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McConnell introduces bill tying $2K stimulus checks to Section 230 repeal:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has thrown a wrench into Congressional approval of an increase in government stimulus relief checks from $600 to $2,000. The House voted overwhelmingly on Monday to increase the payments, as President Trump had advocated for. Instead of voting on the House bill, however, McConnell blocked it and instead introduced a new bill tying higher stimulus payments to Section 230's full repeal, according to Verge, which obtained a copy of the bill's text.
It's a tangled web, but the move is tied to Trump's veto of the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes $740 billion in defense spending for the upcoming government fiscal year. "No one has worked harder, or approved more money for the military, than I have," Trump said in a statement about the veto, claiming falsely that the military "was totally depleted" when he took office in 2017. "Your failure to terminate the very dangerous national security risk of Section 230 will make our intelligence virtually impossible to conduct without everyone knowing what we are doing at every step."
Section 230 has nothing to do with military intelligence; it's a 1996 law designed to protect Internet platforms. At its highest level, the short snippet of law basically does two things. First, it grants Internet service providers, including online platforms, broad immunity from being held legally liable for content third-party users share. Second, it grants those same services legal immunity from the decisions they make around content moderation—no matter how much or how little they choose to do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 05 2021, @08:47PM (1 child)
If specifically detailing what a law requires or does not require, along with concrete examples of litigation around that law is "philosophical," then call me a philosopher.
Because section 230 applies as much to *you*, me, everyone else in the US, SoylentNews and everything else with an IP address within the confines of the United States, as much it does to Facebook or Twitter.
And that's not philosophy, either. Section 230 was passed to address rulings in Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy [wikipedia.org] which would have required that *any* site that does *any* moderation (including moderation like we have here) or removes *any* content, no matter how egregious (say child porn, links to child porn on torrent sites, snuff/torture videos, Goatse and/or gay, midget furry porn on your daughter's homework review site, knitting websites, recipe websites, your open-source git repo, etc., etc., .etc.), that site may then be sued for *any* other third-party content they do not remove.
As such, without section 230, pretty much *every site* or individual on the 'net would either need to completely block *all third-party content*, let every place be a complete free-for-all or shut down.
In fact, the only folks who have any chance of surviving in a such an environment are the companies with billions in the bank to fight all the lawsuits. That would be Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. So repealing section 230 would kill off most of the free speech on the 'net, except for the very platforms you're bitching about.
As such, that you want Section 230 repealed means that you're either anti free speech or don't understand section 230.
As I'm an optimist, I'll assume it's the latter. If it is, I suggest you read the law [cornell.edu], especially section (c)(1).
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 06 2021, @01:25AM
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
― Anatole France