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The Open Social Web Needs Section 230 to Survive (www.eff.org)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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[–] 26 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Section 230 needs an update. It needs to be made clear that hosing speech is not a liability.
"Recommending" speech with a black box algorithm that the user can't control or select IS a liability.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago* (4 children)

    I like that. If you censor or promote speech, you should be responsible for it, to the same extent. You stop being a carrier and start being a curator.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago*

    Not quite. These aren't "free speech" rules.

    If a company, organization, or community doesn't want to have certain kinds speech, they can remove anything they don't like. Disney can't be required to host comments about how Mr. Wheeler was right to drive on the sidewalk killing people. They couldn't be sued for it if they did. But that's already included in 230.

    The only important thing that's changed between the mid '90s and now, is that sites actively select and push user created speech onto people who didn't choose to see it. Speech that wasn't from a community or user they choose to follow. If that speach leads to harmful behaviour, then sites should be able to be held accountable for the harms.

    That's all I'm saying. Promoting user content is fundamentally different than hosting it. Hosting needs to be protected as it has been. Promoting does carry a new level of responsibility. Censorship (when not the government) is still well within an organization's rights.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    So how does that work with Threadiverse instances, many of which have openly partisan rules? Would that make instances like lemmy.blahaj and dbzer0 liable because they censor specific expressed political and social viewpoints?

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    Censoring content isn't the same as recommending content though. The OP was referring to recommendation algorithms specifically.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    Hexbear in particular literally stickies posts to their instance and thus in that sense 'recommends' it. The user replied saying that if you "If you censor or promote speech, you should be responsible for it, to the same extent."

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