It's a good article.
Without Section 230, the Internet basically couldn't exist. If anyone who deleted spam was also accountable for anything their users said, we'd go back to the Internet of 1995, where every website was just a brochure with no comments section.
Without the protection of S230 big tech social media would not have got to the point where it is today. Once they got this big, rich and powerful they started gatekeeping the industry and crushing potential competition. "Build your own platform" they said. So someone went and did. Big tech acted in cartel and shut it down.
As the article correctly says incremental changes to S230 means only the big guys with an army of lawyers can comply and the smaller guys will suffer disproportionally. Also, good luck achieving any meaningful reform when the other side is in bed with politicians and literally has billions to spend on lobbying. So let's level the playing field and repeal it altogether. Disrupt their business model and take away their power. Let them get sued into oblivion or become the publishers that they apparently desire to be. Let them slash their profit margins and their stock tank. Fuck all that shit, just throw a grenade at it and start from scratch once the dust settles a bit.
Section 230 is good, the problem is these sites aren't acting as service providers in good faith and instead are acting as publishers by picking and choosing which otherwise completely legal content they will "allow", selectively enforcing their terms of service etc.
4 comments
3 u/SevenAsterisks 28 Jan 2021 07:42
2 u/diogenesofthemidwest 28 Jan 2021 12:29
1 u/None 28 Jan 2021 09:14
1 u/Line_Weights 28 Jan 2021 13:19