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295 points AndrewDucker | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.231s | source
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andybak ◴[] No.45045278[source]
Between this and the UK Online Safety Bill, how are people meant to keep track?

Launch a small website and commit a felony in 7 states and 13 countries.

I wouldn't have known about the Mississippi bill unless I'd read this. How are we have to know?

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zaptheimpaler ◴[] No.45045350[source]
Any physical business has to deal with 100s of regulations too, it just means the same culture of making it extremely difficult and expensive to do anything at all is now coming to the online world as well, bit by bit.
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kragen ◴[] No.45045609[source]
Websites aren't necessarily businesses; they're speech.
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TGower ◴[] No.45046388[source]
A blog is speech, but I wouldn't say that deciding to operate a social media site is speech. That said, there are plenty of good reasons to oppose this law.
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dragonwriter ◴[] No.45046414[source]
A social media site is speech (and/or press, but they are grouped together in the first amendment because they are lenses on the same fundamental right not crisply distinguishable ones); now, its well recognized that commercial speech is still subject to some regulations as commerce, but it is not something separate from speech.
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TGower ◴[] No.45046501[source]
I would disagree, for example section 230 reads "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." The content of the site is obviously speech/press, but the decision to operate the site doesn't seem like it is. Very possible I'm mistaken and there is case law to the contrary though, it's a nuanced argument either way
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dragonwriter ◴[] No.45046620[source]
Not sure why you cite Section 230 as if it had anything to say about what is Constitutionally speech; other than inverting the relation between the Constitution and statute law, that is a pretty big misunderstanding of what Section 230 is (and the broader Communication Decency Act in which it was contained was) about.
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TGower ◴[] No.45046805[source]
> A social media site is speech (and/or press

I suppose this is what confused me then, as it seemed obvious that e.g. the Facebook reccomendation algorithm isn't speech, so if a social media site would be considered speech it would be due to the user content. Section 230 doesn't in any way supercede the constitution, but it does clarify which party is doing the speech and thus where the first ammendment would apply.

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1. jcranmer ◴[] No.45048231[source]
A lot of people want to conflate several things that shouldn't be conflated. To clarify:

* The First Amendment generally prohibits the government from enacting any laws or regulations that limit speech based on its content (anything you might reasonably call "moderation" would definitely fall into this category!).

* Private companies are not the government. Social media networks are therefore not obligated to follow the First Amendment. (Although there is a decent argument that Trump's social media network is a state actor here and is therefore constitutionally unable to, say, ban anybody from the network.)

* Recommendation algorithms of social media networks are protected speech of those companies. The government cannot generally enact a law that regulate these algorithms, and several courts have already struck down laws that attempted to do so.

* §230 means that user-generated speech is not treated as speech of these companies. This prevents you from winning a suit against them for hosting speech you think injures you (think things like defamation).

* §230 also eliminates the liability of these companies for their moderation or lack thereof.

There remains the interesting question as to whether or not companies can be held liable via their own speech that occurs as a result of the recommendation algorithms of user-generated content. This is somewhat difficult to see litigated because it seems everybody who tries to do a challenge case here instead tries to argue that §230 in its entirety is somehow wrong, and the court rather bluntly telling them that they're only interested in the narrow question doesn't seem to be able to get them to change tactics. (See e.g. the recent SCOTUS case which was thrown out essentially for this reason rather than deciding the question).