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Comment by klmadfejno | Hacker News Reader

I've seen many people discuss how this ruling could kill small internet communities. Curious how people would react to simply making a separate class for excessively large websites that are effectively public spaces due to scale and likelihood of frequent encounter.

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Basically this. I run a small moderated community and the repealing of Section 230 would mean I would become responsible for everything my site's users say if I dare to moderate anything beyond illegal content. There needs to be a separation under law of social media giants which permeate every corner of social life and small communities.

Serious question - if what your users are saying isn't illegal (because you moderate that away), what's the problem in being "responsible" for it?

The problem is that it's not enough anymore to try to moderate away illegal content on a best-effort basis and you're required to be perfect. In the earlier situation, if the moderation misses some violating content and leaves it there, it's still the sole liability of the poster. With the recent changes, if you don't want to be liable for less-than-perfect moderation, the prudent choice seems to be to avoid any moderation at all; you'll leave all the illegal content alone but at least that won't be your liability.

Illegal is nebulous, there are two aspects to it, criminal and civil. Civil liability is the one that's most in play here, since criminal content like CP or threats of violence are more easily recognizable. Defamation and libel lawsuits can be problematic, and you can be sued by celebrities and politicians for defamation. Even if you win it, the lawyer fees, and the inconvenience of dealing with the courts etc. isn't worth it at all.

Public spaces? It’s platform or publisher, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

I feel like it's really easy for these sites to have their cake and eat it too. Anything the company writes is considered publishing and anything someone not affiliated with the company says falls under platform.

If a forum's owner/admin participates in the forum, does that mean it's no longer a platform?

That only feels problematic if you're a huge company, which is exactly my point. If you're a small forum, I don't see any problem with you playing both roles.

I doubt that this ruling is going to kill small internet communities. They generally have people of similar interests are more closely knit, so there is less spam or mindless conflicts.

The big ones like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter, might be killed or at lease heavily impacted should this ruling go against them.

> Curious how people would react to simply making a separate class for excessively large websites that are effectively public spaces due to scale and likelihood of frequent encounter.

It should have been done long before.

>I doubt that this ruling is going to kill small internet communities. They generally have people of similar interests are more closely knit, so there is less spam or mindless conflicts.

Let's say you like kittens and are in a kitten forum. I'm an unscrupulous lawyer looking for a pay day. I go to your forum specifically to troll and say kittens should be eaten as snacks. You ban me. I file a lawsuit against you.

It's not the members that you have to worry about, it's third parties with an ax to grind against the whole community or financial gains for doing so.

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