<story><title>Section 230 Explained</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/section-230-the-internet-law-politicians-love-to-hate-explained/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wahern</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think it would be world ending to get rid of Section 230. I &lt;i&gt;almost&lt;/i&gt; would like to see it happen, if only because it would have precisely the opposite effect expected by all the people whining about being censored. Though, I suppose you can&amp;#x27;t be censored if the channel itself is extinguished.&lt;p&gt;More practically, the technically literate would go back to the world of Usenet, mailing-lists, and minimalistic forums like HN, hopefully inventing distributed reputation systems in the process. I have this vague idea for PGP web of trust-like signing of Usenet posts (published as hidden posts when readers +1&amp;#x2F;-1) which are then SPAM scored based on the depth of the attestation chain to the reader&amp;#x27;s own trusted posters, which may have been seeded from one or more centralized databases of group maintainers, similar to the current registration system for moderated Usenet groups except you could freely choose alternative registrars.</text></item><item><author>EdJiang</author><text>If you haven&amp;#x27;t read Section 230, go do so now. It&amp;#x27;s enabled the development of the modern internet as we know it, and the meat is only 3 sentences. The rest is preamble or interactions with other laws.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; (c) Protection for &amp;quot;Good Samaritan&amp;quot; blocking and screening of offensive material&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; (1) Treatment of publisher or speaker&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; (2) Civil liability&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of-&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; (B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;uscode.house.gov&amp;#x2F;view.xhtml?req=(title:47%20section:230%20edition:prelim)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;uscode.house.gov&amp;#x2F;view.xhtml?req=(title:47%20section:...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>NationalPark</author><text>Would forums like HN survive? I can think of a few incidents where malicious information about people made the front page then turned out to be false. Is HN prepared to defend against lawsuits about that? Is HN prepared to &lt;i&gt;lose&lt;/i&gt; lawsuits about that?&lt;p&gt;It sounds like you&amp;#x27;re basically suggesting that making the internet useless is a good thing, because maybe something something cool will come out of the ashes and there&amp;#x27;s a chance it could be even better after a bunch of extremely hard and broad problems are solved. I don&amp;#x27;t like those odds.</text></comment>
<story><title>Section 230 Explained</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/section-230-the-internet-law-politicians-love-to-hate-explained/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wahern</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think it would be world ending to get rid of Section 230. I &lt;i&gt;almost&lt;/i&gt; would like to see it happen, if only because it would have precisely the opposite effect expected by all the people whining about being censored. Though, I suppose you can&amp;#x27;t be censored if the channel itself is extinguished.&lt;p&gt;More practically, the technically literate would go back to the world of Usenet, mailing-lists, and minimalistic forums like HN, hopefully inventing distributed reputation systems in the process. I have this vague idea for PGP web of trust-like signing of Usenet posts (published as hidden posts when readers +1&amp;#x2F;-1) which are then SPAM scored based on the depth of the attestation chain to the reader&amp;#x27;s own trusted posters, which may have been seeded from one or more centralized databases of group maintainers, similar to the current registration system for moderated Usenet groups except you could freely choose alternative registrars.</text></item><item><author>EdJiang</author><text>If you haven&amp;#x27;t read Section 230, go do so now. It&amp;#x27;s enabled the development of the modern internet as we know it, and the meat is only 3 sentences. The rest is preamble or interactions with other laws.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; (c) Protection for &amp;quot;Good Samaritan&amp;quot; blocking and screening of offensive material&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; (1) Treatment of publisher or speaker&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; (2) Civil liability&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of-&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; (B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;uscode.house.gov&amp;#x2F;view.xhtml?req=(title:47%20section:230%20edition:prelim)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;uscode.house.gov&amp;#x2F;view.xhtml?req=(title:47%20section:...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwawaygh</author><text>The plan is not to repeal Section 230. The plan is to make protection contingent on appeasing political appointees at the FTC.&lt;p&gt;Whoever controls the FTC will be able to (and will) pressure the major social media networks into acting as a propaganda arm for their political party.&lt;p&gt;As dystopian as FB and Twitter are today, in this case, the medicine is poison.&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.hawley.senate.gov&amp;#x2F;senator-hawley-introduces-legislation-amend-section-230-immunity-big-tech-companies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.hawley.senate.gov&amp;#x2F;senator-hawley-introduces-legi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>