Comment by IfOnlyYouKnew | Hacker News Reader

Comment by IfOnlyYouKnew | Hacker News Reader

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Reverting to the law doesn't really change anything.

Laws are almost as arbitrary as moderation guidelines. And while they are democratically legitimised in principle, they are rather static by nature and absurdly unchanging due to current political dysfunction. The chaotic system of the current "court of public opinion" probably leads to an outcome that is far closer to the actual desires of a plurality of people.

The law also tend to divide content into sharp legal/illegal categories, whereas the more chaotic practice of differing moderation policies allows for a gray area. And that area is where some meaningful discourse could possibly happen.

Logically, moderational discretion happens only within the space of legal content. It is therefore, indeed, smaller than the maximum allowed by law.

But that is no different from any other group we participate in offline. At work, Thanksgiving with the family, or in some random store, we do not insist on being allowed to use the full spectrum of what's legal. If someone starts screaming obscenities in the theatre row behind you, they'll hopefully be escorted out.

Right, but those are private spaces.

Social media is what i would consider a public space.

Your analogy would be analogous to police locking up lawful protestors.

> Social media is what i would consider a public space.

This is where the true disagreement is. We can both believe in the constitution, in the first amendment, and in section 230, but I don't believe social media is a public space, because the person paying for the server is not the government. To me, these are very explicitly private organizations running web applications. For it to be a public space, it would necessarily not be limited in existence to the ability of a private organization to keep it running profitably.

Madison Square Garden is a private space, because someone owns it; it cost money to build, it costs money to maintain, there are finite seats, etc. The organization paying for the thing to exist has authority over the thing. If you want a public space, you can either create one explicitly, or petition the government to create a social media platform bound by the first amendment. It isn't Reddit or Twitter. Those are someone else's property.

No, it's a more fundamental disagreement than what constitutes a public vs private space, it's a disagreement about who gets to choose. If a private corporation gets to decide by virtue of ownership - property rights granted by societal contract to begin with - then they have unilateral, unaccountable power over society. We are in the process of deciding the nature of corporate personhood and how applicable the Bill of Rights is to organizations so what is "public" and "private" is still an open question.

> If a private corporation gets to decide by virtue of ownership - property rights granted by societal contract to begin with - then they have unilateral, unaccountable power over society.

Again, I have the opposite interpretation. If the government gives a private organization property rights, the government is the holder of power over society. The organization has authority over what the government gave it the rights to, and the government gave them the right (with section 230) to moderate their property in the way they are now.

> The organization has authority over what the government gave it the rights to, and the government gave them the right (with section 230) to moderate their property in the way they are now.

I think we're in agreement.

Laws are not immutable which is what I'm getting at. We're past the "public" vs "private" debate, we're now debating whether to change laws and adjust which rights private organizations have - whether to adjust or repeal 230 entirely.

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