Section 230
Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2023 7:42 am
Apparently the Supreme Court is hearing a challenge on this and nobody really knows what the justices think or might do. This is the portion of the communications decency act (?? I think) shielding internet providers from lawsuits if they platform objectionable content that might otherwise get them sued. I e. Lower court interpretations of this provision have protected social media companies and internet service providers from being sued when their users create objectionable content.
But things have changed since the advertising model shifted to putting as many things in front of viewer's eyes for as long as possible. Nina Totenberg did a nice segment on this earlier this morning, and her example was a family suing YouTube for promoting isis videos, which they contend ultimately led to the death of their daughter who was killed in an attack in Paris.
She also quoted representatives of the pro and the con before landing on what the Biden administration had to say. Yet again Biden making sense to me: 230 should give companies protection for hosting until they start to make choices that manipulate the content by promoting certain things. Then they've done something that goes beyond merely hosting content for which someone else is responsible, because they're deliberately promoting and recommending it.
I feel like making this the legal position would solve a lot of the things I think are bad about social media. But I'm leery of embracing anything that's going to turn out to dampen the freedom to put things online. Maybe that's the correct interpretation of what the companies are doing wrong, but if those companies overreact by strictly policing everything that gets posted, far beyond what would be necessary merely to comply with the law, then it won't be a good outcome. So I'm not sure what to make of it.
But things have changed since the advertising model shifted to putting as many things in front of viewer's eyes for as long as possible. Nina Totenberg did a nice segment on this earlier this morning, and her example was a family suing YouTube for promoting isis videos, which they contend ultimately led to the death of their daughter who was killed in an attack in Paris.
She also quoted representatives of the pro and the con before landing on what the Biden administration had to say. Yet again Biden making sense to me: 230 should give companies protection for hosting until they start to make choices that manipulate the content by promoting certain things. Then they've done something that goes beyond merely hosting content for which someone else is responsible, because they're deliberately promoting and recommending it.
I feel like making this the legal position would solve a lot of the things I think are bad about social media. But I'm leery of embracing anything that's going to turn out to dampen the freedom to put things online. Maybe that's the correct interpretation of what the companies are doing wrong, but if those companies overreact by strictly policing everything that gets posted, far beyond what would be necessary merely to comply with the law, then it won't be a good outcome. So I'm not sure what to make of it.