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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 DeathMonkey on Wednesday January 29 2020, @07:39PM (3 children)
You seem to be advocating for the removal of the very protections that this article about, though. How does making it easier to outlaw a platform help prevent us from becoming China?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday January 29 2020, @09:25PM (1 child)
Well, if platforms are outlawed, only outlaws will have platforms .... or something ...
And there's always mesh networks. Shut down the internet for a couple of weeks and watch a thousand nodes light up.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @12:33AM
God Emperor Trump will smash you and your puny network [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:13AM
Our government can't regulate the internet like China does, because of the First Amendment. It's still too big a hurdle for them to overcome in the courts, for now at least.
So what they are doing is regulating it indirectly, through these big corporations. It's given them immunity, predicated on them being common carriers, but when we ask them to act as common carriers, they go 'oh, we're a private platform.'
I'm just saying they should have to choose. If they want to be a private platform that imposes whatever rules it wants and enforces them at a whim, then they shouldn't be getting any special immunity to the laws everyone else has to live under. If they want to keep the immunity, that's fine, but they need to commit to acting in a manner consistent with it.
To put it another way, right now the incentives are all lined up in favor of China. US Companies drool at the Chinese market, they're inclined to bow and scrap and do anything the CCP wants as a result. And there's essentially no downside for doing so - because they're effectively above the law in the US we have no influence on them. Again, they should have to make a choice. If they want to act like *American* companies then they can keep the exemption, if they prefer to cater to the CCP then they should have to give that up and register as foreign agents. Clear?
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