Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #CDA230
Most recents (6)
No matter how benevolent a dictatorship is, it's still a dictatorship, and subject to the dictator's whims. We must demand that the owners and leaders of tech platforms be fair and good - but we must also be prepared for them to fail at this, sometimes catastrophically. 1/ 
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/sem… 2/
pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/sem… 2/
A monopolist's first preference is always "don't regulate me." But coming in at a close second is "regulate me in ways that only I can comply with, so that no one is allowed to compete with me."
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A couple hundred mil for compliance SOUNDS like a lot but it's a BARGAIN if it excludes future competitors.
That's why Facebook and Youtube flipped and endorsed the EU plan to mandate hundreds of millions of euros' worth of copyright filters in 2019.
eff.org/deeplinks/2019…
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That's why Facebook and Youtube flipped and endorsed the EU plan to mandate hundreds of millions of euros' worth of copyright filters in 2019.
eff.org/deeplinks/2019…
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Mark Zuckerberg may be a mediocre sociopath with criminally stupid theories of human interaction that he imposes on 2.6 billion people, but he is an unerring bellwether for policies that will enhance Facebook's monopoly power.
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There's a bipartisan movement to abolish #CDA230, the Clinton-era law that makes people liable for their own speech, while simultaneously immunizing tech providers who carry that speech and incentivizing them to moderate it.
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On the right, you have trumpy calls for a social media fairness doctrine that would require a platform that removed false claims that masks don't prevent covid transmission to also remove true claims that masks DO work (seriously, wear a fucking mask).
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On the left, you have people who claim that CDA230 is corporate welfare, absolving Big Tech companies of the need to hire an (impossibly large) army of moderators to approve everything their users say before it goes live.
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You know how the Curse of the Monkey's paw works: a cursed object grants all of your wishes, but in the worst way possible: "be careful what you wish for."
That's what we're living through with Big Tech right now.
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That's what we're living through with Big Tech right now.
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I'm all for regulating Big Tech, but not all regulation is created equal. Some regulation can dampen the power of Big Tech, while other regulation can make it permanent, even creating powerful stakeholders for monopolies within government.
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Every monopolist's first preference is to be totally unregulated, but every monopolist's SECOND preference is to be regulated in a way that only a monopolist can comply with, thus foreclosing on the possibility of competition from an as-yet-nonexistent upstart.
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I took the time to read @ma_franks and @daniellecitron's excellent paper on #CDA230 and I'm glad I did. I hope those committees working on reform read it too. I'll summarize some key points here 🧵
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papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
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papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Worth reminding y'all that #CDA230's original purpose was "to help clean up the Internet, not to facilitate people doing bad things on the Internet."
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The law’s overbroad interpretation by courts "resulted in platforms having scant legal incentive to combat online abuse."
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The law’s overbroad interpretation by courts "resulted in platforms having scant legal incentive to combat online abuse."
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"Allowing attention-grabbing abuse to remain online often accords with platforms’ rational self-interest" as they profit from engagement. Also, firms have mainly "expended resources to stem abuse when it has threatened their bottom line."
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People have asked me why I haven't written about Trump's executive order on social media and #CDA230. Here's why.
As everyone who understands the law knows, this will not survive contact with the judiciary. It's unconstitutional and incoherent and just stupid.
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As everyone who understands the law knows, this will not survive contact with the judiciary. It's unconstitutional and incoherent and just stupid.
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It's as if Trump declared up to be down, and then threatened FAA sanctions against anyone caught standing on the ground. This will doubtless inflict pain and chaos, but the first judge that hears the case will tell him to knock it off and stop being an idiot.
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The real purpose - tissue thin, totally obvious - is to get us to stop paying attention to white nationalism, pandemic genocide, 101,000 dead, and corruption and start talking about whether up is down.
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