It was one of those “what do you think” calls from a friend, that was really a “here’s what I think and you should too” calls. He acknowledged that Trump’s lawsuit must be bonkers because all the lawyers say so, but wasn’t he “right, really”? Wasn’t it really true that but for Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, there would be no Twitter, no Facebook, no social media where most of the people can be found, and so becomes the de facto town square in a virtual town?
The discussion didn’t center on whether private corporations had a First Amendment right to speak as they chose, or not, or allow speech as they saw fit. Whether for good reason or no reason, they could shrug and trash any utterance, as they explained in their terms of service. Unfair? Arbitrary? Capricious? Where is the respect of principles of free speech, of diverse thought, of tolerance? A fair enough question, given how ham-handedly decisions appear to be made and the inability to argue your case with a sentient human being.
So F/T suck? Do you want your money back? Does anybody force you to go there, to use them, to be complicit in their success?
But that’s where all the people are, and you want to talk to and with the people. That whole “so make your own social media site if you don’t like theirs” is like gabbing in the wind. If you’re angry about getting shafted, you have a point. Just not a right. And not a cause of action.
Hey, if I was banned from twitter, I would be pretty pissed too. I would proclaim that whatever it was that gave rise to my ban was hypocritical and inconsistent. I would denounce their methods for lack of transparency and due process. I would explain why my speech had merit, even if it was heresy to the Lords of Twitter, and that silencing speech that veers from the orthodoxy while simultaneously allowing vicious, deceitful, hateful speech to go unmolested as long as it backs the “right” horse or attacks the “wrong” one doesn’t. Yes, I would be pissed. Really pissed.
And I would have no redress, which would piss me off even more.
I get it, even if some of the purported banned heresy is pretty stupid, false and, on occasion, dangerous. And I, too, would look for a conceptual ledge to grab on to to strike back. That ledge is Section 230. It was enacted long before there was any Facebook or Twitter, but when there were AOL chatrooms.
Section 230 was enacted to promote what was then a baby internet learning how to walk when the problem became clear that whoever was running the “interactive computer service” was in the untenable position of being liable for allowing anybody with a keyboard from saying bad, obscene, false and offensive things, which could then place the host in a position of liability for allowing. It was enacted to allow the host to post it or not, and be free of most liability either way.
The ledge served as the governmental “interference” in the free market, I was reliably informed, that was the comparable give-back to Ma Bell being a monopoly and putting poles wherever it needed to string telephone wires to distant farmhouses. Therefore, Section 230 was the hook that justified the conversion of “private” businesses like Facebook and Twitter into the public square subject to the obligations the Constitution would impose on government.
Of course, Section 230 wasn’t a gift to social media, as some temporally-challenged folks believe, but rather social media was the bastard step-child of Section 230. That someone could build an app that allowed people space to spew without being legally responsible for what they said was step one. That someone could also decide that what they said sucked too much to allow and could remove it with impunity was step two. Those were the rules. When FB and Twitter entered the game, they just played by them.
If the rules were different, and there was no Section 230, there may not be a Facebook or Twitter today. There might not be a Yelp or Amazon reviews or NextDoor or GlassDoor. Each of these, and, indeed, SJ comments, enjoys the benefit of Section 230. Without it, there would be a constant stream of lawsuits by angry people over serious defamation and nonsensical hurt feelings. The point isn’t who would ultimately win the suits, but that nobody can survive the cost associated with defending a million lawsuits a year based on crap other people spewed.
The other implication is that nobody really wants websites to be required to squander their bandwidth on shitposters, Russian bots and furry porn. But SJ isn’t the town square, and Twitter feels as if it is because that’s where the people are. What purpose is served screaming into the abyss when you want to snark among your friends?
I remember when the Supreme Court decided Pruneyard, back when malls had replaced Main Street as the place where people went to shop. While it relied on a quirk of California’s Constitution on the one hand and the impairment of economic value of a purported “taking” on the other. Still, I thought it was a bad decision by crossing the public/private line and opening a very dangerous door, even if the very point of a shopping mall was to supplant Main Street and assume the benefits without the detriments of being a government.
But I told my friend, I can’t blame Facebook or Twitter for using the law as it existed before they did to their advantage. Had there been no Section 230, there would be no Facebook and Twitter. And we wouldn’t want there to be social media without it. And we wouldn’t like social media without it, and this whole issue wouldn’t exist if social media sucked and nobody wanted to be part of it.
My friend told me we would all be better off if there was no Facebook, no Twitter, and we weren’t spewing nonsense at each other and instead enjoyed real relationships with real people, and put our time, attention and energies to more productive use. Maybe so, I replied. But before you make a change to Section 230, understand that the most likely outcome is that the internet will blow up. I’ll still have SJ. You won’t even have Reddit.
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“My friend told me we would all be better off if …” Who the hell does he think he is?
Talk about ‘spewing nonsense’…I think that person would be relieved of my friendship when i tell him I’d be…
There was life before the internet. It wasn’t so bad. In fact, some might feel it was better than it is now.
Honestly, I could live very happily if Facebook, Twitter, et al all just went away. Not going to get into the argument about 230, but the world wouldn’t be any worse a place if those all just went away.
Rant alert.
The only reason they ‘feel’ that is their own inability and lack of self awareness to see and use a tool properly. I never have and never will get sucked into the FB BS or twit-sphere, I got better things to do.
Never really had the need for validation by a bunch of virtual randos. That said, I did enjoy the occasional applause when preforming, but that was real people, in a real place doing real stuff. Nothing ‘virtual’ about it. A one dimensional screen will NEVER replace that.
I most definitely would not be ‘better off’ without it. I would not have found this here hotel…you and all the wonderful (and not so wonderful) guests. Weather its actually learning useful things, or just seeing the egoistic stupidity of inflexible minds, it has certainly been educational.
Yes, the interweb is chock full of nuts, and yet, even idiots can be very useful. When I had to fix the non-functioning power windows on my ride, a short YT search got me at least 3 morons (that I could wrench circles around) filming their ham handed repairs… unlike them, I got the job done without breaking any old, brittle plastic parts. Yay!… and thank you, narcissistic mutton-head who needs to see himself on screen giving advice on things you’re not really qualified to do.
It’s a tool. You can use it, or it can use you. Only the fools that get sucked in and used think ‘better off without it’.
I’m not on Facebook, but I am on twitter. I gain some good information from there, some insight into people and things that would otherwise never make it onto my radar, but most ranges from worthless, witless to downright narcissistic idiocy. I’ve learned to shrug a lot and, when it all gets too stupid, turn it off.
Though to be fair, I wouldn’t learn about the echo chambers of the unduly passionate without it so that I can work to try to blunt its worst excesses.
A voice from the Peanut Gallery (from a guy who was actually once in the Peanut Gallery):
I’m not on facebook, twitter, any other of those things. Never have been. And yet the world goes on.
Sometimes I’ll miss getting a picture of my kids or something, but they know I’m not on any social media, so they’ll generally either send to me directly or count on my wife to show me whatever it is. Like my kids, my friends know how to reach me – e ( or snail) mail is usually best. I do wish folks would stop texting, but I haven’t figured out how to stop them.
Seems to me I’m doing just fine. (I do miss WordStar, though, and especially my old Hermes 3000.)
At least twitter provides some useful information at times. I never understood Facebook as anything other than a plea for validation by the desperately lonely.
As I recall, you once told me I was wise not to be on Twitter and I should stay off. (Or maybe it was Tannebaum.)
SHG,
If social media has become some sort of a public utility subject to the rigors of being such largely because of its ubiquity, I wonder whether the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post should be viewed in a similar fashion particularly when it comes to readers’ comments?
Is this a dumb question? Perhaps. Clearly, not same, same, you say. But then again . . . .
All the best.
RGK
As you know, one of the reasons I suffer constitutional rights is because once you shrug off their limitations, you never know where you end up. And by the time it happens, no one remembers the extremely limited and special circumstances that everybody agreed was a “one time only” wink at dignity.
Amen, brother!
Social media and the prominent papers should be viewed similarly in the sense that they will thrust ourselves away from our primordial concern of coming to understand our existence-in-this-world. The thrusting-away is always expected in a life unadulterated by social media and current mass media. However, our current societal trends hyper-ventilate this thrusting. Humanity is engorged with these ills of narcissism and ghost principles filling into this vacuum generated from this hyper-ventilating thrusting-away.
What the hell are you talking about?
I know the norms here at this hotel, and yet, I have made myself to be ambiguous and a little (a lot) unintelligible. I will stop commenting just for the sake of explaining out loud my unfettered thinking. I will take more time to consider and respond to other arguments and consider the logical fallacies that may tag along to their arguments.
To answer your question I have taken liberties caused thus by my Bowmore 18 and my reading of “Being and Time.”
Lastly, I have been reading SJ everyday for the last 11 years. And I also have read the back copies after being implored by our host to do so. It is my motivation for working as hard as I do in the restaurant business in Philadelphia.
Some comments are just nuts. Others seem to have a seed of substance buried in there somewhere, but I just can’t figure out what it means. I could have just trashed yours, as it was a reply to Judge Kopf and he doesn’t need to spend time trying to make sense of incoherent comments, but I decided instead to post it and reply to give you the opportunity to restate your point in some modestly coherent fashion.
Remember, the rest of us aren’t inside your ambiguous head, so if you can’t bring yourself to do it because coherence is a virtue in itself, think of me having to read it and figure out what the hell you’re talking about.
It’s heartwarming to see so many “leftists” celebrating corporate power while so many “conservatives” insist on the government playing big daddy. We can find common ground, even if it usually isn’t at the same time.
Sit down. I have something to tell you and it’s going to make you unpopular at the hipster coffee shop.
If we don’t think FB, Twitter, and other mass media forms of internet communication have been used and managed in ways that are undermining civil society, then there is no need to be troubled about ways to rein them in that could be consistent with First Amendment rights. But if we believe these media behemoths are a problem, at least to the extent they provide a mechanism to amplify anonymous harmful communications, then we shouldn’t accept the argument that they cannot be regulated without destroying the ability of the Internet (writ large) to enhance our ability to communicate with one another. To be sure, it’s hard not to slip on the slippery slope, but that argument has never been particularly persuasive as a reason to avoid addressing a serious issue. If we have a functioning government, it can rely on input from serious, intelligent people to both define what is the problem and generate ideas for regulatory steps that could lessen the ability of these entities both to permit harmful behavior and provide a fairer means of sanctioning people determined to be causing harm. Will there be hard choices on the margin? Sure. But could we make things better within 1A constraints? I think so.
What could possibly go wrong, Comrade Donald?
One person’s “undermining” is another person’s “enhance.” This is sometimes even stated outright with great righteousness.
The Hays Code addressed similar concerns. It ultimately lost, but not to government, because government isn’t the only arena where the principle of free expression matters. Meanwhile more “functioning” governments were/are the ones enforcing such codes elsewhere.
But they’re “intelligent people.” There can be only one possible correct view.
Switch a couple words around, and this sounds a lot like FDR or, before him, Woodrow Wilson: the business of government is to act decisively to solve society’s problems with input from the best and brightest.
Up to you whether that’s a compliment or a criticism.
A while back, a couple twit algos had a conversation. Algo Bob fretted over the loss of 230, lawsuits and shit-stained content, so he went to Algo Romina:
Algo Bob: What can we do? If 230 goes, the bosses get sued and we have to give everyone their say, even the nuttastics!
Algo Romina: Right.
Algo Bob: But if we let in the Nuttastics, the normies will be pissed.
Algo Romina: Right again.
Algo Bob: So how do we keep the normies happy?
Algo Romina: we ban Trump.
Algo Bob: Whaaaaat? That’ll piss ’em all off! They’ll say we have to let everyone in and they can say anything. We cancel like 12 billion dumbass pieces every day. They’ll go crazy and want us to delete stuff!
Algo Romina: Three times right. You’re on a right-roll.
Algo Bob: The bosses will get sued if we put all that shittery out there. Wait, the bosses can’t get sued because 230, right?
Algo Romina: Bob, you’re like a right machine.
Algo Bob: So, what do we do?
Algo Romina: It’s a matter of timing. We let it all in. Pretty soon, humans will understand 230 is a pretty good idea. Sadly, it won’t last long.
I remember this episode of Sábado Gigante.