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Will Silicon Valley's Next House Member Rewrite a Key Internet Law? (sfchronicle.com) 133

Posted by EditorDavid from the Section-230 dept.
An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this report from the San Francisco Chronicle's senior political writer: The next House member representing Silicon Valley wants to change a key piece of federal law that shields internet companies like X, Facebook and Snapchat from lawsuits over content their users post. That protection is considered the lifeblood of social media.

The top eight Democratic candidates vying to succeed Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo in her very blue district agree that something has to change with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which was created in 1996, back when lawmakers shied away from doing anything that could limit the growth of the industry. Their unanimity is a sign that Eshoo's successor won't be a tool for the hometown industry. At least not on this issue. The challenge is what to do next. Whoever is elected, their actions as the voice of Silicon Valley will carry outsize weight in Congress. They can lead the charge to actually do something to clean up the bile on social media...

The good news is that they will have bipartisan support to address the bile and disinformation online. The bad news is that finding the right solution will still be hard.
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Will Silicon Valley's Next House Member Rewrite a Key Internet Law? More

Will Silicon Valley's Next House Member Rewrite a Key Internet Law?

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  • Ultimate double edged sword (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04, 2024 @05:33PM (#64213486)

    Be careful what you wish for, making these companies culpable will mean the death of forums or really almost any public discussion media.

    What company in their right mind would want to take on the liability for the worst of their userbase? It won't happen, they'll just shut down discussion completely and that's that.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      >to address the bile and disinformation online.

      I am more concerned with unequal application of the law than 230.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      And the third edge,.. it will not be the 'worst' of their user base that suffer the consequences, it will be the weakest.

    • Facebook won't have any problems (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday February 04, 2024 @07:51PM (#64213820)
      Neither will Twitter or any of the other major billionaire backed websites. This will just turn the internet into a heavily censored pro corporate hellscape.

      What pisses me off about this is that it's the same dumb shit the left wing did with citizens united where they think they can go toe to toe with mega corporations in a fight and win. There's a bunch of dumb law Lefties and neoliberals think that they can use this to kick the Nazis and the racists off the internet.

      Those Nazis and racists are extremely useful to large corporations who send them to the polls to vote on pointless culture War issues instead of on important economic issues. So if section 230 gets killed we're still going to have the Nazis and racists but we're going to lose all the spaces where you can agitate for union membership or universal health Care and things like that.

      • Re:Facebook won't have any problems (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday February 04, 2024 @10:43PM (#64214166)

        So if section 230 gets killed we're still going to have the Nazis and racists but we're going to lose all the spaces where you can agitate for union membership or universal health Care and things like that.

        Yes, and it has happened before.

        In the 1930s, the left passed laws against "un-American activities" to suppress the right. Then, in the 1950s, the right regained power, and Joe McCarthy and others weaponized the same laws to target the left.

      • Re: Facebook won't have any problems (Score:4, Interesting)

        by kenh ( 9056 ) on Monday February 05, 2024 @01:14AM (#64214388) Homepage Journal

        Do you recall what sparked Citizens United? A movie company wanted to show a movie critical of a Presidential candidate close to a Presidential election... that's it.

        Do you remember what provoked the Dobbs decision? Abortion enthusiasts took exception to a state imposed 15 week ban on abortions. And what was the result, Abortion is now up to the states (where it always belonged), and many, many states have imposed limits on abortion far, far worse than anything they could have done during the reign of Roe V Wade. (As a note, the vast, VAST number of so-called First-World nations have limits on abortions around 15 weeks, but we needed to join with Russia & North Korea and try for elective abortions at any point in the pregnancy...)

        Democrats, in cases like this, have a tendency to over-reach and then regret ever 'poking the sleeping bear' - in the immortal words of that famous song "...You don't know what you've got till it's gone..."

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by vlad30 ( 44644 )

      Be careful what you wish for, making these companies culpable will mean the death of forums or really almost any public discussion media.

      It won't happen, they'll just shut down discussion completely and that's that

      It could also be used selectively against companies/Sites that don't promote the government view. to kill that site e.g. the company formerly known as twitter. It would be better to go after the author if its truthful with evidence the author will win. If not the author is subject to a slander case

    • To be fair, these officials probably view this as a feature, not as a bug.
      They never really cared about speech on any media, until it started going against them.

  • Freedom of speech (Score:5, Informative)

    by rtkluttz ( 244325 ) on Sunday February 04, 2024 @05:35PM (#64213494) Homepage

    Freedom of speech is *** INFINITELY *** more important than protecting hurt feelings or preventing idiots from believing misinformation.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by darkain ( 749283 )

      https://xkcd.com/1357/ [xkcd.com] not only the comic, but the alt-text is an absolute banger.

      • Depends on why you got banned, etc from a forum.

        If you violated TOS (for real) then shrug, bye.

        If you got banned because at that week's meeting with the white house, the company was provided your UID on a list of people the WH wants banned then that is a clear 1a violation.

        • The latter has never fucking happened

          • It definitely happened, and it's a MUCH bigger deal than any progressive will ever admit. The democratic party went so far as to completely turn their backs on this guy who they were all in favor of during the Bush years.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

            This is Nixon level shit. The actual story of the watergate break-in falls well within the "who cares" territory. Nixon wasn't actually involved in it either, and to this day nobody believes he was. The scandal was that he tried to cover it up after the fact

            • Net neutrality is an idea I've always supported

              Weird, since you don't seem to understand what it is.

              Net neutrality opposes, for example, an ISP blocking a customer's traffic to/from Netflix unless the customer pays an extra fee.

              It's not about censorship, rather it's about service providers treating all Internet traffic equally and not creating artificial tiers of Internet access so ISPs can milk more money from their (often locked-in) customer bases.

              Being opposed to crappy ISP pricing structures and being opposed to state-mandated censorship are not the

    • 1) Go into a Walmart
      2) Start yelling about your political beliefs
      3) Walmart makes you leave
      4) Claim your freedom of speech was infringed

      • Your misleading example only applies to forums and discussion boards that are clear what is on-topic and what is off-topic.

        For big social media that give people their own profile page and post their own thought, your example doesn't apply. Forums and discussion boards that ban every politic topics are okay. Big social media that amplify political camps the boss like and silence camps the boss dislike, all while pretending the platform is a social tool for all people, are NOT okay.

    • Fully, entirely agree with you.
      My caveat is that the majority of message boards, chat rooms, reddit, Twitter, etc only provide the ILLUSION of free speech.

      There are already laws against libel, threatening people etc. Those still stand and should be applied. No, what I'm talking about is generally termed moderation but invariably ends up a politically twisted censorship where not just illegal speech is blocked but ideas THAT THE MODS DISLIKE ARE THROTTLED.

      That's bullshit.
      Yes, freedom of speech should be al

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ormy ( 1430821 )

      Freedom of speech is *** INFINITELY *** more important than protecting hurt feelings...

      Agreed 100%

      .. or preventing idiots from believing misinformation.

      Well now, if it was just people believing misinformation (i.e. no further consequences) then OK I still agree with you. But when those idiots number in the tens of millions and go to the polls and make voting decisions based on their misinformed beliefs, that can have a very negative impact on everyone else, and that I think raises the importance of the issue to be equal to the importance of freedom of speech.

  • The next House member representing Silicon Valley wants to change a key piece of federal law that shields internet companies like X, Facebook and Snapchat from lawsuits over content their users post. That protection is considered the lifeblood of social media.

    Social media as we know it today, which isn't referring to anything worthy of defense. Lets hope for a better 2.0.

    • Do you honestly believe that political discourse will improve in the U.S. if social media is required to be censored by partisans in the government or by greedy executives of social media companies?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by drnb ( 2434720 )

        Do you honestly believe that political discourse will improve in the U.S. if social media is required to be censored by partisans in the government or by greedy executives of social media companies?

        I think it would improve if social media required a real name in a public forum. A real name relieving social media of responsibility. Sort of like how opinion pages in newspapers worked in the past. Name and town included or editor tossed your letter into the trash.

        • As I commented elsewhere on this article: "And that is how you end all forms of whistleblowing in the U.S." Some of the most valuable information we have comes from people who were allowed to report it anonymously. Even the government hesitates to require reporters to divulge their sources.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by drnb ( 2434720 )

            As I commented elsewhere on this article: "And that is how you end all forms of whistleblowing in the U.S." Some of the most valuable information we have comes from people who were allowed to report it anonymously. Even the government hesitates to require reporters to divulge their sources.

            To get into the details, I am not against the occasional anonymous post. If a social media company investigates a claim, finds it true, and publishes it referring to anonymous sources that is fine. It is literally acting as a journalist in that sense and has quite strong constitutional protections. But for the more mundane and common BS, publish names to get immunity from the content.

        • IN-the-day newspaper editors acted as  censors ... we have moved beyond that. Privately owned WWW social media should have well-articulated   human moderation. Pick your website ... pick your neighbors ... pick your poison. 

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by drnb ( 2434720 )

            IN-the-day newspaper editors acted as censors ... we have moved beyond that.

            No, we have made mistakes, and could learn from the past.

            Privately owned WWW social media should have well-articulated human moderation. Pick your website ... pick your neighbors ... pick your poison.

            As newspapers of old also did, where we picked our papers based on leanings. But we are not talking moderation here, we are talking legal immunity. We have erred there and been too generous and it such generosity has been abused. Social media needs reigning in.

            • Free citizens expect  for (political)  speech not only legal immunity, but also legal protection. Pick your favorite sacred cow ... affirmative action, CMYK-Trans, legal migration, unions  ... now imagine that sacred cow has been gored by a bison beyond recognition and weeps bloody tears. The gub;mnt gun-barrel is onsite to protect owners of both oxen and bison.  Something like that dick & jan story ...   

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by drnb ( 2434720 )

                Free citizens expect for (political) speech not only legal immunity, but also legal protection.

                Red Herring. The comment above was discussing a post identifying the actual author, thereby relieving the social media company of any responsibility. The point being, social media does not need the blanket immunity it now has and which has led to unanticipated negative consequences.

  • If anyone wants to post on any social media
    they can't be anonymous.
    You have to be answerable for anything you post.

    • You first. What's your name and address?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by drnb ( 2434720 )

      If anyone wants to post on any social media they can't be anonymous. You have to be answerable for anything you post.

      Name and town worked for newspapers, back when there were newspapers. Worked for radio too, back when there was radio. Things were pretty clearly labeled as opinion too.

    • That'll surely foster a lively public debate, what with cancel culture and all. Even in countries with a strong history of free speech, posting the wrong opinion can land you in a world of hurt. Not because that opinion is bad and you need to be answerable for it, but simply because there will always be people taking exception to whatever you wrote, and decide to take action with potentially far-reaching consequences.
      • As our Founding Fathers intended, Dan Wesson ensures my anonymous  free speech. He's a patient service, but given Floridas' stand-your-ground law  responds quickly to intrusion. 
    • And that is how you end all forms of whistleblowing in the U.S.

    • Our Founders would disagree with you and a few would have been in prison before the revolution started if they weren't allowed to publish anonymously.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by acroyear ( 5882 )

      JWZ: "When the response to your argument can be found in the Federalist Papers, you've already lost the argument". (Signed, Publius.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thaylin ( 555395 )

      That would violate the first amendment. Being anonymous is a right.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dryeo ( 100693 )

        Try driving down the road anonymously (no tags or ID) and see your right in action.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tippen ( 704534 )

          Try driving down the road anonymously (no tags or ID) and see your right in action.

          Freedom of speech (1A) has what to do with driving exactly?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dryeo ( 100693 )

            I seem to have mis-understood you. What part of the 1st gives anonymous speech as a right? Seems it is something a Court added thinking it should be a right and was meant to be there. While I agree that anonymous speech is important, having rights that have been declared by the courts is dangerous as that right can just as easily be removed. At that an originalist reading of the 1st simply means no statuary laws restricting speech, something else the courts have expanded to speech meaning political speech a

  • The answer is still "no".

    Freshman House members have zero power to do anything - except impede progress. And, even then, they only can impede by joining up with others.

  • What's up with the headlines on Slashdot? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nkwe ( 604125 ) on Sunday February 04, 2024 @06:02PM (#64213576)
    Why do the editors here insist on making almost all the headlines a question? Are they unaware of Betteridge [wikipedia.org] or something? Why wasn't the headline for this article "All House Candidates for Silicon Valley Promote Rewriting a Key Internet Law"? Titling it this way would more accurate but still not give away the content of the article, prompting folks to read it. The most useful title, but one that wouldn't require reading the article would be "All House Candidates for Silicon Valley Promote Rewriting Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a Key Internet Law". Since all the candidates are proposing changing the law, asking the question in the current title is really asking "Will the candidates do what they say they will?", which is a good question but not really what the story is about (which is that there is unanimous support among the candidates to change the law.)
  • Who could currently be trusted with the power to determine what is truthful and tasteful? And if you can think of anyone, what is the likelihood those are the people chosen to be the arbiters of social media? What happens when someone you don't like is given the reins and they call your speech bile and disinformation? As much as I don't care for the mountains of disinformation being purposely dumped onto social media, I don't think censorship is the answer. Besides, the First Amendment clearly makes alm

    • Obviously, people who agree with me are smart and honest and educated and trustworthy.

      People who disagree with me are lying scum of the earth sub humans.

      I shall pick the censors after filtering out the second group.

  • At least they admit (Score:3)

    by starworks5 ( 139327 ) on Sunday February 04, 2024 @06:33PM (#64213656) Homepage

    Its about the government violating the first amendment.

    "From 1791 to the present," however, the First Amendment has "permitted restrictions upon the content of speech in a few limited areas," and has never "include[d] a freedom to disregard these traditional limitations." Id., at 382-383, 112 S.Ct. 2538. These "historic and traditional categories long familiar to the bar," Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of N.Y. State Crime Victims Bd., 502 U.S. 105, 127, 112 S.Ct. 501, 116 L.Ed.2d 476 (1991) (KENNEDY, J., concurring in judgment) — including obscenity, Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 483, 77 S.Ct. 1304, 1 L.Ed.2d 1498 (1957), defamation, Beauharnais v. Illinois, 343 U.S. 250, 254-255, 72 S.Ct. 725, 96 L.Ed. 919 (1952), fraud, Virginia Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U.S. 748, 771, 96 S.Ct. 1817, 48 L.Ed.2d 346 (1976), incitement, Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 447-449, 89 S.Ct. 1827, 23 L.Ed.2d 430 (1969) (per curiam), and speech integral to criminal conduct, Giboney v. Empire Storage & Ice Co., 336 U.S. 490, 498, 69 S.Ct. 684, 93 L.Ed. 834 (1949) — are "well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem," Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 571-572, 62 S.Ct. 766, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942).

    https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12907128943316010890&q=content+based+restrictions+united+states+v+stevens&hl=en&as_sdt=6,38#p1585

  • Before anyone thinks this is a good idea (Score:3)

    by Dusanyu ( 675778 ) on Sunday February 04, 2024 @07:25PM (#64213770)
    They should read two facinating books the first being "The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet" which is about Section 230 and why it is important for free speech. the second which i feel everyone should read "Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation" which goes into when lieing is and is not protected speach and why it should remain so. He even tells a fun anic dote about the oft Missqupted platitude about "yelling fire in a crouded Theater" (With intent to cause a panic) and how the ony examples of the phrase in Juripridance was a Prosecutorial Argument agint someone who was critasizeing the draft just before World war 1

  • The problem is that Joe Blobs is public facing to be abused. As Zuck said from the very beginning, "The dumb fucks" have handed out all their personal details.

    So the fact that Facebook then used it to make "someone" the real person is where we get into all the problems. Your presence online shouldn't be your real presence at all. Arguably, Social Media shouldn't exist at all.

  • Holding companies liable for the actions of their users, seems to against the Geneva Convention, which lists collective punishments as prohibited. Instead, people need to be held accountable for their actions. Just like how Andrew Tate is facing the music, or the killer in the Amanda Todd case was held accountable
  • The bottom line is that generally humans have simply not evolved far enough to have access to unrestricted exchange of information at the speed of light. Nobody is willing to admit that, so instead they are trying to create paternalistic government policies to protect the gullible masses. The alternative is let evolution take its place, let the naïve and stupid die believing whatever the latest trend is. Only those who develop critical thinking skills over their base instincts would survive. I say we t

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