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Comment by travisoneill1 | Hacker News Reader

On the one hand it seems completely reasonable that websites like HN should be able to both display user generated content without liability, and also apply moderation at will. On the other hand that kind of negates the distinction between a neutral platform and publisher. Any platform could display user generated content, but curate it via moderation to only show the opinion of its owners, which makes it sort of equivalent to a publisher, but does an end run around the standard rules of liability for such an entity. I really don't know what the best way to handle this is.

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Curated user generated content and a publisher are very different and this needs to be distinguished. This has been mixed quite a lot in the past few weeks of events.

While it is theoretically possible to moderate to th point they are close to each-other, this is not the reality of any of the cases being discussed. Such draconian levels of moderation will kill any community that was not already a full echo chamber without diversity, and not in the "oh Facebook is an echo chamber" way but in a true, cult-like following fashion.

Affiliation vs Promotion vs Allow - Publishers have directly affiliated authors. Algorithms and manually curated sets within UGC are promotion. Most all other social postings are simply "allowing". These distinctions are important, and arguably each have different legislative implications.

> Curated user generated content and a publisher are very different

On the scale of facebook or twitter, not really. You have enough users that every conceivable opinion is going to show up on your platform, and by boosting or suppressing those opinions, you have basically exactly the same amount of power and influence as a traditional publisher.

> by boosting or suppressing those opinions, you have basically exactly the same amount of power and influence as a traditional publisher.

Strong disagree there. First, on either platform, you can go seek out every opinion under the sun, it's users that do their own content selection. Not to mention that there are top-level features that break any user-bubble like Twitter + Trending.

There's plenty of nuanced opinions on power/influence, but equal power/influence does not make them publishers, and I struggle to see how that relates to topics like moderation and liability. If these types of boosting/suppressing mechanisms are the policies actually in concern by people, this has nothing to do with all of the recent buzz/potential actions as any laws addressing that aren't going to get near that, only increase spam and abuse levels.

Are you going to make a law that me choosing the people I follow on Twitter is illegal?

I don't think they are as different as you say. Take the example of the NY Times and Youtube. Both accept content from unaffiliated authors, monetize it, and pay the authors. They both apply censorship based on the ideas expressed by those creators (note the recent censorship of Tom Cotton by the NY Times). Why should the NY Times be liable for what it runs but at the same time Youtube avoids this liability?

Say YT censors after publication, NYT censors before. If you're liable either way, then the first model is just not possible.

Well that brings me back to my first point that on the face of it, the business model seems perfectly reasonable. I brought up Tom Cotton specifically because in that case the NYT moderated after publication like YT, but in any case I don't see why when the moderation is applied should determine liability or lack thereof.

In the real world, when something happens is very important.

Applying moderation before publication is active moderation, so everything that appears is approved by the "publisher." Applying moderation after publication is reactive moderation, so things the publisher disagrees with could get published.

It's like the difference between shooting someone to death and shooting a corpse.

I think my post laid out the response to this clearly: NYTimes has affiliated authors, thus enabling liability. Youtube has promotion at best, more like allowing. The sheer scale of Youtube and the vastness of what is allowed (their monetization system is fucked and needs reform/regulation but that's another matter than liability) makes it clear that youtube is applying policies with large swaths of opinion, not taking any editorial stances beyond what they deem is hate/abuse.

If youtube only allowed centrist opinion vlogs and no other content, you might have a point. They are not even close to comparable to that in a practical world.

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