Summary
Lawmakers are once again pushing to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields online platforms from legal liability for user-generated content.
Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) are collaborating on a bipartisan bill to sunset the law in two years.
Repealing Section 230 aims to force Congress to renegotiate platform liability standards.
The proposal reflects growing frustration over tech giants’ power and content moderation practices, but past efforts have faced political gridlock despite bipartisan support.
For all the people cheering or indifferent to this:
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This would affect more than social media - this would affect ANYWHERE that has user accounts that can post content - blogs, wikis, website builders, hell, even email.
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The summary states this is so it can be “renegotiated”. Considering the current authoritarian direction of the United States, now would be absolutely the worst time to rewrite online content policing laws - it will absolutely be used to silence dissent.
Oh no! Anyway…
Sounds like talking points of someone paid off by social media to sow division about the bill.
- I don’t see why it’s an issue that this would apply to moderation of all user generated content on very large online platforms. That’s the point. The platforms are pushing false and controversial content to drive engagement and have not implemented the necessary guardrails to verify correctness and minimize harm (like, when a post/blog is inciting violence).
- That’s a definite possibility in the current regime that the bill will be used to silence dissent. But from what it looks, the White House doesn’t need bills to silence dissent. Everything in the country is being done by and fought between the executive and the judiciary with 0 public involvement. At least with a bill, there are >500 people involved in passing/blocking it so a larger surface for people to influence the decision.
I would be more concerned about this bill never seeing the light of day because I don’t think the US Congress of this decade is capable of passing any major laws.
Wow, you are either a complete troll/shill, or horribly lacking in critical thinking skills.
The platforms are pushing false and controversial content to drive engagement and have not implemented the necessary guardrails to verify correctness and minimize harm (like, when a post/blog is inciting violence).
In the current climate I very much doubt that this is how the bill would be used if it became law. It will be used to silence political dissenters and prevent the organization of resistance. Right-wing disinformation will get a pass. Left-wing content will be censored. LGBTQ+ content will be censored. Health advice for trans people will be censored. Black history content will be censored. Women’s health and feminist content will be censored. Tech companies are not about to risk the wrath of Trump and huge financial penalties to stand up for these people’s right to speak.
Yeah it would be great to change 230 so that at the very least tech companies are liable for the content their algorithms recommend to people. Seems akin to publishing something so should have the same liability.
But that’s not what’s happening here. They want to repeal it entirely, this will create problems, which will give leeway for Trump to use EOs to resolve it, regardless of whether that’s legal. This will likely end up with Trump deciding what’s allowed on social media.
The point of section 230 was to allow sites to do moderation without that resulting in liability. Without it the lemmy instances couldn’t operate in the US without being sued into oblivion. What’s lacking from the CDA is anything about sites using recommendation algorithms to push content. Because that kind of thing didn’t exist in 1995, when the law was written.
You could not possibly sound more like a shill if you tried.
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If it accidentally kills Facebook and X, that would be a silver lining. But then again they have the money and connections to be effectively immune, as does Truth Social. It’s smaller sites that would suffer, and it would be selectively enforced as another means of political persecution.
The Fediverse might still be OK, but it might become dangerous for US-based admins even if hosting outside the USA.
Might be dangerous for Fediverse hosters outside the US to visit the US as well.
Bipartisan? Which democrat is still working with any republican on anything??
Dick Durbin.
Apparently he swindled some Illinois voters into voting against their own interests.
They need to get the memo so they can prevent it from happening again.
So Durbin is basically a Republican now huh. Good to know.
Durbin was one of the 10 that recently voted Yes on the Republican spending bill, so yeah Democrat In Name Only
Haha DINO
Gotta stop voting for him!
Why the fuck is Sheldon Whitehouse sponsoring this??? Does he suddenly have shit for brains?
Yes. Money talks.
Archive without AI slop here
WHY ARE PEOPLE VOTING FOR Dick Durbin
Round two: Lindsey Graham vs Elon Musk
Good. All the major centralized/corporate social networks are Nazi bars now anyway; nothing of value will be lost if they can no longer exist.
Remember that the Fediverse could survive instances having legal liability for user-posted content because each user could run his own instance.
The Nazi bars will survive. It’s the dissenters and minorities trying to speak in them that will be silenced as a self-protective move by tech corporations.
All the major centralized/corporate social networks are Nazi bars now anyway; nothing of value will be lost if they can no longer exist.
Uh… Bluesky? And in the first place it won’t be the big platforms losing here, but the small ones. What section 230 does is make it so you don’t need a first amendment argument to prevent the courts from controlling what you do with your internet platform, because a first amendment lawsuit is very expensive to run compared to a section 230 lawsuit.
because each user could run his own instance.
They can, but that will push many people away.
I don’t buy the smaller platforms being hurt more argument.
It’s not hard to prevent undue burden on smaller platforms by adding in the bill that it only applies to platforms with more than $1B in revenue.
We need to get rid of 230 because it has given way too much immunity to the biggest internet companies and they have been simply shrugging away all their responsibilities. Let’s work out how to make this bill work for the people instead of shutting it out.
100% agreed. Not even that high. Platforms that generate more than $1 million in revenue. Wipe out these engines of disinformation.
Remember that the Fediverse could survive instances having legal liability for user-posted content because each user could run his own instance.
And this would require each user to run their own instance. The Fediverse is already hard enough to get average folks to join, this would make it nigh impossible for most.
And what happens when you instance is found hosting opinions that the current administration, or some random company doesn’t like? They just send a cease and desists to your ISP or hosting company. And of that ever became too burdensome, they’ll go up the chain to DNS providers and sue them into censoring domains completely.
Once 230 is gone, responsiblility for content hosting can be shifted all the way upstream to largest companies that make up the backbone of the internet, and with liability on them, they will censor everything.
Well, yes. I am opposed to repealing section 230, it’s one of the few good parts of the CDA. I’m arguing with someone who’s in favour of repealing with section 230.
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to argue with you at all, just add more on to your point. I completely agree with what you wrote, but I could have phrased it better.
Ah, okay. Since you opened with a question I assumed you were engaging in debate with me, which was confusing since we seemed to be in agreement.
People outside the USA will still run instances. It might become harder for people in the USA to access them, depending on how these measures are enforced.
Sure, but wouldn’t it be nice if people inside the USA could still run instances too?
Of course. In the current climate this bill would be a huge problem.
They’d do it, because the alternative would be no social media at all.
X would somehow magically be exempt from legal problems, it’d still be around. Same with Truth Social.
You are truly delusional if you think that the Fediverse is safe. This is just the first step towards using DNS to filter the internet of dissenting opinions, and lastly, this will be used to automate lawsuits against anything and anyone that hosts anything that those in power don’t like.
To spell it out, if they remove 230, and everyone just hosts their own platform, and those platforms are used to spread information and opinions that are counter to the administration, they will sue your ISP to cut off your service.
But surely one user posting illegal content would get blasted to all connected instances making everyone guilty.
So… Worse. Much worse.
Damn, it’s sad people can be so clueless yet still have a voice.
Yeah, I’m struggling to see the downside of this personally, which means there is no way in gods green hell it will happen.
