Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

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> Not a lawyer, but is this actually the case?

Generally, no, they have a license, generally a broad, perpetual, non-exclusive license per the conditions attached to use of the site. not ownership. OTOH:

> I thought the core of section 230 was about exactly that - that a site operator does not constitute a "publisher" for everything that is written on their site, if the site is just a "dumb" software that displays content written by the site's users - and therefore can't be made liable for anything written in user-generated content in the way they would be for editoral content.

This is wrong on multiple levels; it specifically does not require that it be ”dumb” (neutral) software, which would have made them a distributor not a publisher under the law without Section 230; it specifically is to allow site operators (and other users) to do things that shape which content is presented without being subject to liability as a publisher.

But that's about liability, not ownership.

> (... this doesn't even touch on the situation where that content contains intellectual property or PII.)

If its not IP, no one has ownership ; ownership of content only applies to IP of some kind.

Thanks a lot for that clarification. That actually changed my understanding of section 230: I always thought that the "shaping" of content was some sort of loophole that the section might have more or less accidentally enabled - I wasn't aware that this was its main purpose.

Considering that we increasingly understand how much power lies in that ability to "shape" distribution of UGC, and how much platforms actively abuse that power, the people wanting to reform/repeal the section just got a whole lot more sympathetic in my view.

> If its not IP, no one has ownership ; ownership of content only applies to IP of some kind.

(I edited the GP before I saw the reply)

My point was more who is responsible for violations of other IP in UGC - i.e. the classic case of someone uploading a blockbuster movie to YouTube. Would the liability fall on YouTube or the individual user who uploaded the content.

Or, in a similar vein, you post your address/phone number/real name/whatever to a platform, then later want to delete the post again, but the platform doesn't let you. Can you (legally) force the platform to delete the post or not?

However, the fact that both scenarios resulted in years-long, (and still ongoing) debates and in the end, new laws had to be passed to handle them (DMCA and GDPR), shows to me that the whole area seems to be extremely messy and not completely well-defined.

But yeah, the other question is also interesting: If I uploaded some personal project to YouTube (which would constitute IP I believe) and suddenly it goes viral, could Google steal the video and publish it as their own? Good to know here that they can't.

> Considering that we increasingly understand how much power lies in that ability to "shape" distribution of UGC, and how much platforms actively abuse that power, the people wanting to reform/repeal the section just got a whole lot more sympathetic in my view.

I’m curious who you’re referring to as the people wanting to reform/repeal. Most of the discussion on section 230 that I’ve seen in recent years can pretty much be summarized as “I allege that you’re shaping content to reflect a particular political/cultural preference. Therefore you should not be shielded from responsibility for illegal content”—which is a total non-sequitur. But maybe there’s also bee more thoughtful discussion that I’ve missed since I was never really paying that close attention to it.

Really, those people weren’t even looking for reform. They wanted to apply their interpretation of the existing law such that it would lead to a punitive outcome for the sake of retribution.

Yeah, that's the point. Create a negative outcome for companies that perform politically biased censorship, as many do. It gained a ton of popularity during covid because so many were against the government banning public assembly. Yet the only remaining avenues for broad speech censored views that went against the CDC's demands

> [have the government] Create a negative outcome for companies that perform politically biased censorship

Let’s not leave out an important few words.

No, the government does not create the negative outcome. It is simply an act of removing broad protections granted to a social media company from hosting illegal content. When it's clear that the assumption they have little control over the overall content are not true, because the act to censor to politically slant said content.

The risk comes completely from their members and the ones who may sue them

Why has the focus been purely on instances of perceived political bias if this isn’t just a pretext for punishing the wrong type of perceived political bias? Shouldn’t any demonstration of content control cause the same loss of protection (and cause the same fervent calls for loss of protection)? This would include removing illegal content. Removing illegal content, under your theory, should cause a platform to lose protection from hosting illegal content.

Well that's a bit of a chicken and egg. You only get "protection" from accidentally hosting illegal content if you never host any illegal content in the first place?

The idea is that if you have time to shape the slant of your community, you have no excuse for letting illegal content faster

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