Trump threatens defense bill veto over social media protections

Page 3 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
96,951
16,210
126
Hey ... If Section 230 is repealed, Twitter and Facebook are going to dump his sorry ass first thing. No way they’re letting him keep an account if they’re legally liable for the shit he pours forth every day.

That part is a win-win.

Na, Trump would be the first one to sue Twitter for his own shitposts.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DarthKyrie

DarthKyrie

Golden Member
Jul 11, 2016
1,545
1,305
146
Yup.

I don’t think people quite understand the legal history behind Section 230.

The short history is before Section 230 both CompuServe and Prodigy were sued back in the 90’s for things their users posted on their respective services.

CompuServe specifically said they did not moderate their content and because of that the judge threw the case against them out as the offending content was deemed to be from another user not CompuServe.

Prodigy on the other hand did moderate content to be more family friendly. When they were sued on a similar issue the judge ruled against Prodigy specifically because they moderated their content. With attempted moderation failing to remove the offending content the judge ruled Prodigy was now responsible for its user created content.

Congress said, shit we don’t want companies trying to keep porn, snuff films and threats off their sites to be held accountable if they fail for simply trying so they passed section 230 of the internet decency act.

After that advertisers were more willing to support sites with user generated content.

If section 230 is struck down then only two kinds of content sites will be legally viable.

Wholly corporate controlled content where the content creators are contracted by the company and subject to editorial review (Like news sites) or /b/ style anything goes no moderation what so ever sites.

Of course the problem with running a /b/ style site is whose going to contribute money. 99% of advertisers wouldn’t touch a site where scat porn and death threats were common posts.

So forums like AT would have huge financial and legal risks with virtually no upside. Think Intel, AMD, etc will advertise here if every other post here is two girls one cup, spam and personal threats? Same goes for YouTube, Twitter, etc.

Thank you for taking the time to explain the history of Section 230, I was only 17 or 18 or so back when this was being debated in the HoR and Senate so I wasn't paying as much attention back then as I do now. I just know that repealing it would make the internet inside the United States a much shittier place.
 
Feb 4, 2009
35,248
16,716
136
Yet another area where the President has the right idea, he simply has no plan.
I am all for message boards like this and social media companies having some expectation to remove false or dangerous or salacious posts. They need some wiggle room regarding when the content gets removed or edited. They should have some liability if they ignore or encourage such content.
Personally I don’t know how a law could be crafted without basically shutting everyone down however I am certain there could be a way to craft such a bill and yeah maybe forum membership would cost a little money per month or a bigger lifetime fee to have 24/7/365 moderation and fact checking but again I don’t think that is an unreasonable outcome. I think that scenario would come with some side benefits like shit posters will be discouraged and everyone posting stuff has some accountability because nobody is going to want to continually pay for new accounts or have to buy prepaid Visa cards to hide the fact they’ve shit posted under dozens of accounts.
Summary:
Not a bad idea the President has, just no plan is attached to the plan.

edit: this is a ten thousand foot overview no need to pick apart the idea, I admit I likely have several holes in this plan