So, the practical results: a marginally higher legal bill for big companies, but at rounding error levels, and likely LESS INCENTIVE to moderate to avoid actual knowledge. But, the BIG loss is for smaller entities, who will now either shut down, be easily pushed around by legal threats, or... - ThreadSky

mmasnick.bsky.social • 15 days ago

So, the practical results: a marginally higher legal bill for big companies, but at rounding error levels, and likely LESS INCENTIVE to moderate to avoid actual knowledge.

But, the BIG loss is for smaller entities, who will now either shut down, be easily pushed around by legal threats, or...

Comments

momofj5.bsky.social•15 days ago

You could retain the protection for small companies. That’s pretty common in other areas of our law.

mmasnick.bsky.social•14 days ago

Every day someone who hasn't thought about this issue at all makes this suggestion and I ask them if they can answer all the challenges raised by actual experts who point out the problems with that solution. And every day there remain no answers.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3863015

mmasnick.bsky.social•15 days ago

... massively limit person to person communication and content.

End result: Meta/Google get MORE POWERFUL with LESS INCENTIVE to moderate.

Every small competitor is massively limited or gone.

I think that would suck.

@opinionhaver.bsky.social may have a different opinion.

hellapositive.bsky.social•15 days ago

Wait, and the claim is they're doing this to bring big tech to the bargaining table? How the fuck does that work?

vonotar.bsky.social•15 days ago

That's the neat part. It doesn't!

aaaac.bsky.social•15 days ago

I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to ask. But the censorship mechanism without section 230 is expensive lawsuits, which would allow the government or private actors to sue people hosting speech online over that speech, which effectually would reduce the ability of that speech to be online?

aaaac.bsky.social•15 days ago

Which the fear is then could be broadened to entire types of speech?

My interest in being online is making adult fiction. So my concern is that with section 230 removed, it'd get too legally risky for anyone to host that.

mmasnick.bsky.social•15 days ago

Yeah. There would be way fewer places willing to host such content.

aaaac.bsky.social•15 days ago

Thank you, just trying to make sure I understood.

jymbob.bsky.social•14 days ago

If you want to see what could easily happen, take a look at what's happening right now in the UK with the dreadful Online Safety Act, which comes fully into force next month, and has resulted in /hundreds/ of small community forums shutting down because they /cannot/ comply in a cost effective way.

joshuasharp.bsky.social•15 days ago

Question: wouldn't eliminating 230 also make the platforms liable for any damages for content that is outside of 1A protection unless there is no moderation?

If I genuinely defame someone on Facebook, couldn't they sue Facebook for damages as a publisher of the defamatory content?

mmasnick.bsky.social•15 days ago

If you genuinely defame someone, FB would only have liability *if they had actual knowledge that said content was defamatory.* In most cases they would not.

billstewart.bsky.social•15 days ago

@target @facebooksafety @markzuckerberg
Re: Previous post #1233423453465526346
You have defamed me!
My mother is NOT a hamster and my father does NOT smell of elderberries!!
I will sue you all !!!
Facebook, you must take down @target's account NOW !!!!
Or Else !!!!!

t8erboi.bsky.social•15 days ago

I'm not sure I see the argument behind "less incentive to moderate." As you said in your post, companies already have an incentive to moderate because unmoderated sites are unusable.

t8erboi.bsky.social•15 days ago

So if Facebook can't avoid actual knowledge without ending up worse than 4chan, wouldn't accepting the increased liability STILL be the less bad option?

mmasnick.bsky.social•15 days ago

Again, FB can afford to take the liability and win the cases (they would win nearly all of them). Others cannot. So, again, only Meta wins in this scenario.

t8erboi.bsky.social•15 days ago

That's also something I'm confused by: asymptotically, the cost of running a social media site should scale linearly with users. If Bluesky has 1% of the daily active users that Facebook does, and therefore 1% of the server costs, why wouldn't it also have 1% of the liability lawsuits?

palecur.bsky.social•15 days ago

Winning 1% of the amount of frivolous suits Meta gets costs quite a bit more than 1% of Meta's lawyer bill.

mmasnick.bsky.social•15 days ago

Such lawsuits won't scale linearly, because most lawyers will know they're expensive losers, but not all. So you'll have a few lawyers chasing these suits. And also, the costs don't scale the same way. Just a few are enough to kill a small site. Meta can stand many thousands & that won't happen.

raphus.bsky.social•15 days ago

I suspect the future we would be looking at is that sites with the resources (Facebook, etc) substantially reduce or eliminate ways to host data publicly, and apply aggressive AI pre-screening to all content, with no human oversight, no way to report posts to a human, and no way to appeal removals.

mmasnick.bsky.social•15 days ago

Under existing 1A precedent, the only way a distributor could be held liable is if they have *actual knowledge* (not general knowledge) of *specific* content that violates a law. Most lawyers will tell sites that the best way to avoid having actual knowledge (and, thus, liability) is to never look.

t8erboi.bsky.social•15 days ago

Thanks, that makes sense.

nora-hakase.bsky.social•15 days ago

This is another content area where you're super patient, Mike.

00johndillon00.bsky.social•15 days ago

Nicely done, Mike. I was always under the impression this would lead to more censorship and suppression, even on bigger platforms. Thanks for threading the needle on the finances causing me to rethink that a bit.

mplsdjl.bsky.social•15 days ago

@skyview.social unroll

sdowney.org•14 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prodigy_Services_Co.

Companies are liable for the speech of their users, possibly only if they moderate at all, so the Internet as we know it goes away?

ironcurtainyc.bsky.social•13 days ago

§230 was created to overturn that very case.

thecleric.bsky.social•15 days ago

Also would've a massive chilling effect to anyone creating new social sites or sites with social features like a comment section.

ironcurtainyc.bsky.social•13 days ago

Like the site we're on, for instance!

flakywanderer.bsky.social•15 days ago

How much would anti-SLAPP legislation mitigate the issue you just described?

mmasnick.bsky.social•15 days ago

Only on the margins in some cases. It would handle one layer of 230-related attacks, but not most of the most recent ones. It would definitely help, but it wouldn't solve everything.

hellsop.ninehells.com•15 days ago

Plus the dissolution of 230 isn't happening alongside a national anti-SLAPP establishment. So even if that were enough, we don't have it and aren't getting it soon. (And a dire and obvious need isn't enough to assure that legislation passes in this environment either, so don't get any hopes up.)

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply