Section 230?

[question everything]

“60 minute” just had a very convincing story about the damage that Section 230 is causing. A long interview with a bereaved Sandy Hook father who has bee taunted for not having a son. A cyclist who was in Wuhan and has been threatened for bringing Covid over.

I am sure it will be available online.

And yet, we know that he vetoed the defence bill because he wanted Section 230 repealed.

Would be nice to sometimes have a discussion about it without his input.

[Blue_true]

1. The Section has allowed a lot of seriously vile stuff to be posted on social

media, under the "freedom of speech" rule. That such vile trash is not deleted is nonsense that many right her on DU are defending. If social media companies had done what they should have, 98% of what Trump has posted since 2009 would never have seen the light of day.

[Make7]

2. Section 230 doesn't require companies to leave content up on their service.

They are perfectly within their rights to delete user content that doesn't meet their standards.

Take DU as an example, there are things that will cause posts to be removed and/or people banned. DU can moderate their site as they see fit.

What Section 230 does is give sites a liability shield for user content. Once again, take DU for an example. How long would DU last if Trump or Republicans could sue DU for any negative thing users posted about them here? Sure the lawsuits would fail, but the cost to DU to defend against them would put DU out of business. And if they did manage to stay afloat, they would end up censoring users just to avoid any possible lawsuits.

As in most things in life, this issue isn't simply a binary option of good vs bad. There are both positive and negative aspects to Section 230.

[question everything]

4. Thank you. Makes sense. There should be a way for Facebook and Twitter

And YouTube to remove inflammatory content and this was the point made.

[NutmegYankee]

3. Section 230 simply allows message boards to exist.

It doesn’t prevent moderation, and in fact encourages it. Without section 230, sites like DU would cease to exist within a few years.