Changed to what? Should dang become legally responsible for any of the bad legal advice I've been giving people on this forum? Should Murdoch go to prison for the lies in the paid advertising that Fox anchors and opinion wonks are doing every day?
Let me take things back a step - it's nearly impossible to hold people who are lying accountable. Surely the platform bears less responsibility than the liars on it?
I don't know but I think there is a room for compromise. If you post illegal things online and the site cannot identify you so that you can be held accountable then the site should be held accountable. As it stands people are harmed and nobody is liable so we end up in this situation.
There's a simple way to do that. Legislate a requirement for ID, the users will provide it to the platform, the platform will provide it to law enforcement when requested.
Kind of like how South Korea (where you need a national ID to access digital services) is doing, or the UK is trying to do with their ID push.
(And then who wants this could go have a fight with the people who don't want this.)
Speeding in a rental car doesn't absolve you of the ticket.
But I mean yeah, you could theoretically rent a car in the UK and kill somebody then flee to the US and hide. But don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
HN users used to herald that law as the best thing since Betty White (who was older than sliced bread).
Without 230, there would be no YouTube. No Facebook. No Instagram. No social media. Forums would likely have gone extinct. Half of the tech industry and a good chunk of the jobs that people on HN do would never have happened.
Now people on HN want to get rid of the law. People who are too young to know what it was like before that protection set the internet free to create and collaborate.
I despise social media. But demonizing 230 just shows a basic lack of knowledge of history, economics, and the reasons it was created.
Well, give us the argument, then, instead of the mere allegation that history is frowning at us. Why is it not possible to change the law to permit platforms to not be liable for speech of their users, particularly when users are engaging in a platform in the capacity of communicating and exchanging information, (i.e., 230 as it is today) but not permit advertisers from displaying ads which contain blatant fraud, for which the advertising platform is profiting off that fraud?
Usenet was a thing. A huge thing. There was zero danger that it would go "extinct" due to the lack of extralegal protections.
> But demonizing 230 just shows a basic lack of knowledge of history, economics, and the reasons it was created.
You're ignoring the context. Section 230 was created when the Internet was nascent and we were trying to encourage broader /business/ investment into the technology.
Now that that investment has occurred and most consumers _prefer_ to do business on the Internet, whereas the opposite was previously true, we no longer need the _additional_ protections for hugely profitable businesses.
Aside from that is there some reason we can't _modify_ the law to bring it more in line with citizen expectations? We're bound to the decisions of the past absolutely? Please...
