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.
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.