alt Hacker NewsI understand the mechanism.
I agree that removing section 230 today would have an even more centralizing effect. We've already got huge tech companies that would happily shoulder such liability, and lots of small sites that would find themselves in an uncomfortable position.
My point was that if we never had section 230 to begin with, then we would have kept the strong incentive against setting up sites revolving around centralizing speech in the first place. There would have been more emphasis on protocols, and keeping communication under the control of the person speaking.
>My point was that if we never had section 230 to begin with, then we would have kept the strong incentive against setting up sites revolving around centralizing speech in the first place.
Where did you get that idea? Section 230 never provided any preference or privilege to large organizations over small ones.
In fact, it did exactly the opposite for reasons I discussed. You say that without Section 230:
That doesn't even come close to covering it. Without Section 230, your aunt would take down her knitting pattern discussion website/chat room/mailing list/whatever within half a day, with whoever it was posting something objectionable (or just off topic) and when your aunt deletes it, file a lawsuit claiming censorship.How long is your aunt going to keep the completely free and volunteer site up when she has to pay lawyers $5-10K every week? And if she doesn't delete it, continue to flood the site with garbage until it's unusable, turning a knitting discussion site into 4/8chan.
All while doing nothing to stop the big boys from creating a dystopian hellhole because they have legions of lawyers on staff.
In fact, without Section 230, $BigCorp and/or other bad actors wouldn't even need to buy out their competition or wage costly efforts to destroy them, just post oceans of objectionable/off topic stuff, sue if it's taken down or wait for it to go under because its awash in garbage they posted there to make it unusable.
If we never had, or got rid of Section 230, your preferred candidate or issue advocacy group could trivially be taken down through these tactics, stifling free expression. Think fake DMCA take downs, but without recourse except through $500/hour lawyers and the courts.
Not sure where you got the idea that Section 230 ever was some sort of "giveaway" to big companies to encourage centralization. It was not, and even today it primarily protects the little guy, just as it did 30 years ago.
Do you have your mind made up and no amount of actual evidence will change it?
If not, feel free to check out the following:
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R46751#_Toc155275791
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....
https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
https://www.propublica.org/article/nsu-section-230
https://theconversation.com/law-that-built-the-internet-turn...
There's lots more of that to be found, but don't believe me. Check it out for yourself. Thanks to Section 230, among other things, you can.