Mastodawn

Mike Masnick ✅Feb 23, 2023

I have lots of respect for the investigative journalism that @Julia has done for many many years. But her first opinion piece in the NY Times, about Section 230 gets a ton of basic facts wrong, misunderstands the law, and proposes an unworkable and dangerous "fix" https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/23/your-simple-solution-to-section-230-is-bad-julia-angwin-edition/

Your ‘Simple Solution’ To Section 230 Is Bad: Julia Angwin Edition

It’s getting to be somewhat exhausting watching people who don’t understand Section 230 insisting they have a simple solution for whatever problems they think (mostly incorrectly) are c…

Techdirt

ex0du5 Feb 24, 2023

@mmasnick @Julia Your reply sounds very yt. It seems to ignore the fact that platforms have monetary gain from hosting of harmful speech, and does not acknowledge the systematizing forces involved here. The “I can’t monitor everyone making me money” defense is weak.

Air don’t make money off of transmitting speech. Twitter does. Twitter is a full-hearted participant in the speech, incentivizing it even.

I don’t agree in tearing down all liability limitations, but these arguments are poor.

Mike Masnick ✅

@ex0du5 @Julia I don't know what your first sentence means.

But as for the rest, we have different rules for liability for those "transmitting" speech for a damn good reason. If we had liability for transmitting speech, no one would transmit your speech any more.

ex0du5 Feb 24, 2023

@mmasnick @Julia The first sentence is a commentary about how your entire response attempts to frame bad actors as individuals and not systems of harm, a very white viewpoint that has been used to persist structuralized systems of harm.

And the second is a very ignorant response. They transmit speech because it makes them money. People regularly take on risk for the opportunity at profit, which is actually what this is all about. You are sounding really out of touch.

ex0du5 Feb 24, 2023

@mmasnick @Julia In fact, your arguments sound like Elon’s “I’m just about free speech” framing while hate speech has skyrocketed on his platform. The pretending of a lack of participation in the harm is really gross, and factually clearly wrong.

Mike Masnick ✅Feb 24, 2023

@ex0du5 @Julia gotcha. you are willing to completely pretend I've said stuff I haven't said, and you clearly do not understand the issues.

I see no reason to engage further with someone who responds in such a manner.

ex0du5 Feb 24, 2023

@mmasnick @Julia Several people have pointed out in the responses to you about how money making by the firms hosting the speech makes your arguments about “focusing on the ones causing the harm” much more complex than you pretend, and you have avoided responding to every single one.

Also, you have twisted and attacked Julia’s response with more vitriol than I have yours, so your pearl clutching is telling. It’s just avoiding the actual source of the liability being discussed.

Helge Feb 24, 2023

Let me summarize the situation how I understand it:

Section 230 does something and does it well.

People say Section 230 should do something else, and don't explain how to do it well. The framing of this being about Section 230 is entirely frivolous as Section 230 does something, I believe everyone wants it to do.

I'm not going to explain what Section 230 does; or what other people propose; I'm not qualified to. I'm just providing meta commentary about the discussion.

ex0du5 Feb 24, 2023

@helge @mmasnick @Julia Yeah, that’s definitely a framing. Let me describe another framing based in social choice theory and restorative theories of justice. This will take a few posts, as I need to flee this tl;dr server that limits responses to 500.

People make choices. Some of these choices may be a net health benefit to society, some are neutral, and some produce harmful outcomes. Some people (the liberal view of governance on which many governments are based) say harm should be regulated.

ex0du5 Feb 24, 2023

@helge @mmasnick @Julia Section 230 is odd in this regard. It says that if you produce harm due to the structure of your technological choices, you aren’t responsible if that technology’s purpose is “purely” the amplification, not some initial production.

This is a vague distinction based on some idea of transmission that disregards structural features that may grow harm. It is also contrary to this Harm Principle from the liberal tradition, but based in some darker history.

ex0du5 Feb 24, 2023

@helge @mmasnick @Julia For centuries, there has been this desire to claim that speech does not harm. Some of this is based on the authoritarian view of parental dictate over children, and some based in other colonialist distinctions to enforce power in society through oppression, but this leaves clear gaps where society would allow harm without additional distinctions. So exceptions are often listed like lying (contract breaking), libel, the theater fire case, and such.

ex0du5 Feb 24, 2023

@helge @mmasnick @Julia But generally, a theory of harm in speech is generally scoffed at except when presented as a producer/consumer model with transmission seen as a neutral act. “Don’t blame the messenger” is the general idiom.

Yet we do tend to blame the guy who helps the bank robber drive away.

So when the Dearborn was used to transmit antisemitism to hundreds of thousands, that was seen as Ford’s fault, not the company who delivered it to the doorsteps of those masses.

ex0du5 Feb 24, 2023

@helge @mmasnick @Julia That’s the point of Section 230. It tries to make that distinction to focus the liability away from amplifiers of harm. It’s there to protect Twitter when it gets taken over by fascists to be the new Dearborn. It’s there to protect Google when it drives views to fascist thought. It’s there, not to promote the view of rightful governance in the harm principle but to instead ignore the harm of certain decision and point at other decision that on their own cause less harm.

ex0du5 Feb 24, 2023

@helge @mmasnick @Julia Definitely, there are those that say Section 230 is good at what it is intended, and that may be true. If you accept the legislative intent as shielding the blame of harm from certain decisions made by corporations that amplify harm, in some cases clearly deliberately, then yeah, it’s doing that. But if you think the social contract is about protection from harm, it’s actually pretty horrible at that. Kind of contrary, even.

ex0du5 Feb 24, 2023

@helge @mmasnick @Julia In many cases, the amplification actually structuralizes harm. It can be an enticement for others to join the harm, to grow the harm. In many, many (many) historical examples, that was it’s clear intent, often found communicated in private letters years later in historical research. Algorithmically, it often dynamically grows the harm and spreads it. That’s what Mr. Mad Nick is defending, and in the process belittling Julia’s commentary on.

Helge Feb 24, 2023

Section 230 does not talk about transmission. You can find the text here. Are you sure we are talking about the same law?

47 U.S. Code § 230 - Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material

LII / Legal Information Institute

ex0du5 Feb 24, 2023

@helge @mmasnick @Julia

???

What kind of language game is this? This sounds like the kind of avoidance game a kid will play when caught doing something they were told not to. The law is crystal clear about entities such as “interactive computer service” being separate from “information content providers” for terms of liability treatment. What kind of interaction do you think it is talking about? How do you think these words are treated in case law?

This is such an odd comment.

ex0du5 Feb 24, 2023

@helge @mmasnick @Julia what do you think Mr. Masnick was discussing with his comment on air???

K Smith MI Feb 24, 2023

@ex0du5 @mmasnick @Julia

Since Musk has owned Twitter, its ads revenues are way down. So much for your theory that "sites host harmful speech because it makes then money".

ex0du5 Feb 24, 2023

@K_Smith_MI @mmasnick @Julia Facebook internal memos show they refused to limit hate speech because of the ad revenue effects. Google is still rolling bank on YouTube (nearly 30 billion). Hell, Breitbart is profitable. This is a weird angle to attack the point that they don’t host out of generosity and wouldn’t flee if there was liability involved.