Thread by @thedextriarchy

This is a good point. I’m just defining “real” as “a thing that is factually related to Section 230.” I’m grasping at straws here.

https://twitter.com/jess_miers/status/1321494106623799302

The *other* reason that “otherwise objectionable” matters is that Republican lawmakers/Trump regulators have been trying to export the (c)(2)(A) preconditions into (c)(1), so any changes they make there are sort of a trojan horse for the entire law.

To be clear, most of the stuff the Trump administration wants to do is very legally questionable, so we’re sort of speaking in hypotheticals.

We’ve had a string of questions that have basically just gotten the CEOs to reiterate press releases and statements to journalists. They’re not getting pushed very hard on anything they’re actually doing at the company.

Mike Lee is asking if “any high-profile liberal person” that has been censored.

Zuckerberg can’t exactly bring this up, but Facebook reportedly deranked Mother Jones in its algorithm because it was left-leaning. motherjones.com/media/2020/10/…

Also Lee is kind of eliding the point that Barack Obama hasn’t gotten tweets labeled because Obama doesn’t constantly say completely bizarre stuff on social media.

Lee suggests platforms are “writing their standards to target conservative viewpoints,” which again, sort of elides whether things like “randomly making stuff up about the coronavirus” are inherently conservative viewpoints

Finally, some wholesome Section 230 content

https://twitter.com/RonWyden/status/1321497275537874944

I try not to be a downer about this, but 200,000 people are dead and millions have been impoverished and instead of helping them the Senate is busy litigating how Twitter is labeling the president’s tweets.

Sen. Johnson is asking Dorsey/Zuckerberg/Pichai to provide a breakdown of the political viewpoints of people who participate in internal chat forums at Twitter/Facebook/Google. What.

Senate Republicans' fixation on figuring out how many Democrats are working in specific tech companies is sort of awkwardly McCarthyian.

Johnson is now complaining about this tweet:

https://twitter.com/marytherese5/status/1317973661404565505

Ron Johnson: “If people think I’m strangling my neighbor’s dog, they may not show up at the polls!”

i mean, let’s not get ahead of ourselves

Again, you know what we could be doing right now? We could be grilling Zuckerberg about how far he’d be okay eroding Section 230. Asking newspaper editors about whether they’d have to shut down their comments sections without Section 230. And so on.

A few of the entities/people I would love the Senate to ask about Section 230:

- Wikipedia
- The Organization for Transformative Works
- Basically any consumer complaints site
- Harassment campaign victims
- Newspapers with comment sections
- Yelp

We’re still talking about dictators tweeting, so I’ll go on with questions I want to hear:

- What were the concrete effects of SESTA/FOSTA, a key test case for eroding Section 230?
- When does/should algorithmic recommendation make someone a “speaker,” if ever?

More questions:

- Is there a size above which platforms should face different rules?
- What would be the likely effect of changes like @daniellecitron’s “bad samaritan” proposal? fordhamlawreview.org/issues/the-int…

Ooh we’re back to something related to algorithms, let’s see where this goes.

Jacky Rosen wants to know “There has to be accountability when algorithims actively contribute to radicalization and hate.” When you implement policies banning hate etc., how quickly can you adjust your algorithms to stop promoting/recommending it?

Not crazy about this question, but algorithmic recommendations are a really interesting Section 230 topic and the subject of a recent bill: mediapost.com/publications/a…

We are officially done with our Section 230 hearing! Life is pain. All is vanity. Thank you for joining me on this journey.