>Stated differently, some liberals seem to have the fantasy that potential civil liability would finally force platforms to do more about disinformation on their sites — “to take responsibility.” But what does that mean? Because whatever the moral responsibility may be, there isn’t actually any legal repercussions for republishing, or publishing, crazy propaganda and conspiracy theories. If so, Newsmax and Gateway Pundit and even Fox News would not exist.
He's completely wrong here. No one really cares that Brietbart publishes lies to their readers on their own site. What people are upset is that facebook, twitter, reddit, etc allow propaganda and lies to be published on their site for their users.
If The_donald wants to make a site and push bullshit, go ahead, people that only want to see The_donald can read it, but coordinating so that hundreds of millions of redditors see bullshit and spread bullshit is ridiculous.
>If The_donald wants to make a site and push bullshit, go ahead, people that only want to see The_donald can read it, but coordinating so that hundreds of millions of redditors see bullshit and spread bullshit is ridiculous.
How would that work? If reddit loses its 230 protection, then this The_donald-only reddit alternative would also lose its 230 protection.
Additionally, I'm concerned whether reddit could exist at all. Would every single comment need to be human-moderated before it's posted? That doesn't seem feasible, and seems likely to kill reddit.
The threat of revoking someone's 230 protection would ideally make them think about everything you just said, and hopefully decide to abide by the conditions of that protection. That is, they get to choose for themselves: either support free speech on their platform and receive the benefits of that protection, or don't. If they don't, then they'll need to figure out how to address the kinds of problems you mentioned.
>The threat of revoking someone's 230 protection would ideally make them think about everything you just said
By someone you mean the site owner? I don't know what you mean by "support free speech". Does it mean every non-illegal post must be allowed? There will probably be a ton of spam. Possibly porn in every subreddit. The entire idea of subreddits will die, because moderators of individual subreddits will no longer be able to moderate. There can no longer be rules about what is on-topic vs off-topic for a subreddit.
>If they don't, then they'll need to figure out how to address the kinds of problems you mentioned.
Okay, but what does any of that have to do with Section 230? How would repealing it have any effect on how Facebook treats content on their site vs. how Brietbart does it?
Here's an interesting question: would linking to a Breitbart article from Facebook be risky for Facebook if 230 was repealed? That is, we can probably agree that summarizing a Breitbart article into a Facebook post would be risky for Facebook, but a simple link might be fine.
He's completely wrong here. No one really cares that Brietbart publishes lies to their readers on their own site. What people are upset is that facebook, twitter, reddit, etc allow propaganda and lies to be published on their site for their users.
If The_donald wants to make a site and push bullshit, go ahead, people that only want to see The_donald can read it, but coordinating so that hundreds of millions of redditors see bullshit and spread bullshit is ridiculous.