I spent the early 2000s on SomethingAwful. I have a lot of tolerance for letting people say bad and wrong things and for hosting such speech. First Amendment.
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But at some point if a new mother comes in asking for books on sick babies and you decide the best thing to do is sell her a book on horse pills because it's the most profitable and then you go 🤷♂️ when she actually listens to it, well...
Just as no law says you can’t host it, no law says you *must*, and it’s important for everyone to put pressure on platforms which do. It’s why I left Twitter, for example. They promote Nazis; I will not give them my support.
I mean, truth is I'm not sure myself if I'm making an ethical or legal argument. I'm no lawyer and don't know case law. I think if someone asks for a book on health and you give them garbage that's legal. If they ask for an art book and you give them CSAM that's not, and 230 knows that.
I am a programmer and I'm fine we sell tools that can injure. So does Home Depot. I'm a lot iffier about when the product injures by design or is indifferent to it. But again, ethics or legality I'm not sure. Bookstore or tobacco company?
I'm a card-carrying member of @eff.org . They have great points about why the Take it Down act is bad. What the UK is doing to encryption. But I struggle with the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too game of promoting harmful content and also denying knowledge it's there or ability to better control it.
Yes, 100%. Back during COVID when people were clamoring for censoring "misinformation" my head was on that was a wildly dangerous law. Fortunately and unfortunately, I was right.
But tobacco is harmful and not illegal and it's been highly regulated and found to have liability.
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Has anyone been arrested for their book, podcast, video, or t-shirt saying “Take horse dewormer!”
If it’s not illegal to *produce* the speech, how is it illegal to host it or recommend it?
It’s *immoral*, amd the response should be pushback, criticism, and boycotts.
All speech someone wants to censor is speech they claim is harmful. No one says “This must be banned because it’s harmless! Good, even!”
If, say, the head of HHS claimed recommending *vaccines* was harmful, would you give him the tools to ban speech promoting vaccines?
But tobacco is harmful and not illegal and it's been highly regulated and found to have liability.
how about nazi recruiting ads?