Thread by @AriCohn

1/ Business school profs have just *got* to stop writing these articles about Section 230. Or at least have someone with an understanding of the law review it. It's embarrassing.

This one comes to us from a dean at @MITSloan, and it's a doozy.

cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021…

2/ The theme of the article is clear from the top: Section 230 is Very Bad because it makes it difficult to hold platforms available for misinformation/disinformation that people spread online.

3/ But what Professor Cusumano doesn't grapple with (they never do) is whether platforms could be held accountable by law for such user content even without Section 230.

4/ With the constitutionally-mandated requisite knowledge (not a low bar), platforms could perhaps face some defamation liability in certain cases.

But I don't quite think that's the type of misinformation that Cusumano is after here.

5/ The fact is that much of the misinformation/disinformation that Cusumano and those advancing these arguments want to curtail are in fact protected by the First Amendment.

Getting rid of Section 230 isn't going to magically create legal culpability.

6/ There's a pervasive underlying idea that Section 230 prohibits "accountability" for Bad Content. But there's no sign that people have given any thought as to what "accountability" looks like and whether eliminating 230 actually gets you there.

7/ And that's just a really bad place to be starting from when you're advocating for wholesale changes to a foundational piece of legislation that would have serious impacts on the Internet as we know it.

8/ It also seems like maybe Professor Cusumano hasn't read anything about Section 230, because this is very much not "given the law."

For the billionth time, 230 contains no "neutral platform" requirement; content moderation is its raison d'être.

9/ The entire point is that they *do* act like publishers. Moderating "too much" doesn't open the door to "strong legal challenges" to 230 protection. It would be a pretty pointless law if so.

It really wouldn't take more than ten minutes of searching to learn this.

10/ Now we get to the "Tragedy of the Commons" part, which should not inspire hope for great things.

Professor Cusumano does an apt job summarizing the tragedy of the commons, but the devil is in the details: what does he think that essential common resource is?

11/ Ok, this is actually a good example of a common resource that might be degraded/depleted through neglect, greed, and overconsumption.

But how does that translate over to social media, you might rightly be wondering.

12/ This really goes off the rails in my opinion. User trust in what we read on the internet is an essential common resource? In what universe?

You can't even *define* that subjective, nebulous, probably never-existing concept sufficiently to categorize it as a "commons!"

13/ User trusts exists in different quantities within, and is defined in completely different ways by, each individual. To say that user trust in the Internet is a commons is like saying job satisfaction is a commons. It just doesn't make any sense, conceptually.

14/ It makes even less sense when you're using it to justify legal and regulatory changes. Trust in the media is also pretty low at the moment. Is that trust an "essential common resource" that the media is unfairly depleting and thus grounds for regulation?

Surely not.

15/ In my view, this speaks to the continual refusal to remember that social media platforms are businesses. We do not owe them trust, but at the same time *not* trusting them simply isn't an erosion of the commons and it makes no sense to frame it as such.

16/ A fine description of the fact that the goals of Section 230 Truthers on either side are diametrically opposed to each other. Ok.

But the "what can we do" question is always where things are bound to take a turn for the worse again.

17/ I cannot fathom how one can be a dean at a highly-ranked university in the United States and not be aware that THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE CANNOT AMEND LAWS.

We are truly up the shit creek of civics education here. There's no excuse for this.

18/ I don't have any clue what "accountable for the advertisements and profits tied to..." is supposed to mean, and to be honest I don't know whether Professor Cusumano does either.

19/ But that's basically how all these conversations go. People love to throw out these high-minded (sounding) ideas with absolutely no discussion of *how* and pretend like they are contributing anything to the discourse.

But they aren't. It's all just meaningless platitude.

20/ Ok, if you want to argue what platforms ought to do, that's a conversation that is good and worth having. People may disagree, but it's definitely a useful topic to discuss.

21/ But that's not going to be enough, it seems.

Much expression results in negative societal effects, but is nevertheless constitutionally protected. And so it should be.

The law can't fix all of society's ills. Forcing it to try presents a cure worse than the disease.

P.S./ Do better, @CACMmag, this should have never made it past review.