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posted by martyb on Wednesday January 29 2020, @10:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the speak-up-now dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @04:45PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @04:45PM (#950706)

    >Trump
    You do realize there is resistance to Trump right? You think this single man is in control of all the government departments, all the education administrators, all the bureaucrats and all the think tanks? He is not the totalitarian you are looking for, he is merely a tree in the forest.

    Do you think Big Brother has enough resources to have jackbooted police patrolling every corner of the street looking for wrongthink? Do you think it has the power to erase all wrongthink from each and every person's mind? Your idea of totalitarianism is so wrong that you'll never see it when it comes. Instead of a police state, you'll police yourselves for wrongthink, Big Brother needs those resources elsewhere, like distracting you with pointless bread and circus drama so you'll support it voluntarily. Step outside of the bubble and you'll be ostracized by both red and blue ritual worshipers at the same time.

  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 29 2020, @09:48PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Wednesday January 29 2020, @09:48PM (#950863) Journal

    "You do realize there is resistance to Trump right?"

    With all the lies he tells and all his bullying and how big a doof he is on the international scene: I thought he'd have been out already!

    I was agreeable to #NeverHillary, but Trump? Man...why is he NOT GONE?

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---