Hillary Clinton Joins The Chorus Of Ignorant Pundits Insisting Section 230 Must Go
from the that's-not-how-section-230-works dept
Apparently, the one thing that can unite Democrats and Republicans in 2023 is a shared desire to destroy the internet’s legal framework. Hillary Clinton is the latest to jump on the ‘Repeal Section 230’ bandwagon.
It’s truly stunning how Section 230 has switched from being a crowning achievement of US tech policy to something that is now almost universally hated, though almost always by people who don’t understand it.
Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump have insisted that it needs to be repealed. Senators on both sides of the aisle, including Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham, are supporting bills to repeal Section 230.
And now Hillary Clinton has joined the crew of ignorant political pundits spouting nonsense about 230 and saying it needs to be repealed.
“They were granted this impunity for a very good reason back in the late ’90s, which is [when] we didn’t know what was going to happen,” Clinton said, adding, “Nobody knew anything because nobody had a real sense of what was happening.”
“Well, now we do, and shame on us that we are still sitting around talking about it,” she continued. “Section 230 has to go. We need a different system under which tech companies — and we’re mostly talking obviously about the social media platforms — operate.”
Instead, Clinton suggested the U.S. should “come up with the right form of liability” for tech companies.
The thing is, removing Section 230 will not fix whatever problem any of these people think it will fix. Trump seems to think it will make sites no longer ban him. He’s wrong. If there’s more liability at risk, they may be less willing to have him constantly spewing potentially legally liable statements on their platforms.
Biden and Clinton seem to think that there’s some magical “right form of liability” for internet companies. But we already have that right form: it’s Section 230, which simply says that the liability falls on whoever imbues the speech with whatever violates the law. Merely hosting content should never do that. Nor would recommending it.
Section 230 serves a particularly useful purpose: preventing frivolous lawsuits. What everyone calling for its repeal is effectively saying is that they want more frivolous lawsuits, most of which will simply be stopped eventually by the First Amendment, but after much more significant expense for websites.
If Clinton thinks we should have more liability for third-party speech, she’s going to find that the First Amendment likely stands in the way of that desire.
And, really, what Biden and Clinton seem to be admitting in their desire to remove liability protections is that they want to suppress speech, namely the speech of people like Donald Trump, because they know that any threat of more frivolous litigation would lead companies to take down such accounts faster.
So, the position of Clinton is inherently censorial.
It remains a silly, ignorant claim, but I fear that we’re going to keep hearing it over and over again from politicians who don’t understand the underlying issues, as it seems unlikely anyone is going to learn.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, hillary clinton, legal liability, section 230
Comments on “Hillary Clinton Joins The Chorus Of Ignorant Pundits Insisting Section 230 Must Go”
Once, again… ITS UNDER THE SAUCE.
What’s particularly baffling and ironic about Hillary’s statements is that her Bill Clinton’s administration was the one that created Section 230 in the first place. So, she is actively trying to undermine not just the greatest innovative transformation of the internet, but her own husband’s legacy.
To quote South Park, “GET OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY!”
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It’s almost like two people can have different opinions, even if they’re married, and she doesn’t have to cover for her sex offender husband’s “legacy”.
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Sure, spouses can have different opinions. But when you owe your spouse your entire political career, the least you can do is not trash-talk said spouse’s major accomplishments.
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This might shock you, but my husband and I aren’t 100% in political lockstep either.
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There’s a difference between disagreeing with your spouse and undercutting your spouse’s greatest accomplishment because… FOMO?
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Because she wants control. That’s more or less always who she’s been. This should surprise Bill less than it surprised anybody.
Personally, I’d have preferred she undercut his “third way.” But that would have ultimately been a win for the people, so of course we get this instead.
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In what universe is Section 230 Bill Clinton’s “greatest accomplishment”? The suggestion is idiotic.
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Section 230 has positively influenced the lives of literally billions of people. Which of his accomplishments even comes close to that?
I was really, really hoping she’d just fade off into obscurity after 2016.
This implies that the companies actually want to take down the accounts of the likes of Trump et al and that the threat of lawsuits would make them do it faster. That’s not really the case. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more all give massive leeway to Trump and people like him and show no intention of actually dropping the banhammer on them.
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The reason platforms are willing to give more leeway to the likes of politicians and other powerful figures is because they believe that the gains in the form of more engagement and attention on/to the platform from them outweigh the costs of hosting them.
Should they become legally liable for what those people say on their platforms those costs are going to rise rather quickly and it will reach a point where it’s simply not worth it for them to continue to host such people.
It's not 'confusion' when you're lying
It remains a silly, ignorant claim, but I fear that we’re going to keep hearing it over and over again from politicians who don’t understand the underlying issues, as it seems unlikely anyone is going to learn.
Once more with emphasis I guess…
Stop. Giving. Politicians. The. Benefit. Of. The. Doubt.
These are people who are either in office or running for it, stop assuming that the reason they keep getting 230 wrong is because they ‘don’t understand’ what might be the simplest law on the books based upon the most basic concept of ‘if you didn’t say if you’re not liable for it’.
There is no chance that they haven’t been corrected repeatedly by actual experts about what the law actually says when they get it wrong and even less chance that they don’t have the ability to get experts on the line within the day if they so desired so if they get something wrong? Make an ‘oopsie’ about what the law says? A tiny little mistake about how the law works?
That’s intentional
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This. It just another flavor of Big Lie.
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This, this, this! If your a politician running for office, it is a reasonable assumption that you understand the laws and frameworks in place. Unreasonable is the expectation that a politician would understand all the laws and frameworks, but reasonable is that they would understand the important and most important ones, and that they would be able to utilize technology,as well as their advisors, to read those laws that they don’t understand. But clearly such a thing is beyond our politicians, who think that to understand a law is to just spew whatever comes to mind, even if that interpretation is the opposite of the very wording of the law in question.
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But Hillary isn’t a politician running for office. She ran and lost in both 2008 and 2016, and was the first lady from 1993-2001, The US Senator for New York State from 2001-2009, and the Secretary of Defense from 2009-2013. She’s basically a Politica Emerita now. She’s no longer going to run for president after her humiliating loss to Trumpy in 2016.
That being said, this is actually worse, because even with all this experience she doesn’t see anything that was actually good she and her husband did and wants to exacerbate the evil she and her husband did.
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By “running for office” I also meant being in the house or senate. The reasonable expectation still holds. She knows damn well the laws and frameworks that this country has in place and she’s perfectly capable of figuring out that which she doesn’t understand.
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I wasn’t aware that POTUS is the only political office in the US. Thanks for the info.
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I don’t think of it as “giving them the benefit of the doubt”. I think of it as “assuming they are ignoramuses”.
I once watched a Senate debate about HIV testing. Multiple senators took the better part of an hour to grasp the difference between false positives (HIV- people wrongly told they are HIV+) and false negatives (HIV+ people wrongly told they are HIV-). This is not a difficult concept, but it still took a while to sink in.
I see no reason to assume a roomful of senile old men and women, who on average date back to when “phones that don’t require an operator to connect you” were cutting-edge technology, actually know diddly-poo about the Internet.
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I see no reason to assume a roomful of senile old men and women, who on average date back to when “phones that don’t require an operator to connect you” were cutting-edge technology, actually know diddly-poo about the Internet.
If they’re keeping their mouths shut and not commenting on something I’d be inclined to agree with you, but when it comes to giving public statements about a topic that’s been covered extensively for numerous years there is no valid excuse not to have done their homework before speaking.
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Politicians don’t need an excuse for ignorance. Their job involves being popular, not being right. Voters reward charisma and pandering, not knowledge or intelligence.
Section 230 isn’t hard to understand and isn’t kept secret from the public. The only reason the likes of Clinton or Trump can bash it without being laughed out of the room is that voters are lazy and stupid.
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Hence the accusation of ignorance. Under the original definition of the term, ignorance is the act of ignoring, not the lack of knowledge that results from ignorance.
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TBF, although most (if not all) politicians likely know how Section 230 currently works, I think their heads are way too far up their asses for them to realize the likely consequences of its repeal.
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Which I might be willing to believe were it not for the fact that experts are almost certainly constantly telling them and/or everyone ‘if you gut 230 it will not result in what you want it to.’
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Yeah, but if your head’s that far up your ass, then your ears are likely filled with your own shit, making it extremely hard to hear anything.
This is a woman who, in 2014, still bought into the “gateway drug” bunk regarding Cannabis. In 2016, her daughter, while campaigning on her behalf, reiterated the claim, and went a step farther in claiming that people were dying from cannabis.
She still, still takes zero responsibility for blowing the 2016 election. Were Russia and Comey factors? Yeah. Were they the biggest factors? No. The biggest factor was Hillary’s ego.
I know Democrats like to pretend Hillary hate just comes from a place of right-wing propaganda. The fact of the matter, though, is that Hillary Clinton’s biggest obstacle is Hillary Clinton’s ego.
Clinton is better than Trump, but that's a pretty low bar.
Hillary Clinton is on the right-wing side of neoliberalism. She is more invested in the preservation of the regime than the will or best interests of the American public.
So I’m inclined to assume she knows what she’s doing and is looking to hobble the freedom of information and intercourse on the internet, so that we go back to the pre-internet status quo when corporate interests has tight control of information flow and communications.
In other words, Clinton knows repealing Section 230 will break the open internet, and that is exactly what she wants.
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I had her as my state’s senator. I can confirm what you said with over 9000% clarity.
Considering the American popular opinion of her, maybe this will lead to people recognising the importance of Section 230 out of being contrarian.
It’s an idea.
It is literally impossible for her to be unaware of the reasons this is a bad idea.
Mike, I hope we keep hearing it over and over again. Because that would mean CDA 230 is still law. The only way to get them to shut up about it is to fix stupid[0], or to repeal CDA 230.
[0] To the best of my knowledge, nobody has conclusively proven this to be impossible, but many people believe it is.
PS. Attempting to post this comment the first time (after having been disconnect from the internet for > 30 minutes) threw another 429 error. I waited upwards of 2 minutes before attempting to post again.
H.R.C. was just the spark that lit the fire under each of the previous responders. That fire is what’s important, not Clinton.
In point of fact, there are two, and only two, outcomes should S.230 pass into oblivion:
a) No platform will be willing to moderate or otherwise look at any of the content being posted. Thus, they’ll be able to claim ignorance at the first turn, and likely escape any ‘punishment’ desired by the plaintiff. There will be no under-moderating or over-moderating, there will just be no moderating at all. Anything else will be subject to a lawsuit from ambulance chasers all over the country;
b) For the following reasons, platforms will essentially shut down any and all user input, regardless of the legality of the speech, and regardless of how benign the speech may be. They simply won’t allow anything on their platform. Those reasons are;
1) Fear of offending high-roller advertisers;
2) Fear of lawsuits over the most inane things;
and
3) Fear of losing those lawsuits.
The real problem here isn’t that Congress-critters are willing to shit where they eat, it’s that they don’t desire to look to the most extant example of what they’re asking for. For that, you need look no further and Elmo’s treatment of Twitter. And here’s the kicker…. If Elmo were to look at the writing on the wall, even a asshole like him would recognize that as soon as Facebook is “forced” to allow all manner of speech on that platform, where to you think 99% of his horde are going to move over to?? That’s right, Facebook, the platform with about a thousand times greater number of people, per topic of discussion.
Would you stay on Twiddler when you could be touting neo-Nazism to hundreds, even thousands times more of recipients? No, you wouldn’t, simple as that. And from there, we can figure out that Twitter will soon be a goner, and Elmo will be left holding the debt-bag, with no direct way to pay back his loans.
Face it, advertisers are running the show, lock, stock and barrel, there’s no way around it. Platforms on both sides of the equation will soon be hurting enough that either they’ll be carpet-lobbying (as in, carpet-bombing) Congress to reinstate S.230, or else they’ll simply die off.
Either way, it’ll be the users who suffer the most, not the politicians.
Oh wait. When politicians realize that they can’t use any social media platform to promote themselves come election time, things just might start looking up. One can hope.
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Option A (letting people post unmoderated) is already off the table. They could do that back when Section 230 first came into being, but laws passed since then have chipped away at it. Sites are now held civilly and criminally liable for hosting certain kinds of content , even if they didn’t upload it.
I would expect Option B to be what most sites will take. Wealthy social media sites could probably get away with putting mandatory binding arbitration into the EULA, e.g. “by posting to this site you agree to pay 120% of all legal costs incurred by your post, subject to arbitration by an ex-judge we hired”. They have the cash to bear the short-term expenses before passing the actual damages on to the loudmouth who caused the problem.
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Thing is I don’t see a full Section 230 repeal happening anytime soon.
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The problem is we’ve seen a Section 230 carveout which was disasterous and yet remains heralded as a victory since it only harms sex workers and human trafficking victims. Oh and has chilled the snot out of freedom-of-speech holdouts like sex-ed, LGBT+ information and porn, which fall into the neoliberal Red-haired Stepchildren naughty detention bloc. Our establishment officials are glad not to care much.
And the court system has infamously been carving out exceptions to the fourth and fifth amendments of the Constitution of the United States, which we only noticed when it became routine for police to fabricate probable cause, confiscate anything valuable and shoot dogs for no good cause at which point we notice we dare not object lest they escalate violence, which they do according to normal police protocol. I rant.
Still, our legislative and judiciary masters absolutely know how to make civil rights and protections disappear piecemeal without causing a stir until it’s gone.
And that is how I expect section 230 will dissolve like sand through our fingers.
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Not any more, that’s for sure. It’s dead, murdered by SCOTUS in 2022.
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Except that 99.9% of the “loudmouths who caused the problem” do not have the cash to pay those legal fees. Can’t get blood from a stone and all that.
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There’s no section 230 in the rest of the world yet somehow they still host user-generated content.
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That’s because most of the rest of the world have other laws that deal with intermediary liability.
That doesn’t mean that those laws are as effective as section 230, though.
Nowhere in this article, or the one it links back to, does it show Clinton making an ignorant mistake on how 230 functions? I get that a lot of people misunderstand 230, and that’s likely the case here, but you should actually give some evidence of it.
You can definitely argue that there can be improvements made to Section 230, that still keep the important parts of the existing law. It doesn’t have to be blanket immunity. It’s not crazy to argue that there’s a certain point where hosting/recommending it should be actionable, even if in most cases it shouldn’t be.
Not necessarily, if they’re arguing for a replacement. It is entirely possible to design a 230 replacement that keeps protections against frivolous lawsuits, while also assigning liability in more egregious cases. Whether that assigning that liability is a good thing or not is a different argument, but that doesn’t make it frivolous.
It doesn’t (yet) sound like the issue here is ignorance, just you disagree with Clinton on 230. It’s important to defend 230, but this seems pretty knee-jerk.
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Please tell us where that point should be, then.
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That’s the fun part. It depends on who’s in the boss’s chair. And the process for picking that person is really, really bad.
Could be climate denial on the chopping block this year. Could be climate science on the chopping block next year.
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So you’re saying that “My swing set, my rules” is a bad idea? Or only bad if 5 million people (or some other arbitrary number) want to use your swing set, and fewer is fine?
Best justify why you can set the rules for my swing set, then.
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In any event, it’s going to end up somewhere past the point that Republicans use it to torture queer kids to suicide.
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Explain how it isn’t crazy to argue that the act of recommending a person read something should carry legal consequences. Show your work.
As for there being consequences to hosting, hosting wasn’t the issue. Moderation was the issue. All Section 230 did was allow sites to remove content they found offensive without being liable for what was left. They could ALREADY avoid liability just by not moderating the content.
It became glaringly obvious pretty much immediately that a world in which your local parent-teacher discussion group was legally required to let people post neo-Nazi scat porn was not a world anyone wanted to live in. Thus, Section 230.
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Sure, as soon as you point out where Hillary said that. Show your work.
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(Comment posted early, oops)
Both were part of the issue when it comes to speech. Pre-internet law made the distinction between publishers and distributors (and the awareness, or lack of) (and to be clear here, before people complain, yes I’m aware 230 does not distinguish between platforms/publishers). Moderation is what decisions like Cubby/Prodigy latched onto to make a distinction, and is what Prodigy used to claim was an editorial role. Compuserve got out of liability due to it’s lack of moderation in Cubby.
There were other similar speech cases as well, like Smith (in 1959) deciding whether a bookstore was liable. Ultimately, the bookstore was not, because it fell under distributor.
I’m aware of how Cubby was decided, and the perverse incentives it led to.
At least in these articles, Hillary does not seem to be suggesting that that should be the case.
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I didn’t say Hillary said it. I was responding to your claim that it “[isn’t] crazy to argue that there’s a certain point where hosting/recommending it should be actionable.
You said that it wasn’t crazy for a recommendation to be actionable. Now, pretend you’re honest and back that up.
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Don’t worry about it. Like Jhon Smith, Hyman Rosen, Bratty Matty, et al., Arianity is a specialist in the related disciplines of disingenuity and mendacity.
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Mendacious as fuck. I’d ask you to show your honesty, but that would be like the emperor showing off his new wardrobe.
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Well since you asked, here is one example (taken from the article)
She seems to believe 230 is just for tech/social media/whatever but, it’s not it’s for survice providers and users. Meaning a user can’t be held liable for retweeting something someone said. I can’ be held liable for pointing out(quoting) Hillery’s speech. I would imagine the reason Mike didn’t point that out was he thought it obvious.
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Why do you think she seems to believe that? That quote doesn’t actually say anything about it not applying just to tech/social media.
She says there’s a focus on tech/social media, she does not say it only applies to them. Which is true. You shouldn’t have to misquote people to make the point.
Even if that were the case, Mike points out “obvious” things all the time, that’s no excuse.
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Because she says
Your options for interpreting that (go back and read the rest of the context if you want, but it doesn’t help her case) is either she wildly misunderstands CDA 230, OR she’s attacking every internet user’s first amendment rights just so she can attack “tech”‘s first amendment rights.
So I guess you could get out of the “she doesn’t understand CDA 230” argument (but only for that bit of evidence) if you are willing to argue “She doesn’t think the first amendment should exist, and wants to repeal something that makes it(1st A) practical”.
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So, for one, those aren’t the only two options to interpret those comments. There’s a very obvious third option, where she feels like 230 has some flaws when it comes to tech/social media. You don’t have to misunderstand 230, or attack every user’s 1st amendment rights to think that third option. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to assume it’s one of the two options you listed, other than just assuming everyone criticizing falls into those two buckets, just because most critics of 230 fall into them.
But even if they were, “she’s attacking every internet user’s first amendment rights just so she can attack “tech”‘s first amendment rights.” is not “She seems to believe 230 is just for tech/social media/whatever but, it’s not it’s for survice providers and users”. Those are two wildly different things, even if you take a negative interpretation that doesn’t seem to be based on anything she actually said.
And reading the rest of her comments really doesn’t seem to tell you much at all about her case, positive or negative. I went back and read them, repeatedly, and it says very little. If it does, actually quote the parts you think don’t help.
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Felings that, if honest, can only, without single exception, possibly come from misunderstanding. Congratulations on proving AC correct.
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And? Just because another website’s already reported on something, doesn’t mean Mike or another writer can’t report on it too. Do you believe that only one news website should exist, giving them a monopoly on news reporting?
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Source: Arianity’s long history of pathologically lying.
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TBF, it’s not pathological if that’s how she makes her living.
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This point already exists. FTC v. Accusearch showed that if the host is actively participating in the creating or distribution or soliciting of illegal or defamatory content, then they are liable and 230 doesn’t apply. There are other cases where hosts lost 230 protections as well. You’re basically saying you disagree with how the courts have ruled in interpreting 230, not with 230 itself.
Good luck getting a functional replacement that isn’t worse. Saying you advocate for a replacement without having the support to get it passed is functionally the same thing as wanting it repealed. There isn’t enough support for a replacement that would be better. Most people who attack 230 (including members of Congress who have the ability to vote on the matter) aren’t even pretending to want to replace it.
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I’m aware of precedents like that . But that’s my point- you could pass a law changing that part of the interpretation of 230, without chucking the entire thing. 230 is quite narrow in terms of what qualifies as creating/distributing, and you could make a n argument for broadening it, without killing the protections it provides.
(And to be clear, I don’t really have a problem with 230 overall. I think you could make some nips and tucks, but overall I actually like 230, and I do think it provides some important protections. )
I 100% agree with that. But that’s a different argument. That’s not an issue with ignorance of how 230 works or flaws that it has, but being overly optimistic on any potential replacement.
It’s totally fine to say “it’s too risky to mess with 230, it’s too politicized and people are too stupid around it”.
You can’t build that support if you don’t start somewhere, though. It doesn’t exist now, for sure.
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230 already doesn’t apply to speech/acts that violate federal law.
Such an argument would be meritless on its face, for to change 230 would be to change how the Internet works as a whole. As an example: Broaden the definition of “distribution” to include retweets on Twitter, and a whole bunch of people would then be liable for third party speech if they retweeted speech that is potentially defamatory. 230 protects that kind of “distribution” and the people who partake in it because the liability for speech in such contexts should always lie on the speaker(s).
And yet, you’ve argued that 230 could possibly be altered in some vague way to make it “better”.
A good place to start would be to propose a “better 230” that doesn’t involve misinterpretations or lies about what 230 does and doesn’t do. By all means, feel free to present such a proposal…if you have one.
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There’s already a law that does that in the exceptions to the First Amendment, and if your speech falls into one of those exceptions, then it’s not protected by Section 230. Thanks for erecting that strawman; destroying it was so much fun.
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Thank you for providing yet further proof that the rule that it is impossible to argue section 230 should be changed without deliberately lying about is in no danger of ever being broken.
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She assumes that repealing 230 will make them liable. She is wrong. 1A already protects them.
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But why bother when that’s exactly what Section 230 already does?
The war on innovation continues, I see.
It’s infuriating to witness a bi-partisan effort to undo decades of innovation and economic progress like this, but it’s not something that is exclusive to the US.
In Canada, we have the same sort of thing where the Conservative party thinks that we must have mass internet censorship implemented because there might be some icky adult content somewhere along the line. The Liberal party wants mass internet censorship because someone might get offended by a troll somewhere along the line. Compounding problems is the fact that the other parties are just smiling and going along with both efforts because if the larger parties are for mass censorship, then it must be good to support it.
The large media companies are cheering this all on, going so far as to call anyone supporting free speech is little more than extremists trying to get more Donald Trumps in this world (I wish I was joking: https://www.freezenet.ca/canadian-mainstream-media-finally-says-the-quiet-part-out-loud-they-hate-free-speech/ )
I view the efforts to repeal Section 230 as nothing different than the censorship efforts in Canada. Stamping out free speech on the internet has been a top priority for politicians for years. The media is on board with this because they legitimately think that by doing away with the internet, they’ll get their monopoly of audiences back like in the 60’s and 70’s (it won’t work).
Speech has legitimately become the new piracy. Government is working hard to stamp it out. Whether that is through litigation, filtering technology, Deep Packet Inspection, or whatever else they’ll come up with, they don’t care. If the internet is gone, they can go back to business as usual. By removing the financial incentives to use the internet, they think that the internet can be defeated somehow.
The problem here is, of course, the fact that removing the financial incentives for businesses to start up online won’t make the internet magically go away. All it does is offer incentives for other countries to fill the voids left behind (i.e. being a web hosting company, offering VPN services, etc.). Further, it pushes all the economic benefits out of the country (and there’s TONNES of that). It means America misses out on all of the benefits that come with having a free and open internet.
Evidence of this came from the file-sharing world where shutting down the likes of Morpheus, Napster, etc. meant that the opportunities went elsewhere (The Pirate Bay and several others out there). It wasn’t until the record labels finally decided to begrudgingly embrace the internet that the money finally came back to North America through services like Spotify and Apple Music, but that transition was very rocky for several years.
I’m convinced history will repeat itself in the event that speech is outlawed on the internet. People like talking and the internet made it easy to do that. People will find other outlets for that and whatever country plays host to that will rake in hundreds of millions as a result. The internet has anti-censorship technology built into the system and people will take full advantage of that should we get to that point. Only then will it become apparent that by shutting down legal protections for speech will the realization set in that politician’s only closed the door to the economic benefits of allowing speech to thrive. By that point, the damage will already be done and it will take years to regain that foothold back – if at all.
Perhaps a little demonstration of what the resulting internet would be like if they were successful in repealing section 230.
What would the reaction be when all comments on all websites are shutdown. Not just the ones that are frowned upon, not just the hated ones, all of them.
If a website is forced to host comments and are then held accountable for same .. how long will said website continue with the self destruction?
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We’ve already had a demonstration of what repealing Section 230 does. That was SESTA/FOSTA and the results were numerous websites shutting down immediately.
…is a disinformative revisionist history directly contradictory to how things actually happened according to 230’s own authors:
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TL;DR: The robust, ubiquitous internet we know today exists only because Section 230 does.
Could there be any clearer sign that the people aren’t interested in what you have to say than losing an election to Donald Trump? By opening her pie hole, Hillary proves once again how tone deaf and self-centered she is.
This is just more clear evidemce of how badly we need MORE OPTIONS. The Democrat/Republican nonsense that keeps them all wealthy keeps us stuck in gridlock while the World slowly roasts. Their legacy is NO FUTURE.
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I agree that section 230 must be repealed because Silicon Valley, the government, and users have had over three decades of history of a concerted effort to conceal corruption, high crimes, treason, organized crime, and crimes against humanity.
It is not possible to claim that that is having any positive effect on society.
My comments are flagged on this site without explanation. I have called the Floor 64 phone number listed on this site and asked for an explanation. Nobody has ever returned my calls.
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…said no honest, mentally competent human being, ever.
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WPATH Files
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Posts only nonhumans with nothing to counter the truth with.
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Are you tired of my line already? It is only posted in response to your one thought, starting recently, so only a fraction of the times of your one line.
Or are you saying you can’t counter the truth of the WPATH Files?
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Keep repeating it and you’ll end up training the spamfilters on it. If you’re not going to add anything worth a damn to a conversation, don’t butt your head into one and bray like an ass.
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“It isn’t, but go on.”
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/01/bandai-namco-copyright-strikes-youtubers-showing-off-game-mods/#comment-3609647
Practice what you preach first.
Re: Re: Re:3
And what does that have to do with Hilary Clinton wanting to repeal Section 230 and showing she hates 1A?
I’m not seeing any connection with what you just said and Hilary’s contempt of 1A.
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Even if that were true, what does section 230 have to do with those crimes?
The explanation is that you spam the comments sections with deluded nonsense.
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I see no evidence of such a thing. Nor would the government’s efforts to conceal such things have any relation to 230, as it only protects sites and users.
It is possible to claim that there are positives to 230 that outweigh the negatives, and that the specific downside you point to is just an assertion with no evidence.
You are not owed an explanation, but for the record, users have flagged you enough times to hide your comments. Users are not even asked to provide a reason, so the site owners would have zero insight as to why you were flagged.
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I wonder why. Oh wait, I think I know. Hackers are blocking Techdirt’s phoneline from connecting with yours, right?
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Section 230 enabled Craiglist to steal advertising money from newspapers. Paul Hansmeier will appeal, and he will win.
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Copyright law’s best and fucking brightest.
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How, exactly?
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Just from the part you quoted, I can tell you’re responding to Tero Pulkinnen, or potentially someone whose bought into his crap.
He thinks that Craiglist somehow stole the money that belonged to Newspapers by getting people to give them their mailing addresses (the holy grail of profit, the mailing list) which could then be used to send them advertisements to get them to buy shit.
It’s not based in any actual understanding of how the majority of people respond to unsolicited advertisements sent to them as email or in the mail (which is basically to annoyedly discard it). Direct return is extremely low.
The other possible mistaken assumption is that the Classifieds / user ads sections in newspapers were a major part of a newspaper revenue. One could argue that “section 230 allowed craigslist to win this market share” – but this is still grounded in a significant misunderstanding of what section 230 does, and completely disregards the benefit to the public that came out of the Craigslist move.
Newspapers didn’t rely on Classifieds as major source of their revenue, from my understanding, so this is not what killed the local newspaper. Craigslist allowing much broader, searchable reach for personal ads with a much cheaper buy-in was a massive boon to the public in general.
(Also, you won’t get a serious answer from someone saying Paul Hansmeier will win. They are divorced from reality.)
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Am I the only one who smelled a small dose of satire here?
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It isn’t satire when you realize it’s likely one of the permanent “trolls” on Techdirt.
Re: Re: Re:2
Satire requires a clarity of purpose and target—e.g., “I’m going to take this specific concept/idea to an extreme or absurd level to show you how bizarre/illogical/nonsensical it truly is”—so people don’t mistake it for, and it doesn’t contribute to, that which the satire intends to criticize. Nothing about the first comment in this particular chain reads like satire, and declaring something to be satire doesn’t make it so.
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That has nothing to do with 230, and there’s nothing for Paul Hansmeier to appeal.
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The people that have conspired to commit over three decades of high crimes, treason, organized crime, & crimes against humanity have censored the people that oppose their corruption.
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I have seen no evidence for three decades of such crimes, nor of a coverup lasting the past three decades.
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So you haven’t heard anything from the censored.
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As if anyone else can hear the voices in your head.
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Section 230 killed the 1st amendment. Most of the social media sites have had enormous funding from the Unites States federal government. They are not privately owned country clubs, that have any legal right to exclusding American citizens, but they act that way.
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Back out here in the non-hallucinogen-induced world, Section 230 is the strongest shield protecting the 1st Amendment.
That some meth-goblin calling themselves andrea hates the free speech 230 protects has no influence on that fact.
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Section 230 chills speech because it allows for (anonymous) retaliation against that speech for which tech companies are immune.
It also sets up innocent people to be sued for repeating defamation they encounter online, in a way that loses immunity for them because they “make the words their own,” though that’s their own fault for not knowing the law and for believing what they read on the internet just because they don’t like someone.
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What retaliation?
If they willingly spread defamatory statements by reposting them in the belief that they’re true, then they’re not innocent, and thus deserve to be sued for defamation.
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Re: Re: Re:2
So, you also believe that Section 230 should be stricken from the statutes?
Re: Re: Re:3
Thank you for clearly labeling your illiterate strawman.
No functioning brain holds within it the lie that Section 230 is an obstacle to meritorious lawsuits, defamation or otherwise.
Re: Re: Re:3
What does section 230 have to do with what I said?
Re: Re: Re:4
So you not only lack reading comprehension of others’ comments, but your own, too. Thanks for that info.
Re: Re: Re:4
Section 230 prevents the above, requiring that the individual or organization that originated the defamation (and thus know it to be untrue) get sued for it, not anyone who further spread it because they believed it was true. As others have suggested, you lack reading comprehension to the point of illiteracy.
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Oh look, Jhon Smith is back.
Fuck.
…at any rate: 230 doesn’t chill speech, your fantasies of “revenge defamation” are just that, and 230 protects people for repeating defamation because 230 puts liability for defamatory speech on the original speaker of said defamation (and anyone who knowingly aided in its creation and distribution, if necessary).
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Highly unsurprised the Mussolini Simp hates 1A as well.
Anyone who has a problen with Section 230 has a problem with free speech, free expression and private property laws.
And it’s very obvious that you, Mussolini Timecube, have an issue with the aforementioned.
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47 U.S.C. § 230 protects platform owners from being compelled by law to host speech (and speakers) with which said owners don’t wish to associate. The law applies equally to all platforms and all kinds of legally expressed speech. Such protections double down on those provided by the First Amendment; anyone who argues otherwise is lying.
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This is why all of your post gets flagged. The ones that aren’t incoherent, at full of complete bullshit.
Social media sites don’t get enormous funding from the US governments and only crackpots would believe such a thing..
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No, it helps protect it.
No, they haven’t.
Yes, they do, and they absolutely are privately owned and run.
So. As I see it, the same people who want “a better § 230” are also the same people who want a back door into all online encryption. Have I got that right?
This is my once a year restatement of the obvious:
The IQ of the universe is a constant.
The population is growing.
We’re all fucked.
Shit. Even I’m getting tired of repeating myself. Someone else take over, OK? Thanks.
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doomerism
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Mike,
Why don’t you tell the truth? Admit that you want to change America to a caste system where there is one set of laws for We the People, and are expected to be law abiding citizens, and another set of laws for government, healthcare, tech, and surveillance state that do not have to abide by the constitution in any way at ll?
You think that you’re Brahmins but you are really sadistic evil morons that conspire to commit high crimes, treason, organized crime, and crimes against humanity and lie through your teeth to keep the money flowing into your corrupt, duplicititous, failed business model front operations.
This is a society of pretenders. People that claim to be providing free speech and communication are censoring free speech and communication. People that are pretending to cure the sick are making sick people healthy and charging them for it and murdering them. People that pretend to report the news are lying and concealing the truth, and so are academicians, and scientists. People that pretend to be governing are pupoets that do not even read or write unconstitutional illegal legislation that they sign written by
lobbyists. People tgat pretend to be enforcing the law are guards for organized crime rings and kleptocratic psychopathic thugs.
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hey clown troll
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Because he doesn’t want that. First, the healthcare and tech industries are not bound by anything in the Constitution the same way the government is but more like how private citizens. Second, Mike has explicitly said multiple times how the government must follow the Constitution. Third, keeping 230 would not be changing America’s laws at all since it is already there. And there are many other problems with your assertion.
So, basically, you’re fractally wrong.
Doubtful.
[citation needed]
Who? How?
If this is about vaccines, then no.
Yes, like Fox News or Breitbart.
Prove it.
Yes, and Mike has consistently called them out for it.
Yes. Again, Mike has consistently called this out.
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Actually, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was officially ended 52 years ago. Get up to date.
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Right now, all the fake “studies” making up data and harming the innocent turn out to be done by frauds projecting their own methods against the medical industry.
“Vaccines cause autism!” … by way of photoshop:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/10/study-claims-vaccines-autism-link-scientists-find-fake-data-have-rage-stroke/
Dangerous scientifically-useless Herpes infecting funded by Peter Thiel:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/08/bucking-fda-peter-thiel-funds-patently-unethical-herpes-vaccine-trial/
The thoroughly debunkwd “Hydroxychloroquine cures covid!” lie turns out, as expected, to be 100% fraudulent in origin:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/04/101-studies-flagged-as-bogus-covid-cure-pusher-sees-career-unravel/
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Irrelevant. andrea iravani’s particular paranoid fantasy is that it’s the Federal Government currently engaging in this, hence my response. Next time, click the flagged comment I reply to to make sure you’re not out of the loop.
One last time, just for posterity’s sake:
They do – they really, really do, understand 230.
Completely.
The internet interferes with propaganda and bullshit of many stripes. Propaganda cannot stand in the face of facts, and the web has allowed the great unwashed to get together and compare notes in a way that has left liars worldwide, desperate for succor. Removing this stroke of genius from the law books would let the buggers lie to the public, cheat the public, and steal from the public, with impunity once again – like the good old days.
For the Luff o’Gawd! Get it straight folks.
They absolutely understand 230.
That is why they’re attacking it.
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Actually, I think they don’t understand Section 230, in that they clearly have not understood the actual consequences of what happens if it goes away.
What they clearly want in all these cases is that the speech they want stays up, and the speech they don’t want stays down. They think they can make that happen. They can’t.
What will actually happen is that all of the speech will stay up, including all the speech they don’t want, or none of the speech will stay up, including all the speech they want, and in no way will this be of benefit to them. Even if they understand what it’s doing, the goals they have do not align with the reality of what will occur, and they clearly have no true understanding of this.
So. No they don’t understand it. They understand just enough to deliberately misrepresent it to try and get what they want, but what they want is not possible.
It’s the two-party system that wants to control the narrative that needs to go.
How quickly they forget FB started out of a college dorm room. Revoking Section 230 helps ensure it never happens again.
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Not to mention locking in place the very same companies they like to complain about having too much power since those will be the only companies able to deal with the legal risks of a post-230 legal landscape.
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Mike,
You mocked Republicans for claiming that the government was censoring people, now you claim that section 230 protects free speech and the government from censoring people, and today you claim that you are fighting spam when you censor people, which is evidently anyone that dusagrees with you or proves you wrong.
If you don’t want to be proven wrong, you should leave the internet, because being wrong or flat out lying is oart of your identity.
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…fucking what
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Welcome to the treachery that is Mussolini Timecube.
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Because social media moderating people and content on their sites isn’t government action, and there’s no evidence the government was censoring the way they claimed it was.
Because it does. That is entirely consistent with the previous statement.
Because he is.
Nope. But even if it was, that remains consistent with the previous statements.
This presumes he doesn’t want to be proven wrong like you claim, and you haven’t demonstrated that he’s wrong or lying at all.
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Actually, he’s not. That is, Mike is fighting spam, but he’s not censoring people. Only government’s can engage in the form of complete suppression that is censorship.
As if the email thing wasn’t stupid enough, Clinton doubles down. Do you think her husband being caught with his dick in an intern’s mouth did something to her?
There’s going to be a House subcommittee hearing about Section 230 in a week (Thursday the 11th), if anyone feels like torturing themselves.
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Hopefully, Mike is willing to torture himself for our benefit.
Re: Re: 'Has 230 stopped beating it's wife, yes or no?!'
I haven’t even watched it and have no plan on doing so yet I suspect I can predict how it’ll shake out fairly accurately.
-Multiple politicians will lie about what 230 says.
-Multiple politicians will lie about what 230 does.
(There will be significant overlap between these two)
-If anyone knowledgeable on the law and/or how it’s applied either historically or currently is there they will be bombarded with loaded questions in an attempt to make the law and anyone defending it look as close to Evil Incarnate as possible.
-If any representatives of tech companies are foolish enough to show they will bend over backwards to avoid telling the politicians grilling them what idiots they are and how none of what they are saying matches the law or even reality.
-Post hearing both democrats and republicans(more the latter than the former) will go on tv to talk about how the hearing showed that it is more vital than ever to gut 230 in order to protect free speech, reign in Big Tech(tm) or both.
“So. No they don’t understand it. They understand just enough to deliberately misrepresent it to try and get what they want, but what they want is not possible.”
Now that truly is bending over backwards.
How the hell does one misrepresent something they don’t understand. Misrepresent is a thing one does on purpose – or as you said above “deliberately”. If it was otherwise, we’d be hearing all sorts of different misrepresentations like – causes cavities, attracts UFOs, grows breasts on guys, and a huge variety of whacky shit. Instead we have a consolidated attack using the exact same rationale and reasoning – if one can call it reasoning. I’m afraid you’ve bought the donkey they’re selling. Shooda checked its teeth. 🙂