Hacker News

points by otterley 2 days ago | 0 comments

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.