Top US Congressman Says Silicon Valley's Self-Regulating Days 'Probably Should Be' Over (recode.net)

On the technology podcast Recode Decode, America's Speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, said that Silicon Valley's self-regulating days "probably should be" over. Recode reports: Pelosi said Silicon Valley is abusing the privilege of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which says that internet companies are not responsible for what is posted on their platforms. "230 is a gift to them, and I don't think they are treating it with the respect that they should," she said. "And so I think that that could be a question mark and in jeopardy.... For the privilege of 230, there has to be a bigger sense of responsibility on it, and it is not out of the question that that could be removed."

Asked about Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren's proposal to break up Amazon, Google, and Facebook, Pelosi said she had not studied it closely. Instead, she more cautiously suggested that some agglomerations of power may be worth breaking up. "I know there could be some clear lines that we see in our community, of companies that maybe could be easily broken up without having any impact, one on the other," she said. "I'm a big believer in the antitrust laws, I think that's very important for us to have them and to use them, and to subject those who should be subjected to it. "

Comments

Re:Good For Google, Bad For Everyone Else

[mentil]

Strike that, seems Canada is getting in on the act too.

Re:They are moderating like mad

[cpt kangarooski]

I personally agree that all of the major companies have long ago abandoned any pretense to being neutral platforms, and all should be excluded from 230 protections.

You idiot. The safe harbor of 47 USC 230 has nothing to do with being a neutral platform. In fact, the express goal was to encourage sites to remove 'unwholesome' content.

I think you need a brief history lesson:

Prior to the enactment of the safe harbor there were three applicable legal precedents. The first was the old rule that the publisher of defamatory content was responsible for it just as the author was, because they had the opportunity to review it and verify it. The second was Cubby, Inc. v Compuserve, Inc., 776 F.Supp. 135 (SDNY 1991), which held that online services that hosted defamatory content were not responsible for it if it was uploaded by the users without the knowledge or approval of the service. Basically, this gave sites protection so long as they didn't moderate. The third was Stratton Oakmont, Inc v. Prodigy Services, Co., 1995 WL 323710 (NY Sup. Ct. 1995) which held that if the online service moderated anything at all, then it was liable even for things that it approved, ignored, or had been in error about.

The result was predictable: the only two safe options were to 1) not moderate anything, which would lead to ads, spam, defamation, hate speech, etc. proliferating, or 2) not allow posting, which would prevent even benign users from having a voice.

At about the same time, Congress decided it wanted online services to take voluntary steps to remove porn from online. But none of the services were stupid enough to try, since they couldn't moderate everything perfectly, requiring them to either moderate nothing or not allow posting.

Exasperated, Congress gave the services protection -- if they moderated imperfectly it wouldn't be held against them, and as they couldn't compel moderation, it would be up to each site to determine how much or how little to do. Thus, a site could remove porn and spam and malware but allow users to talk with one another without careful policing of every single post.

Re:They are moderating like mad

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're a fucking pro-censorship fascist, & a moron to boot.