the right to use other people's stuff to speak or write or publicize what you're saying, nor does it give you the right to be heard or read or taken seriously by anybody.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @05:59PM
"The First Amendment gives you a right to speak or write what you like. It does not give you the right to use other people's stuff to speak or write or publicize what you're saying, nor does it give you the right to be heard or read or taken seriously by anybody."
While I agree with you in theory the problem is that the internet has become ubiquitous, and we need to start treating it as a public utility that cannot be denied to anyone for ideological reasons. The tricky part is coming up with rules to define which services are essential. The ISP is the obvious first choice, they control basic access.
The trickier ones are hosting companies and payment processors. I think hosting companies are unnecessary to include, we should fix ISPs to require that they allow people to host their own servers. That way anyone can host themselves on the already protected ISP connection. Otherwise any service that provides "host your site here" should not discriminate on the content of said site, unless illegal obviously. Any other service can implement whatever rules they'd like, Twitter and Facebook can ban whomever they'd like.
Payment processors are the next possible problem, but there are so many options out there that someone would need to build a court case showing that they have been denied every possible option. I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to the complaints in this area, but I think there is a distinction between not providing someone with an account and blocking existing customers from sending a specific person money. If all credit card companies refuse to authorize payments from their customers to some entity then that is wrong. If credit card companies refuse to create an account for some fragile white wife beating, lynch mob inciting, small hands having small brained idiot racist, well I think that is fine as long as there are alternative methods they could receive money. If not then payment processors will have to become regulated as public services as well.