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

They are moderating like mad

[SuperKendall]

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.

Maybe they could be given year long trial periods to see if they could actually behave with thread of 230 status being rescinded.

Re:They are moderating like mad

[ShanghaiBill]

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

Nancy Pelosi is not interested in making them more neutral. Her goal is to impose more political correctness and censorship.

Protections for free speech should be strengthened, not removed.

Re:They are moderating like mad

[tomhath]

Her goal is to send a message that they must stop funding rogue politicians like AOC and get back to letting her be the conduit of money flowing from her district to Washington.

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

[ShanghaiBill]

Then it gets flooded with actual Nazis. As in "blood and soil", Hitler did nothing wrong, genocide people based on genetics, real life fucking Nazis.

Even Nazis have a right to speak, and you have a right to disagree and speak back. That's what freedom means.

Re:They are moderating like mad

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Politician IQ needs raising first

[presidenteloco]

If politicians could demonstrate an accurate understanding of science and technology, perhaps we could trust them to regulate it....

But, um, no.

Re:Politician IQ needs raising first

[fustakrakich]

How about just not reelecting them? Only we can turn over the house 100% instead of the usual 5 or 10, every two years the opportunity stares us in the face... It's worth a try, don't you think?

Re: Politician IQ needs raising first

[phantomfive]

That kind of thing gives more power to lobbyists, because they don't retire, and continually gain experience in how to manipulate fresh politicians.

Re: Politician IQ needs raising first

[phantomfive]

An experienced politician keeps raising the price. Check out the Medicare “doc fix” for an example. Those politicains got a ton of cash from the lobbyists.

Re: Politician IQ needs raising first

[phantomfive]

It's up to the voters to fix the problem. Nobody else can do it

That's true. You can't help it if the voters want to elect a king.

Re: Politician IQ needs raising first

[phantomfive]

Anarchy and violence until people get tired of it. On a more personal level, recognize what is coming and prepare for it.

Good For Google, Bad For Everyone Else

[mentil]

Google would be a-ok with Section 230 getting the axe. That'd mean that advertisers and other corporate partners would have an even greater portion of the Internet's presence, on Youtube and Google Search. They'd heavily restrict who can post to Youtube, saving them tons of money, and being able to blame the government, just like how Microsoft was able to blame the government when they were allowed/forced to turn over data stored in other countries. Twitter and Reddit would be reduced to verified accounts, with so few posts it's feasible to have moderators pre-approve all posts. Twitter is about the only social media site that'd be able to survive this transition, as it could easily turn into a 'read-only' website for the plebes to read announcements by VIPs.
Twitch would be reduced to a couple dozen known quantities being streamed, everyone else being muted and only allowed to stream whitelisted unmodded games.

It's not just the USA talking about this -- New Zealand, Australia and the UK are also talking about it. Just waiting for the fifth eye now...

Re:Good For Google, Bad For Everyone Else

[mentil]

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

Re:Good For Google, Bad For Everyone Else

[dryriver]

Ironically it is the LEFT - supposedly champions of the, cough cough, working man who doesn't own a TV channel, radio station or a newspaper - that are trying to shut down all avenues of unfettered free speech online. Why? Because the left almost everywhere is a TOOL of a small handful of very powerful and very dominant industrialist families that originate in Europe and have been at the top of the global heap much longer than any one of us have been alive. You see, if you are devious enough to pretend that you "care about the common person", and repeat that message often and dumbed down enough, many a "common person" starts to believe that you are being sincere. Control the LEFT thoroughly, and you can simply stop any genuine revolution or pitchfork uprising dead in its tracks if it does actually start to happen. Just keep pretending that you "work for the average Joe", repeat that message ad absurdum, and in the meantime feed average Joes and Janes around the world watered down policies that ensure that only CERTAIN people get to have real power in the world. There is also a very particular type of internet content that these people are trying to shut down, and it is Youtube channels like A CALL FOR AN UPRISING - way too much brutal truth being broadcast there for the world's governing elite. Yes, the internet is going to get censored more and more. Too much of what was supposed to stay in the dark is being brought out into the open across the internet. No, that will not help these elites - once the internet IS censored, many people will start to realize that these Elites genuinely exist, genuinely control Trillions of Dollars in money, and genuinely want brainwashed sheep to keep funneling money into their Bank Of International Settlements private accounts. So the internet WILL get censored. But this will backfire on the elites - nobody wants a world where your ISP basically delivers a Disneynet into your home or to your phone. The elites will do themselves in by censoring free, truthful speech online. Let them do it.

Yeah , that isn't saying what you might think

[Crashmarik]

It's more like we have picked the winners and don't want to see anything "DISRUPTED" at this point so lets introduce lots of friction for would be new players.

Censorship

[GhostBond]

So she's just officially saying "Government censorship of the internet" right? That's the goal here?

"Privilege"

[Solandri]

"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."

Apparently she thinks that putting up a bulletin board that anyone can tack messages onto is a privilege which must be granted to you by the government. How absolutely backwards. The people grant government the privilege to restrict things the people think might need restricting, not the other way around. 230 was never a right given to the people. The people already had the right. 230 was just a reminder to the government of that fact, so that it wouldn't try to do something silly like infringe on it, forcing the people to go through a lengthy multi-year court battle before the SCotUS would finally reaffirm that The People have a fundamental right to freedom of expression without government interference. 230 exists for the same reason as the Bill of Rights - not because some law gave people those rights, but as a reminder to government not to try to infringe those rights.

You say you wanted freedom of expression. You got it. If this unfiltered view into what people are really thinking and saying makes you uncomfortable, that's your problem not theirs. Hiding it by contravening 230 is the technological equivalent of sticking your head in the sand. All the stuff that you dislike may disappear from your sight, but it hasn't actually gone away - it's still there, in people's minds, being spoken in private, and posted on non-major sites. If you feel these thoughts are wrong and need to be corrected, the proper fix is to educate and convince people so they agree with you and no longer think that way. Not to sweep it under the rug to make yourself feel like the house is cleaner because you can't see the dirt anymore.

Re:"Privilege"

[rmdingler]

Bingo.

The catch to the freedoms of speech and expression you enjoy is that the people you disagree with get them, too... and no one is guaranteed the right not to be offended.

On another note, politicians on both sides of the aisle are the problem. Apologies if you're a heavily invested fan of one team.

Re:"Privilege"

[mentil]

Section 230 is about legal liability. If someone infected with measles wants to sue Facebook in civil court because they didn't shut down antivaxx posts, Section 230 protects them from that. If someone posts hate speech/death threats/whatever to Facebook, that prevents Facebook from being legally liable for hosting it. It's not about preventing the Attorney General from fining Facebook or throwing Zuck in jail over posts some rando made on Facebook.

Re:Crybaby Republican can't be a nazi cuz TOS, aww

[dryriver]

5 years from now you will not be able to do what you just did - post anonymously on a platform like Slashdot, because anonimity only has been made illegal. We'll see just whose inbred faggot ass goes crying to his mommy when that happens. =) THEEEEY TOOOK MYYYY ANOOONYYYMOUUUS COOOWARRRRD POOOSTIIING RIIIIIGHTSSS AWAAAAY !!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!! WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA !!!

This isn't that hard.

[msauve]

The issue was pretty well resolved decades ago with telcom - divide content/service providers from carriers. Current issues revolve around allowing the two to intermingle.