My take on Musk's trajectory over the last four weeks. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/elon-musk-and-the-narcissism-radicalization-maelstrom/sharetoken/Zs4zc5BXA9Et
@joshtpm You know what matters much more than the psyche of Elon Musk is the fact that we allow one forum to be so large that it really matters than an Elon Musk can buy it. To my view, we have to downsize Twitter (my route is repealing Section 230 https://cepr.net/repealing-section-230-giving-mark-zuckerberg-what-he-wants/) but the fact a single platform can have such importance is the real problem.
@DeanBaker13 @joshtpm I do think that Musk's ability to buy Twitter in the first place demonstrates a huge problem with having centralized sites like Twitter being run by publicly traded companies, but repealing Section 230 is a terrible idea that would have serious knock-on effects and would probably lead to huge swathes of the modern Internet closing simply due to legal liability, including a huge number of Mastodon instances, blogs, comment sections...
@mmasnick has written extensively on techdirt.com on why Section 230 repeal would cause huge issues.
@mmasnick
Intellectual blindspots are weird. While a number of people I know of have minor, often transient ones, from time to time, I expect to see major ones like this from people who think they've found out how to square a circle with a compass and straightedge, not educated people like Dean.
@DeanBaker13 @joshtpm
@mmasnick @mathlover @joshtpm Mike, you have a standing offer to have an exchange on my blog where you get to tell me how stupid I am. As before, the deal is I outline my proposal, you tell me it's stupid, I respond, you get last word. Each one is 1500-2000 words.
@DeanBaker13 @mathlover @joshtpm I know that. I'm way too busy correcting others right now to correct you too...
@mmasnick @mathlover @joshtpm well, let me know when you have time to correct me by laying out your full argument
@Naureckas @mmasnick @mathlover @joshtpm Thanks Jim -- got that one sent to me many times. I read through it carefully, nothing answered the points I raised.
@DeanBaker13 @mmasnick @mathlover @joshtpm
Not for Dean (or for Mike), who are no doubt familiar with their own work, but for anyone following this discussion, these seem to be the three main pieces where their disagreement is laid out at length:
https://cepr.net/getting-serious-about-repealing-section-230/
https://www.techdirt.com/2021/12/29/those-who-dont-understand-section-230-are-doomed-to-repeal-it/
https://cepr.net/repealing-section-230-giving-mark-zuckerberg-what-he-wants/
I already posted Mike's general correction to what he sees as misunderstandings of 230:
@mathlover @joshtpm @mmasnick FWIW, as I proposed it, only sites that sold advertising or personal information would lose Section 230 protection https://cepr.net/repealing-section-230-giving-mark-zuckerberg-what-he-wants/ I didn't realize Mastodon did either of these things.
@DeanBaker13 @joshtpm @mmasnick Reading your blog entry, you are correct in that Mastodon doesn't do those things and thus *might* not be as badly affected were your proposal to be implemented. You are not correct, however, in assuming that getting rid of Section 230 would bring larger social media to heel.
If anything, it would affect smaller commercial sites more than big ones, the latter of which have the money and the lawyers to defend against the (completely frivolous but harder to dismiss) lawsuits that would inevitably follow from such a repeal. Which reminds me: how is filling the courts with frivolous, but expensive-to-resolve lawsuits a good solution at all?
There's another issue I spotted in your entry:
> ... I proposed a notification and takedown rule similar to what now exists with material alleged to be infringing on copyrights. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a website ... can be subject to penalties for copyright infringement if they have been notified by the copyright holder and fail to take down the infringing material in a timely manner.
First, there are numerous problems with the DMCA takedown system as is that make it easy to abuse; I don't think you want to copy-paste that system for another thing. Second, how would such a takedown system even work for civil law issues? Would it be "if you don't take down this content according to this notice, I can sue you for what some other person posted, even if said content is 1A protected"?
@mathlover @joshtpm @mmasnick What sort of sites are you thinking of? I'm sure it would lead to a restructuring with many sites taking steps to protect themselves. For example, Airbnb would probably ask people to wave their right to sue as a condition of using it, but I gather you have other types of sites in mind.
@mathlover @joshtpm @mmasnick btw, given that Twitter was already losing money, I'm not sure why anyone would be confident that it could absorb additional expenses associated with potential liability it would face if Section 230 was repealed.
@DeanBaker13 @joshtpm @mmasnick
This raises another point: why muck about with Section 230 repeal/alteration in order to fix the larger sites when Twitter and Facebook are driving themselves into oblivion as-is? Heck, wouldn't it be better to, say, encourage things like ActivityPub adoption by government and others than to bring about massive, intentional regulatory climate change?
You still haven't answered my other questions about larger sites being less affected, how such a DMCA-like system as you proposed would even work, or why using floods of *demonstrably* frivolous cases to solve problems is in any way a good idea.
@DeanBaker13 @joshtpm @mmasnick
Let's see:
* The comments section on a news site that sells advertising.
* The comments section on a blog running ads in some side panel on the site.
* Etsy, eBay, or any e-commerce site of that sort.
* Pinterest, Reddit, or any other mid-range social media site.
@mathlover @joshtpm @mmasnick Thanks -- the comments sections for blogs/new sites seems like a relatively small deal. Maybe they would over-react to takedown notices, but that doesn't seem like a big problem. (How many will they see?) Etsy and eBay are not exactly small fish, they should be able to figure it out. Perhaps Pinterest and Reedit would be whacked. I don't know and I'm not sure it is a big problem if they are.
@DeanBaker13 @joshtpm @mmasnick Imho that's an excessively cavalier attitude on your part. "These sites and comment sections and their content might get whacked, and there may well be a chilling effect as people overreact to takedown notices, but that's not a big problem" isn't a line of reasoning I'd be comfortable using.
@mathlover @joshtpm @mmasnick I said that there are different routes people may go. If they go a subscription route, they have nothing to worry about. If they have a small number of comments, it should not be a big deal to moderate them, as most sites probably already do.
You are apparently fine with saying the current situation is "not a big problem," since I don't hear an alternative solution.
@mathlover @joshtpm @mmasnick I should add, I find the current situation, where a Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk has enormous control over what gets posted on huge platforms, unacceptable. I would not expect any sort of perfect fix that does not have some negative consequences. As a general rule, if you think you have a useful policy proposal, that does have bad effects, then you probably don't understand the policy.
@DeanBaker13 @joshtpm @mmasnick
How about strengthening antitrust law along the lines of that which the current FTC head wants? To be fair, I'm still very iffy about the idea of redefining the law in that way myself, and IIRC Mike Masnick has been at least somewhat critical of it; nonetheless, it's *still* a far less drastic idea than altering Section 230.
(I'm going to repeat this next paragraph from my other post until you address it.)
You still haven't answered my other questions about larger sites being less affected, how such a DMCA-like system as you proposed would even work, or why using floods of *demonstrably* frivolous cases to solve problems is in any way a good idea.
@mathlover @joshtpm @mmasnick It's not clear that anything the current FTC chair wants to do would prevent a Twitter or Facebook from being pretty much what they are.
I wrote (perhaps to someone else) that Twitter was already losing money -- I assume that counts as a "larger site," so it doesn't seem like they would be unaffected. I also pointed out that sites could CHANGE (yes, that happens) their manner of operation.
@DeanBaker13 @mathlover @joshtpm I'm a small news site. I get legal threats related to our comments many times per year. I also got sued over them, and was protected by Section 230.
And you want to remove that and destroy my site.
I'm sorry, but you're just wrong on this and you should stop.
do you get threats for suits over defamation for the things you write?
@DeanBaker13 @mathlover @joshtpm much less frequently than we do for comments.
@mathlover @joshtpm @mmasnick Not sure what you mean here about 1A protected. People get sued for defamation all the time, are you making an argument that these suits violate the First Amendment.
@mathlover @DeanBaker13 @joshtpm Dean and I have discussed this at length. He has a massive blindspot in which he refuses to recognize that both Facebook and Google are now happy to sell out Section 230, because they know that it does WAY more harm to small companies and will lock in the giants.
He refuses to understand this and I do not understand why.
Section 230 protects the small guys. The big guys barely need it.