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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday July 30 2020, @02:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the change-is-in-the-wind dept.

Democrats want a truce with Section 230 supporters:

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which says apps and websites aren't legally liable for third-party content, has inspired a lot of overheated rhetoric in Congress. Republicans like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) have successfully framed the rule as a "gift to Big Tech" that enables social media censorship. While Democrats have very different critiques, some have embraced a similar fire-and-brimstone tone with the bipartisan EARN IT Act. But a Senate subcommittee tried to reset that narrative today with a hearing for the Platform Accountability and Consumer Transparency (PACT) Act, a similarly bipartisan attempt at a more nuanced Section 230 amendment. While the hearing didn't address all of the PACT Act's very real flaws, it presented the bill as an option for Section 230 defenders who still want a say in potential reforms.

[...] Still, Section 230 has been at the forefront of US politics for years, and some kind of change looks increasingly likely. If that's true, then particularly after today's hearing, a revised version of the PACT Act looks like the clearest existing option to preserve important parts of the law without dismissing calls for reform. And hashing out those specifics may prove more important than focusing on the policy's most hyperbolic critics.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @12:03PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @12:03PM (#1029232)

    I do think there's room for reform

    What specific reforms would you like to see?

  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday July 31 2020, @03:53PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Friday July 31 2020, @03:53PM (#1029333)

    Honesty, I don't know. 230 did a pretty good job of carving out a way for online forums to exist without being buried in either lawsuits or spam. And most of the ways obvious ways to "improve" it would be easily perverted to become a means of government censorship (the primary reason I'm opposed to any change in the current political climate).

    However, bad actors have learned how to game the system, and we have lots of well-documented evidence of intentional (and very effective) disinformation campaigns being waged on social media, along with the many spontaneous conspiracy-theories, etc. that spread more organically. Campaigns that are becoming a very real threat to both social stability and government integrity, and which the platforms are, by and large, choosing to allow (and profit from).

    It may be that there is no way to have open(ish) online forums without those threats, and we need to take a long and hard look at whether their value to society outweighs that threat, and consider revoking their legal safe-harbor altogether. Not something I'd want to see, but it may turn out to be the least destructive option.