So we now have at least two distinct legal theories for pleading around Section 230, both blessed by courts, both available to any plaintiffs’ lawyer nationwide.
As I did over in ATproto-world, I'll quibble with this part. I'm not sure I'd call their 230 work-around a separate one from Lemmon v. Snap. It's more like ... a codification of the theory that ambulance chasers wanted Lemmon to be.
In Lemmon, the argument went that the harm didn't depend upon conveying the content to a third party at all: The "speed filter" allegedly encouraged unsafe driving because it motivated people to make a particular kind of video. My analogy in my pro se amicus brief (yeah, I'm that kind of weirdo) was that it's like a sweepstake. Suppose that Snap had run a contest where the condition for entry was a video showing unsafe driving. Then they'd be encouraging unsafe driving in a way independent of how or if they convey those videos to other users. That kind of potential liability logically shouldn't stretch to all "product design".
What the Massachusetts SJC has done is to say, "No no no, Lemmon doesn't let you plead around 230 in the way you want, but our 'do not mention the content of the content' workaround does." See footnote 31: Lemmon is distinguished because in the current case, "the challenged features are publishing tools that control how Meta publishes content to users of its platform". Trying to parse this trainwreck, I think it repudiates Lemmon as grounds for "social media addiction" lawsuits and offers an alternative workaround.
I think it has always been a farce to pretend that these websites, almost all giant billion dollar corporations now, do not have as much control as they do.
The law doesn't just apply to billion-dollar companies. It protects Wikipedia. It protects Bluesky. It protects Dreamwidth. It protects individual Mastodon instances. It protects TechDirt. It protects personal blogs. It protects you.
Acting as though the Internet is synonymous with two or three giant corporations is an excellent way to get laws and rulings that only giant corporations have the resources to survive. Zuckerberg, Musk and the Ellison family win, while you and I lose.
I would love to hear how you think this could be applied to forums.
Moms For Liberty, or the Texas Attorney General, could sue an independent web forum for queer people, on the basis that their site design is too alluring and thus lures people under 25 (whose brains are "not fully formed" according to pop psychology) into spending too much time there.
That's a hypothetical I thought up in a few seconds; I'm sure that others could devise more examples. It might sound like an absurd hypothetical, but right-wingers have sued at every opportunity and judge-shopped for the worst hacks on the bench... So, yeah, feeling that nothing is safe is not unwarranted.
So, funny story:
Connecticut is moving forward with an "Age Appropriate Design Code" of their own. The state AG's office said, in testimony for the first committee hearing about it, that "Big Tech's challenge to California's protections failed in both federal district court and before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals." This was untrue at the time, when the preliminary injunction was in place, and it remains untrue now, with the law whittled to a stump.
There is, as far as I understand, no foolproof way for a website to be sure that a visitor is accessing via VPN. So, the only way for a website to avoid liability under this law would be to apply Utah's ID-checking demands to all visitors from anywhere in the world.
By the way, New York State Senator Andrew Gounardes maintains an active presence on X, the Nazi CSAM app. So does NY Attorney General Letitia James. And NY Governor Kathy Hochul. Maybe they should put their money where their mouths are when it comes to social media?
The supporters include the group formerly known as "Morality in Media", plus the right-wing "Concerned Women for America" (founded by the wife of the coauthor of the Left Behind books).... Why are Democrats willing to advertise endorsements like these as though they are good things?
The Republican leader in the Senate, John Thune, has co-sponsored Section 230 "reform" in the past, so he's probably open to changing the status quo (which is bad), but perhaps not willing to go for the blunderbuss approach of all-out repeal (which is better).
I am doubtful that anyone here has adequate information to make a serious prediction about that. Getting through the next ACA crisis may be a higher priority; they could be dealing with a partial or total government shutdown in February, depending on how the chaos of the funding bills sorts out.
This would make platforms, including your friendly local Mastodon instance, liable for having a spam filter. Every forum that allows the downvoting of comments would lose 230 protection, since sorting comments by votes or hiding comments that have been heavily downvoted is prioritization.
It may, for example, be possible to ensure that users who make the requisite choice are only able to access pages where every editor who has contributed to the live content on the page has verified their identity.
What?
It is not obvious that this would be unduly difficult to achieve.
A plain reading of the law's definition of "social media platform" would encompass YouTube, and would therefore forbid teenagers from watching a 90-minute documentary or leaving a browser tab open in the background to play Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Having followed the overlapping circles of TESCREAL weirdos and Numberwang racists for a while, I learned of Lasker some time ago, and now I welcome everyone to my misery.
The darn thing is that I do believe in the "magic of moviegoing". Back in the Before Times, we'd get a friend crew together and stroll through Boston Common to the multiplex on Tremont Street... an AMC itself, even. Seeing things there like Inception and the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes made for good spectacle and pleasant memories. But over the years, the genuine joy of casual entertainment has been leeched away. My more recent cinema-going makes me sound like a ghastly snob: "Oh, yes, the most ... mainstream film I have gone to see must have been Almodovar's Dolor y Gloria." I ingest plenty of audiovisual junk food, I promise; it's just that popcorn flicks aren't worth the trip anymore.
So, funny story: Connecticut is moving forward with an "Age Appropriate Design Code" of their own. The state AG's office said, in testimony for the first committee hearing about it, that "Big Tech's challenge to California's protections failed in both federal district court and before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals." This was untrue at the time, when the preliminary injunction was in place, and it remains untrue now, with the law whittled to a stump.
There is, as far as I understand, no foolproof way for a website to be sure that a visitor is accessing via VPN. So, the only way for a website to avoid liability under this law would be to apply Utah's ID-checking demands to all visitors from anywhere in the world.
By the way, New York State Senator Andrew Gounardes maintains an active presence on X, the Nazi CSAM app. So does NY Attorney General Letitia James. And NY Governor Kathy Hochul. Maybe they should put their money where their mouths are when it comes to social media?
The supporters include the group formerly known as "Morality in Media", plus the right-wing "Concerned Women for America" (founded by the wife of the coauthor of the Left Behind books).... Why are Democrats willing to advertise endorsements like these as though they are good things?
The Republican leader in the Senate, John Thune, has co-sponsored Section 230 "reform" in the past, so he's probably open to changing the status quo (which is bad), but perhaps not willing to go for the blunderbuss approach of all-out repeal (which is better).
I am doubtful that anyone here has adequate information to make a serious prediction about that. Getting through the next ACA crisis may be a higher priority; they could be dealing with a partial or total government shutdown in February, depending on how the chaos of the funding bills sorts out.
Ted Cruz is the committee chair, and in the past he has made confused noises about wanting to reform 230 instead of repealing it, so there might be an opportunity to put some friction in its path.
No, it doesn't actually make sense, as teens in Australia will tell you, and the Helen Lovejoys would just move on to their next cause, like banning VPNs.
The first link points to the same page as the second.
On the Australianet, no one knows you're a golden retriever.
This would make platforms, including your friendly local Mastodon instance, liable for having a spam filter. Every forum that allows the downvoting of comments would lose 230 protection, since sorting comments by votes or hiding comments that have been heavily downvoted is prioritization.
A plain reading of the law's definition of "social media platform" would encompass YouTube, and would therefore forbid teenagers from watching a 90-minute documentary or leaving a browser tab open in the background to play Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Massachusetts wants to do much the same thing.
Having followed the overlapping circles of TESCREAL weirdos and Numberwang racists for a while, I learned of Lasker some time ago, and now I welcome everyone to my misery.
The darn thing is that I do believe in the "magic of moviegoing". Back in the Before Times, we'd get a friend crew together and stroll through Boston Common to the multiplex on Tremont Street... an AMC itself, even. Seeing things there like Inception and the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes made for good spectacle and pleasant memories. But over the years, the genuine joy of casual entertainment has been leeched away. My more recent cinema-going makes me sound like a ghastly snob: "Oh, yes, the most ... mainstream film I have gone to see must have been Almodovar's Dolor y Gloria." I ingest plenty of audiovisual junk food, I promise; it's just that popcorn flicks aren't worth the trip anymore.