It’s called “distributor liability” and was the law of the land everywhere but the internet (still is actually). They would not be liable unless first put on notice.

As for why, they are the ones who cause 99.9 percent of the damage. Search engines should be held liable as well, since defamation which appears in a small corner of the internet can then be amplified and spread throughout the world whenever someone is searched by name. To immunize that is an atrocity that destroys reputations and weaponizes the search engines. As many say with copyright law, if a business model cannot exist it does not deserve to exist. Section 230 threw individual reputations (and truth) under the bus to prop up the model that allowed for automated UGC, literally putting machine rights above human rights.

Requiring human intervention and moderation would actually create jobs, spread the wealth, and reduce the burden on government by reducing lost tax dollars and the welfare benefits required to compensate for lost income every time some SJW decides to make someone they don’t like unemployable. Many other people have been assaulted or killed because some stupid person who just met them thinks they found something that justifies physical harm.

On USENET, where we have free speech, we also have anonymous remailers that can send posts to newsgroups, making people defenseless against defamation that is then archived and spread not by the “original publisher,” who might have a very small audience that views everything in context, but by the search engine, which ensures it will turn upw henever someone looks for a job, housing, or new friends and lovers.

Defamation isn’t the only issue here. Single young women who live alone in apartments aer at the mercy of building contractors who might have questionable pasts. Say one searches a tenant by name and fins she has done porn in the past, convinces himself she is “easy” and deserving of anything he might bring. Guess what? This is already going on. Just because the internet doesn’t tell people that this danger exists doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Sure, we can live in a Section 230 world, and we do. “What’s your name?” is no longer an innocent question because it means “Can I do a full background check on you?” The “check” isn’t even guaranteed to be accurate, and those “idiots” that people say need protection from themselves are often not mature or ethical enough to handle the lies that they find, lies put there for the explicit purpose of inciting others.

Speaking of which, do Mike Masnick’s neighbors know that….

Disallowing searches of names would be a good start towards preserving Section 230, but the engines have no incentive to protect individual rights. we could have built an internet without weaponized search, and the more this targets sympathetic victims, as with revenge porn, the more there will be an outcry to stop it.

Personally, I’d rather see a standard that says Section 230 can be used as a shield (as it was intended), but not as a sword, nor allowed to be used as a sword. Do you like seeing a half-million in taxpayer money go to support someone sent on disability at age thirty because he made a snide remark to a female co-worker at his first job fifteen years earlier? This is already happening. that’s what happens after we “get them fired.”

My Google-proof name is my own solution to this issue. It’s why google never caught on in China. “Iv’e got the dirt on you, Lee Lee!” just doesn’t work when Lee is one of only a hundred last names.

If you insist on keeping Setion 230, make it so search engines have to delist people’s names with a court order, but even then others with the same name can either wind up defamed, or their names are no longer searchable. Another alternative is to simply abolish libel law so the targets of defamation can respond in kind, just like abolishing copyright law and making everything public domain would yield a truly level, consumer-friendly playing field. As it is now, the target of an internet mob risks being sued if s/he fights back.

There arerigh people who hire judgment-proof people in other countries to defame others. That some4 of the people who do this are attorneys who are very similar to attorneys whose names have been mentioned in this space of course means nothing. It’s not difficult to imagine that a lawyer can hire a hacker to create a virus-infected website full of defamation about a known litigious individual, mock the individual for suing, follow the individual around online while waiting for them to get into an argument, link the other side of the argment to the hate website (with the hackers getting paid by the virus that steals financial information), after which the other side thinks it has “confirmed” what it “aready suspected,” inevitably repeats the defamation (thus losing Section 230 protection), the target sues, and the lawyers rush in to “defend free speech” by telling an already gassed-up speqaker “not to worry about that kook.” The lawyer then bankrupts the pawn if the pawn is wealthy, or crowdfunds the lawsuit if the pawn is not. All it takes is to target someone who will sue when lied about, usually a celebrity.

“Cui bono” from Section 230? Internet lawyers, who, when they speak of how vital 230 is, leave out the part where it’s vital to their own business model. If you look at the names defending 230 it’s a very small cadre of attorneys with the same names turning up all the time. Revenge porn was a logical outcome of this,and Congress reacted not by trashing 230 altogether, but by carving out a special exception for slutty female victims. Meanwhile, a site like “don’t date that jerk” is called a “social networking site” by cable news, and noprotection is given to men who are targeted by “revenge libel” designed to incite “white knights” into making death threats.

Section 230 turns the world into a jungle when it doesn’t have to be one. The law needs to be abolished, and as the victims become increasingly sympathetic, as withrevenge porn, it will be. It’s literally just a matter of time.

Those who say the Supremee Court upheld Section 230 are correct, but they upheld the concept of distributor immunity. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on what constitutes a distritubor and whether or not Section 230 immunizes distributors of libel. The law says “shall not be treated as the PUBLISHER or SPEAKER” of libelous content, but a distributor is neither of those and is still liable under existing state laws. Had congress intended to immunize distribtuors, they could have added the word. General Supr3eme Court precedent is to recognie this omission as a clear sign of congressional intent.Contrary to what the small group of lawyers say, this issue has never b een ruled upon, and they’ve had chances, but refused to hear the case. Numerous cases in the Seve4nth Circuit have departed from Section 230, which even immunizes discriminatory housing and employment ads.

For those who think the above is some conspiracy theory, it is actually much easier to prove. Be warned: Section 230 also immunizes these websites againswt online reviews of attorneys who have very p0ublic internet associations with these hackers, and if someone has ever logged everyone’s timelines and postings very carefully, for a ong enough period of time, a series of online reviews of the law firms involved, with all dots connected, will enjoy the same Section 230 protection these lawyers have enjoyed.

Along those lines, one attorney who claims to advocate for free speech sure did not practice what they preached when the postings were suddenly about them. the content could have gone back up more easily, but maybe the person who posted it is just waiting for a better time to more thoroughly document what is going on.

Lincoln was right about being able to fool some of the people someof the time, but not all of the people all of the time. To call all conspiracy theories automatically ijnvalid is to deny human nature and say that humans never conspire. If so, organized crime wouldn’t exist. IIED lawsuits are actually more appropriate thandefamation lawsuits anyway, if not just outright stalking chargews and prison time for those who thi8nk it’s funny to ruin the lives of others. At some point, it will be time to pay the piper, just like it has been for another famous person’s henchmen, who are now dropping like flies after having thought themselves invincible for so long.