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points by csnover 2 days ago | 0 comments

Hello, please see [0].

[0] https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...

Paid advertisements should be exempt from Section 230.

If you're earning almost 200 billion dollars a year directly from the posting of a certain type of content, you can afford basic moderation to avoid obvious scams and fraud.

[–] Terr_ 2 days ago

While I like the general thrust of that idea, there are some kinks to work out.

For example, suppose someone pays $/month for Cubic Zirconia Membership Tier on a site that boosts their posts over the hoi polloi.

That person makes a post hyping up their company or product with a link. Isn't that also a "paid advertisement", just with a different payment scheme? What happens if their product is a scam or otherwise legally-problematic? If gets Section 230 protection, how can we prevent sites/advertisers from abusing the new definition?

[–] erentz 2 days ago

I feel like whenever S230 comes up and I see people defending it I get confused because the defense doesn't seem to address what seems to be the concern of the people saying it needs removing (or more realistically reforming).

The concerned is one of consistency in how media is regulated. E.g. Facebook, is the worlds largest media company, and it truly acts and behaves as a publisher now. It acquires its content from an army of paid and unpaid providers. They may be individuals, often they are influencers, often they may be nefarious agents and companies. It then decides how to place that content in it's "publication", which just happens to be an app and website. It goes out and tells the market, "I have this great publication in which you can place ads!". It then sells ads to those people, and makes a decision on how to place those advertisements inside its publication alongside that content that it acquired.

So how is it not a publisher? And why should it be regulated to any kind of different standard from other publishers?

[–] csnover 2 days ago

Because removing Section 230 would not do anything to address the concern of the person saying it needs removing! It is a shield against civil liability, not criminal liability. If Facebook are aiding and abetting to profit from criminal fraud, Section 230 does not allow them to skate free, and so, it does not need to be changed.

If Section 230 were gone tomorrow, it would likely only be the Facebooks of the world who would survive, as only they could afford the lawyers necessary to fend off frivolous defamation lawsuits. No sane person would run a free web forum where they agree to be considered the “publisher” and therefore the liability for anything some rando posts.

Certainly I think there is a case that could be argued that when a web site says they explicitly screen and approve every piece of content, which as far as I know is what these ad tech companies claim to do with their ads, that it does create a duty of care which should not exist for UGC which is approved and moderated later. But I’m not currently aware of anyone arguing this point in court. Certainly that would be the thing to do first. Otherwise all these knee-jerk “reform S230” remarks are advocating for solving a cockroach infestation by dropping nuclear bombs on the city.

[–] SideQuark 2 days ago

Simply Google “is social media a publisher” and you’ll learn it is not, not even close, by any legal definition.

Therefore you could save all your other questions and statements.

[–] toddmorey 2 days ago

OK, fine. But they are also an ad network, which absolutely acts as a publisher. I think they should be liable for the revenue they bring in from knowingly fraudulent ads.

Legal definitions can should change in order to keep up with society and technology.

[–] SideQuark 2 days ago

No where does it say they know which ads are fraudulent and continue that particular ad.

It’s nuts how many people simply don’t read or think.

Walmart can say, for example, they know they’ll lose 3B to theft. That doesn’t mean they are wanting it, or allowing it, or know exactly which item will be stolen when and where. It means, given their scale, and from evidence they gather after the fact, this is an estimate of what happens when they have so many locations.

Now go read carefully, and don’t make stuff up about what you read, and think about the facts presented.

[–] erentz 2 days ago

You're just responding here by saying "by law they are not thing X" in response to people who are saying "maybe the law should be different because they sure act like thing X".

[–] SideQuark 2 days ago

No. Did you read the law? You wanting them to be a publisher because you don’t understand the difference between a legal use of a word and a popular use of a word does not make them a publisher any more than the right to bear arms means I can go shirtless.

Publisher, in the legal sense, has a long history, and content providers are not that any more the the word arm in the legal sense means human arms.

[–] GrinningFool 1 day ago

But that legal meaning of the word can be changed by changing the laws. Seems that's what's under discussion here.

[–] SideQuark 1 day ago

This sub thread literally starts with “how are they not a publisher?”, not with “we should change the legal definition of publisher.” As such, it would be reasonable for people to know the colloquial vague idea of “publisher” and the legal term are not identical.

[–] otterley 2 days ago

When social media chooses what to display in a user’s feed—even if the content is 3P generated— then it starts to look an awful lot like a publisher. Would you consider a newspaper not to be a publisher of its own op-Ed page? How about the old Reader’s Digest?

[–] SideQuark 2 days ago

So a comic book store, by choosing what to put in the front of a store, is a publisher. Me, by choosing what Christmas decorations to put out front, is a publisher.

I wish people would simply learn to read a little law instead of routinely not understanding simple concepts.

[–] otterley 1 day ago

I am an attorney.

Your analogies don’t hold. There’s no act of content reproduction (the essence of publication), as there is with the examples I provided. DMCA is about copyrightable subject matter.

So how about you knock it off with the attitude?

[–] SideQuark 1 day ago

Good, expert attorney. Then tell us: is Meta a publisher under the law? If not, why not?

I’m guessing Meta and the public both have attorneys, and I suspect all those attorneys also know the answer.

[–] otterley 1 day ago

You make it sound like there's a cut and dry answer to this. There isn't. Moreover, not all kinds of content are alike. There's content that Meta itself produces, and there is content that 3Ps produce (UGC, or user-generated content), which is what Section 230(c)(1) of the CDA pertains to. (Apologies for mentioning the DMCA in my previous response, I erred there.)

It's an interesting question as to whether Meta's act of selective republication of others' content constitutes its own content. This matter hasn't been adjudicated; I expect it will be in the fullness of time.

Parties and their attorneys disagree on legal and factual questions all the time. Meta has a position; others may differ. These disagreements are why we have a dispute resolution system (i.e., the courts) in the first place.

[–] Terr_ 2 days ago

You beat me to it.

I'd emphasize that the scummiest sites with zero moderation never needed Section 230! Section 230 is what allows you to have some moderation (e.g. banning spammers) without suddenly becoming entirely liable for anything that passes the filter.

Blindly reverting Section 230 means eliminating that moderate position, splintering sites into:

1. Ones that abandon moderation entirely in favor of chaos. Maybe you can salvage something by giving opt-in filtering tools to individuals, but you'll still have the problem of someone using your site to store ten terabytes of the Bee Movie.

2. Ones that demand participants sign a serious legal document promising to pay for any problems before they can submit anything.

3. Ones which remove almost all expressive ability, beyond narrow things like like/upvote features.