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Comment by marstall | Hacker News Reader

I watched the piece. Here are the basic points it made (which I agree with):

- Pre-internet, generally speaking the only entities capable of widely spreading facts about private individuals were things you could sue for defamation or libel: newpapers, tv stations etc.

- Now Twitter, Facebook and YouTube can spread defamatory information about anyone without paying a similar price.

- It's true that the services will eventually accede to taking the content down (although in one case, that of a woman murdered on camera, it seemed to have proved difficult/impossible to fully do so given all the reposts).

- But they let it be put it up there in the first place! Once its up, all the damage to someone's life can be done in a day.

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You can still sue the poster. Section 230 just means you cant sue the service provider for defamation and slander.

Do you think phone service providers should be sued for conversations their subscribers have? Similar thing.

Also without it you could sue companies like cloud flare, aws or anyone providing hosting infrastructure.

While I agree you shouldn't be able to sue service providers, I think it is different because Twitter and Facebook recommend things for you to read and amplify the message. The recommendation/amplification aspect is what needs liability.

What about bookstores? They make recommendations too. Imagine if every used bookstore had to send every book they resold to a lawyer to make sure it didn't defame anyone.

If a bookstore promoted a libelous book to millions of people, then yeah, I'd expect them to be as liable as the publisher and author.

They absolutely aren't treated the same as publishers: "Thus, newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters are liable for republication of libel or slander because they have editorial control over their communications. On the other hand, bookstores, libraries, and other distributors of material are liable for republication only if they know, or had reason to know, that the statement is defamatory." https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/law/law...

In other words: they aren't expected to have actually read every word of every book they sell. Publishers, newspapers, etc, are. But if a book defames me on page 154, the law doesn't hold the bookstore responsible unless it knew. Once it does know, you could probably sue. But that's not the same as treating it like a publisher- it's a different standard.

In brief searching I could not find a case where this was true. I don't think bookstores have a duty to read and fact check every book they sell in order to insure that no third party is damaged. It appears to me that they have a duty to the whomever they bought the books with to adhere to whatever contract they signed and a duty to the buyer to provide what the buyer paid for in terms of it actually being Stephen King's IT and not for example the result of their cat walking over their keyboard printed on 597 pages.

It doesn't appear that they even have a duty to the buyer for it to be a good and useful work.

The duty you want to imagine is real would seem to be impossible to reasonably provide because the cost of paying out every time they were wrong would mean books would all cost $500 and in turn the book stores would all shut down. The only viable way to sell books would be to run a website overseas in a less insane jurisdiction selling epubs.

If you wanted to take it to the next level and enforce liability for anything that goes over the wire you could just give up 99.9% of content in the universe?

You can wager that the human involved with book recommendations will do a better job than an algorithm trying to show you metaphorical train derailments or car accidents 24/7

but where do you draw the line? Does a search engine count?

maybe we could have a system where if the company is open source/transparent with their recommendation engine and data they are free from liability, but if they profit off the recommendation/notification content they are liable.

profit motive for recommendation/amplification is probably what damages humans at scale

If 60 Minutes interviews the US President, and the US President says that a pandemic is not dangerous, and viewers rely on that statement to the detriment of their respiratory systems, should the injured viewers or their estates be able to sue 60 Minutes for amplifying the US President's untrue and harmful statements?

No. They are, quite literally, reporting the truth. They are reporting EXACTLY what the president said.

It isn't their job --at least not what I think the job the US Constitution should protect-- to create their own version of what he said, embellish it or modify it in any way, in support or opposition.

I don't want news anchors to creatively interpret reality for me. I want facts. The interpretation is mine, not theirs. Most of them are politically biased liars.

profit motive for recommendation/amplification is probably what damages humans at scale

Is it acceptable for 60 Minutes to choose who they put on their show? If, in their judgement, the US President is saying something that is false or dangerous, are they within their rights to say so, or to decline to broadcast that segment at all?

> Do you think phone service providers should be sued for conversations their subscribers have?

If they have even an incidental financial benefit from this behavior and take human or algorithmic steps to encourage it on their platform, then yes.

> Also without it you could sue companies like cloud flare, aws or anyone providing hosting infrastructure.

And yet, telephone companies were explicitly not liable under previous doctrine without 230 even existing. The idea of a "common carrier" far predates section 230.

I think it's fair to ask if companies like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube should honestly deserve that common carrier status.

There is a diff. A phone convo is more like a Twitter DM. A regular post is akin to a broadcast (like TV, Radio, etc.)

Even then you normal would not sue the company providing the radio broadcasting equipment. Just the production making that particular radio content. Some times they were the same, but they could be different entities.

Section 230 also protects those providing infrastructure for the internet as they do not have common carrier status. Also where do you draw the line between hosting and not? I can use twitter and many other sites to host images. Alot these sites grew out of an easier to use means to host content.

Like what about sites like word-press and medium that also provide easy to use platforms for blogging. Should only the technically inclined be allowed to get hosting?

Yeah, the suits usually follow the money or oversight, like the host, producer and or station owners.

Phone services are not publishing. They are also not curating content, promoting speech. The broadcast methods that are available using the phone (robocalls, phone banks) are the same for everyone, and rely only on money and not on algorithmic measures of engage-ability.

If a TV station had a call in show where the callers were pre-screened to be slanderous, would that be an example of a publisher or a common carrier?

I don't know the answers but it's not so obviously clear cut as running the pipes.

The phone company doesn’t moderate content. I think what blurs is that social media companies aren’t just dumb pipes (like cloud flare), they all have different levels of moderation based on what they decide and not only block content, but also promote content.

I think if they were just going to be ISPs then 230 should apply, but it seems odd that a company can select a piece of content and show it to a million people and then not be responsible. And then alternately, they can choose to remove content due to automated and manual rules, not required by law. It seems like they should either be regulated or not.

It seems off that if I solicit articles from random and print them out and mail them, I’m liable for libel. But if I review them all and publish them on a server then I’m no longer liable.

Yes, they do. Phone companies attempt to block SMS spam.

SMS spam is illegal. Phone companies also turn off service for fraud, etc.

To be more precise, phone companies only block based on regulators and consistent (at least theoretically) rules based on legal authorities given to regulators.

Mobile phone companies can "moderate" a customer or user from abusing their services. Also, traditional phone now includes VOIP, video chat, etc.

You pay the phone company for a service. They have certain obligations they need to uphold in exchange for payment.

New media isn't paid for by its consumers. Their computer, their rules. Nobody is wringing their hands over the decades of censorship by broadcast radio and television for "community standards".

Regulations on phone companies isn’t based on whether I pay them. In my state, phone lines must dial 911 even if there’s no customer. That’s because of regulation. And I don’t pay them anything.

I don’t think the need for regulation depends much on how much I pay to use the service or whether the publisher is responsible for content.

Another example is that even publishers of free newspapers get sued for libel.

>> You can still sue the poster. Section 230 just means you cant sue the service provider for defamation and slander.

That presumes the account can be traced to a real person.

I'm all for having solid end to end identity verification, but that opens a lot of doors governments and companies dont want us to have. For one it makes end to end encryption easy, as its equivalent to ensuring you aren't being MITMed.

Mandated identification is an even more terrifying idea. I already stop signing up for a site when the ask for a phone number. Last thing I want is to make easier for companies to track me.

Not only that I think anonymity is important. Without you could also just as easily be threatened or harassed by people online. It cut both ways.

>> Not only that I think anonymity is important. Without you could also just as easily be threatened or harassed by people online.

If someone threatens or harasses you online, and they are not anonymous you can take action. Like you say, both ways.

You can always have sites that drop your identity. It's technically easier to drop information than to verify it.

That's not true, though. Pre-internet bookstores could sell libelous books without being liable for their contents. You can't sue Barnes and Noble for selling books that defame you, you have to sue the author.

Section 230 extends that regime to websites that host other people's content.

You could sue the publisher, which is analogous to suing social media companies. Suing B&N is like suing an ISP.

B&N makes way more moderation decisions than an ISP, they promote books, they recommend books, they lay out a store so you can browse the different books on offer. They aren't a dumb pipe like a good ISP.

Specialty bookstores are even less like an ISP, they might restrict themselves to one or a handful of genres. Leftist bookstores have an ideological filter. And so on. None of them are like ISPs at all.

It would be weird to make Medium treated like a publisher for hosting a defamatory blog post while a bookstore selling a bound copy of the same content would not be. That's why section 230 is a thing!

You can sue them to have known libel removed from their shelves, but their exposure is not the same as the publisher unless for some reason they do not actually remove it.

>- Now Twitter, Facebook and YouTube can spread defamatory information about anyone without paying a similar price.

Is that necessarily true though? If someone spews libelous content on Twitter, are they not individually susceptible to being sued for libel?

you can sue the individual. Look at what happened to elon musk for just saying “pedo guy”.

And Musk was found not guilty. And you can't 'just say' that another person is a pedophile, that's a serious accusation

The US has a high bar for defamation/slander because the 1st amendment. Also musk could higher decent lawyers.

Even then he still was sued, the case was not tossed for lack of standing or merit. The judge still thought there was a case worth arguing.

For all that "don't read the comments" seems to be common knowledge in the tech community, we have a collective blind spot about the product design choices we make that amplify annonymous, un-vetted, un-sourced claims.

Almost all our tech media products default to treating things as "this is good enough to broadcast to the world until someone proves we should take it down" instead of defaulting to "this is probably low-value dreck that's not worth much distribution."

This is certainly easier from a product design perspective... but does it really make sense?

What would a sensible alternative be?

No recommendations or notifications without liability.

I don't think think this really solves the issue of content quality like the original comment was addressing.

However, I do think it's a step in the right direction and makes sense. After all, if your platform is promoting specific content by your own actions/volition, then it's no longer just content posted by some user, but it's now being used or reposted/linked by the company that owns the platform for monetary gain (I would guess ToS would solidify this with some boilerplate statement saying they can use your content to make money and to promote the platform etc).

Decouple discovery (e.g., suggesting posts from new users or paid ads) from the protections afforded to dumb carriers/hosting services (i.e., posts received from users you follow or are engaged in a discussion with).

Are you basically saying to remove protections from platforms that take an active role in the content propagation, Like Facebook ranking algorithms? If so, I agree that this would be a step in the right direction. But what paradigm replaces the original comment's statement that platforms treat all content as good instead of vetting it for quality? I'm skeptical of how we could have a system that vets for quality without introducing more/other issues. That's what I wanted to learn more about.

Completely agree with you. FB and Twitter can (and have) destroyed peoples lives in more ways than one.

Knowing about history can be important when evaluating and thinking about some of these ideas. Most people I have seen posting comments to your comment are rehashing arguments that were at the core of the Cubby v. CompuServe some thirty years ago.

FB and Twitter MODERATE and control everything on their systems. This places them in a position of responsibility. While IANAL, I think I can say this is a case of legal precedent. Are there cases that reverse or modify Cubby v. CompuServe?

For all their AI prowess they sure as heck seem to just suck at it when it comes to moderating for quality. These platforms are oceans, no, galaxies, of lies, misinformation and manipulation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc.

> platforms are oceans, no, galaxies, of lies, misinformation and manipulation. well said! depressing. i was so hopeful in 2006.

I am literally old enough to remember the arguments for Section 230 when it was voted into law. And they basically boiled down to "this internet thing is too new, let's protect these tiny new companies now that they are starting up by removing liability".

Totally made sense at the time. A quarter of a century later, these are now the largest companies in the history of humanity. We should at least be able to discuss what kind of liability we should be able to put on them.

Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are not the ones spreading the disinformation. Individuals are. What has changed is that individual people have the sort of voice that once only newspapers and institutions had.

By your logic, the phone companies would be legally liable for everything that users say or plan on phone calls.

I think my main gripe with these platforms is that an anonymous random person can accuse a specific person of anything without any corroborating evidence and destroy that person’s life with impunity —especially when responsibility gets diluted via retweets, mob mentality, etc.

It would be interesting to see the statistics of the number and percent successful of defamation and libel suits based on source of the info. I don't think those cases are very common since they can be hard to prove.

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