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Democrats Want a Truce With Section 230 Supporters

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

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

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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Original Submission

• Re:Just use it as it is Re:Just use it as it is (Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Friday July 31 2020, @06:00PM (1 child)

  by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday July 31 2020, @06:00PM (#1029407) Journal

  Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive, back when that term still meant something positive. He was the candidate for the "Bull Moose" Party, which was the Progressive Party. The party platform from 1912 is as relevant today as it was then. This excerpt is a taste:

  Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people.

  From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

  To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

  The deliberate betrayal of its trust by the Republican party, the fatal incapacity of the Democratic party to deal with the new issues of the new time, have compelled the people to forge a new instrument of government through which to give effect to their will in laws and institutions.

  Unhampered by tradition, uncorrupted by power, undismayed by the magnitude of the task, the new party offers itself as the instrument of the people to sweep away old abuses, to build a new and nobler commonwealth.

  A new party today could almost adopt it wholesale and win.

  --
  Washington DC delenda est.

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• Re:Just use it as it is (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday July 31 2020, @10:23PM

  by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Friday July 31 2020, @10:23PM (#1029506)

  A new party today could almost adopt it wholesale and win.

  Too bad TR had not swept into power with such a mandate in 1912. The task would be more difficult today. The forces of the "invisible government" are even more entrenched, with more money at stake, so efforts to eliminate it would have to be monumental. Instead we get things like the Tea Party or Trump, which speak vaguely in terms like that, but in reality work to even further entrench those interests.

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