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Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

It's something that internet freedom advocates have wanted for a long time, and it's unfortunate that these are the people introducing it.

edit: people seem to be misunderstanding what I'm saying, or maybe misunderstanding what is being implied in the article.

Section 230 is GOOD, and it is something freedom-fighters have advocated for for a long time. What I'm saying is that freedom-advocates have been in favor of using the threat of losing 230 protection as a way of compelling platforms not to censor speech that they don't like.

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The question of publisher vs platform is a question of who should be sued for bad speech.

If Twitter / Wikipedia is legally vulnerable for bad claims, such as by Rush Limbaugh, then Twitter would feel incentivized to remove such risky individuals from the platform. If Rush Limbaugh were held responsible for his statements, he may feel poorly about freely disclosing his narratives.

You always have to look at the facts and not align with a party. Maybe one party does more stuff you like but if the other party does something you want, you should support it.

This seems like the complete opposite of what "internet freedom advocates" would want, unless I'm missing some subtlety?

Internet freedom advocates (like the EFF) have been major advocates of section 230 protections specifically because they can compel sites not to censor content.

So basically: no you can't just remove that anti-government, anti-corporate, etc. stuff, because once you do that you are no longer protected, so you better let EVERYBODY speak (within reason) so or else.

That's not how section 230 works at all.

Sites under section 230 are well-within their rights to curate content. They're just not responsible FOR content posted on their platform. It seems like you have an objective misunderstanding of how section 230 works.

For example, HN is a platform covered by section 230 as well. If HN removes political content, do you believe that HN should have its section 230 rights revoked?

That seems to be the exact opposite of their stated policy position on CDA 230[0]. I don't see anything about how they support private sites losing protections for removing speech hosted on the platform. Do you have a source for your claims?

[0] https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230.

So it's the 4chan empowerment bill?

I'm curious: What internet freedom advocates? Because the EFF seems to believes in section 230 being a generally good thing.

And back during the Christchurch shootings when there were proposed limitations to section 230 to make companies liable for hate speech on their platform, there was an uproar from the internet freedom advocates that this would result in censorship and less free speech.

Your curiosity is rewarded: https://disclosurespreview.house.gov/?index=%22lobbying-disc...]

Gosh what an ugly URL. It's the lobbying reports for Twitter. The biggest internet "freedom" advocates are the paid lobbyists of the tech industry.

> Because the EFF seems to believes in section 230 being a generally good thing.

Citation for claim?

https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230

What, how do internet freedom advocates want this?

Are we next going to say google is responsible for the search results it provides, when it's just indexing the internet and returning the best match algorithmically?

HN is going to start being responsible for every piece of garbage someone posts?

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