Social media companies are generally not liable for user activity under a statute commonly known as Section 230, a 1996 law that was aimed at encouraging new forms of communication at the outset of the online era.
In the early days of the internet, there were several high-profile cases in which companies tried to suppress criticism by suing the owners of platforms.
One involved a lawsuit against the early online service Prodigy by Stratton Oakmont, the brokerage firm depicted in the Leonardo DiCaprio movie “The Wolf of Wall Street.” The court found Prodigy was liable for allegedly defamatory comments by a user because it was a publisher that moderated the content on the service.
So let me get this straight, there has been established precedent set in court that if a company moderates their content heavily, they are no longer protected under section 230? Where’s the section 230 removal from Twitter, Facebook, and all Google Platforms?
@coyote The internet has moved on since 1996, how has the law kept up with that ?
@coyote It would certainly have unintended consequences.
@coyote @zleap i thought so too but I chatted with some people in a Constitutional Original Intent and Modern Application debate chatroom about how First Amendment would still allow free speech. But, it would allow more censorship. My thoughts is eliminating Section 230 would simply lead to more Decentralized services because they are censorship resist and the people doing the censorship on centralized services wouldn't be responsible as middlemen that way.
@MakeAmericaFreeAgain @coyote It is complex, over here a few football (as in soccer ) have been subjected to racist abuse, not sure how free speech /. expression fits in there but at least with a decentralised platform they would just be able to block the servers responsible or lock down a mastodon server for example for that teams players
if you want to follow them you do from another instance
@coyote @zleap because it would put liability on the corporations rather than the individuals, but if a shift to decentralized tech happens then the individuals would be solely responsible for their actions. So, really there would be no need to defend oneself unless unlawfully arrested for speaking freely. Hoping that makes sense.
@coyote @zleap thus the need for Anonymous Computing. SCOTUS ruled anonymous speech legal under 1A, and if you do a quick search MIT teaches its students about the ethics and importance of anonymous computing due to what you just mentioned. All its going to do is force protected speech to become anonymous speech or psuedo-anonymous speech even. That's all.
I believe you are correct to some degree, but that is why sites like 4chan and 8chan thrive. As well as ZeroNet/FreeNet now.
@coyote well users are already. as people have been sued for comments made, libel, slander etc still apply in the digital world
