@fraying not everyone running a fedi server is in the US

(I say, from a server with an admin in the US)

@fraying

Yes. I'm sharing the following mostly for others since I went and looked it up myself.

And you're right, if we lose Section 230, so many of us would be unable to host our own servers, and the Fediverse would be in danger.

This is upsetting. Stripping away our ability to talk to each other online.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-you-should-know-about-section-230-the-rule-that-shaped-todays-internet

Quote from article: "“The primary thing we do on the internet is we talk to each other. It might be email, it might be social media, might be message boards, but we talk to each other. And a lot of those conversations are enabled by Section 230, which says that whoever’s allowing us to talk to each other isn’t liable for our conversations,” said Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University specializing in internet law. “The Supreme Court could easily disturb or eliminate that basic proposition and say that the people allowing us to talk to each other are liable for those conversations. At which point they won’t allow us to talk to each other anymore.”

@fraying

Very important...for #US admins/owners:

https://mastodon.social/@HistoPol/110012370982948974

@fraying I certainly don’t think 230 should be repealed, but it needs revision.

I think sites should not be responsible for user generated content, but they should be responsible for manual or automated editorializing that user generated content.

So direct timelines would not be affected, but if Yelp reorders posts, they assume some liability, if Facebook or Twitter reorder content then they are responsible for what they are promoting or hiding.

@fraying There are two provisions called Section 230. Although striking down either of them has significant concerns, I think we should at least distinguish between them.

230(c)(2) is the one that shields providers from liability for blocking or removing contents. This is what GOP hates, and this is what every website relies on for moderation.

230(c)(1) is the one that shields providers from liability for NOT blocking or removing contents. This is still useful, because certain states claim that LGBT related contents must be blocked because they are inappropriate to children. 230(c)(1) effectively nullifies such claims.

FOSTA (and perhaps DMCA) is the one to blame here. It created an exception to 230(c)(1), and guess what, people across the U.S. now demand certain "illegal" things to be outside 230(c)(1) protection, and certain politicians use this effort to ALSO dismantle 230(c)(2).

@fraying

Hi Derek!

And greetings from the remote mountain regions of #Humboldt where we export the genetics for those 🌺 flowers 🤘💀🤘

Anyway...

I'm trying to your post in which you both misconstrued and misinformed the reader with alarmist, and generally misunderstood narrative.

Specifically, and respectfully:

>***"I wonder if people using mastodon know that, without section 230, no one could legally afford to run a mastodon instance in the US. Section 230 protects what we do here every day. Politicians threatening 230 are threatening free speech on the internet."***

Although we'll go over both sentences, the part that I really take exception to is the first one:

- "I wonder if people using mastodon know that, without section 230, no one could legally afford to run a mastodon instance in the US."

I quoted you twice for emphasis, because what you said is simply NOT TRUE, at all Derek, but who would want to run a single user mastodon server instance anyway?

Okay a select few, but it's not economical to do so - here's why:

It's such #bloatware and a #resource_hog compared to other, more capable and featureful #Fediverse servers, like #Pleroma, #Takahē, #Epicyon, #Akkoma, #Calckey, #Soapbox, #Friendica, #Socialhome, #MicroblogPub, #Misskey, #Smithereen, and the list goes on and on for a while; a veritable laundry list of platforms endowed with more feature rich, more resource and energy conserving footprints.

You could call mastodon the white elephant in the room when it comes to kruft, waste of energy and resources, or lack of the most desired features by it's traditional userbase (although people are nowadays migrating their accounts to these other Fediverse platforms in ever increasing numbers).

Like you, I'm also a staunch proponent of Section 230, as it was originally intended and written - to protect publishers, NOT editors. But most of the conservative agendas to which you refer only seek to remove protections for sites that cross that line between that of #publisher to that of #editor anyway - so as long as you don't interfere with a user's #speech those deprecated silos would have nothing to worry about.

It's the Marxist/Leftist agendas in Congress that you need to worry about - they're proposing complete evisceration of section 230 - and yes, that would jeopardize, probably even put those monolithic deprecated silos out of business for good.

- I see very little that is bad about killing a rabid animal... Or a fox in the henhouse.

But... riddle me this Batman:

What would be so bad about that? It would destroy the surveillance plutocracy and data farming of individuals and their identities by those socalled, "Big-Tech" subjugation engines like #Faceplant, #InstaSPAM, #Reddit, #Twitter, and to a large degree, #Google too... (It won't do anything to stop the likes of Amazon or Apple though wrt their surveillance programs).

All if that, while at the same time encourage the migration of people to a fully decentralized and safer social media network where there are either no platforms (only censor proof protocols), as in #nostr; or #federated #SmallWeb and single user #ActivityPub platform instances; or those #Fediverse platforms that vow not to #molest_users who #publish on those platforms by imposing draconian #editorializing (censorship) upon their users.

Either way you can certainly look at this as a win-win situation for the #individual in #social_media networking. The question really is therefore, "How badly do you wish to punish the privacy disrespecting subjugation farms that comprise that deprecated, monolithic silo space?"

I hope that helps, Enjoy!

#tallship

⛵

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@fraying Section 230 might be cast aside & something better instituted. It's also possible that servers/instances/Internet providers that ONLY provide a place for people to say stuff, NOT manipulate readers with algorithm-driven whatnot, NOT curate material, NOT scrape others' materials off the Internet & repurpose it, NOT commission their own content — might remain protected under 230, while Meta-FB-etc. are justifiably sued.

#social #internet #section230 #writers #publishing