10 ms·

I hear that argument a lot as well. It's a very strange argument because publishers don't have a legal requirement to be "unbiased".

jaywalk 7y ago
It's not that publishers have to be unbiased, it's that publishers are legally responsible for what is published.
- LegitShady 7y ago
  Exactly. They act as publishers but do the have any liability like publishers in other areas have. They shouldn't have it both ways.
  - esoterica 7y ago
    Do you also object to HN moderation? Why should dang be allowed to ban people but not twitter? Do you think dang should accept legal liability for everything people post on HN?
    - gsfiydaagihdag 7y ago
      It's good to ask those questions, of course small companies are affected too. But, for example, if Dang selectively removed posts such that the remaining posts slandered someone in a way that none of the individual posters intended, I believe Dang would be the only one in the chain liable for the resulting slander, not the posters. But under current law, Dang has protection under 230, so no one could get charged for the resulting slander That's an extreme hypothetical case of course.
    - LegitShady 7y ago
      I only object that they get both the rights of platform and publisher. they are free to moderate however they wish but once they do they should be liable for the content of their platform. No other publishers are not held liable.
  - dageshi 7y ago
    Pretty much every forum, reddit and social media network goes away including HN in that case, the only way any of it works is because they have it both ways.
    - LegitShady 7y ago
      Alternately there would be open forums and corporate forums and they would be very different. But tech companies wouldn't own speech and would be liable since they can police their platforms as they demonstrate.
jeffdavis 7y ago
Common carriers (like a telephone company) are content-neutral (unbiased) and have no legal responsibility for what is said. If someone mails you a threatening letter, you can't sue USPS. Publishers can publish (or decline to publish) whatever they want, but they do have some responsibility for what they say. Libel, copyright infringement, and threats all carry consequences even if the publisher is not the author. Publishers can be as biased as they want. Is FB a publisher or a common carrier? What about Google? Youtube? Instagram? Twitter? (The answer is that they are kind of either depending on the exact part of the organization. And they are having it both ways: control without responsibility.)
- woopwoop 7y ago
  Here is section 230, the law protecting websites from liability for things published on them by third parties. [0] I do not see anything about a provider needing to be content neutral. In fact, part c2a seems to be explicitly saying the opposite. IANAL. Where does this legal concept of a distinction between a "carrier" and a "publisher" appear? [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
  - schoen 7y ago
    It appears in the pre-230 litigation about intermediary liability, to which section 230 was a response. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
  - heavyset_go 7y ago
    There is no distinction, it's a red herring.
- koboll 7y ago
  >Publishers can publish (or decline to publish) whatever they want, but they do have some responsibility for what they say. It is abjectly insane to label a tweet as something Twitter, the company, is "saying". If we're retooling the law to orient it toward that definition, then the inevitable endgame, after the avalanche of litigation, will be that the concept of posting text on social media or blogging platforms is dead. It kills Web 2.0 in its entirety. It regresses the United States back to the dark ages of a completely one-directional media, where the best you can do as an outsider is to submit a letter to the editor.
protomyth 7y ago
You are correct, publishers don't have a legal requirement to be unbiased, but publishers can be sued. Service Providers cannot be sued for what appears on their service[1]. The argument is that "biased" decisions on what to publish makes them publishers and not service providers. 1) ok, in the US anyone can get sued and there seem to be some specific things people can sue and win on, but that is outside the scope of 230.
- mirimir 7y ago
  This has been my understanding for many years. And so it's ironic how increased moderation to increase marketability brings immunity of service providers under 230 into question. It's almost like 230 has been a bait and switch ploy. With 230, mega social media corps developed, with nothing else to protect them against liability. But instead, we could have had decentralized systems that made liability impossible. And if stuff like this goes forward, maybe we can. Someday, anyway.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > This has been my understanding for many years. And so it's ironic how increased moderation to increase marketability brings immunity of service providers under 230 into question. Especially since allowing providers to increase (automated and best-effort, but not comprehensive human) moderation withour incurring general liability for content was the explicit and overt justification for Section 230, because the kind of complete human editorial control expected of publishers in traditional media was viewed as preventing scalable systems on the internet (where traditional media had other scaling limits that make content liability far from the limiting factor.) > But instead, we could have had decentralized systems that made liability impossible. Decentralized systems probably wouldn't have made liability impossible, just ineffective at it's objectives, because no matter how many operators were ruined by liability. the content would still thrive and you'd never hit enough operators.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Yes, decentralized wouldn't be enough. I'd want anonymously decentralized.

jaywalk 7y ago

It's not that publishers have to be unbiased, it's that publishers are legally responsible for what is published.

LegitShady 7y ago
Exactly. They act as publishers but do the have any liability like publishers in other areas have. They shouldn't have it both ways.
- esoterica 7y ago
  Do you also object to HN moderation? Why should dang be allowed to ban people but not twitter? Do you think dang should accept legal liability for everything people post on HN?
  - gsfiydaagihdag 7y ago
    It's good to ask those questions, of course small companies are affected too. But, for example, if Dang selectively removed posts such that the remaining posts slandered someone in a way that none of the individual posters intended, I believe Dang would be the only one in the chain liable for the resulting slander, not the posters. But under current law, Dang has protection under 230, so no one could get charged for the resulting slander That's an extreme hypothetical case of course.
  - LegitShady 7y ago
    I only object that they get both the rights of platform and publisher. they are free to moderate however they wish but once they do they should be liable for the content of their platform. No other publishers are not held liable.
- dageshi 7y ago
  Pretty much every forum, reddit and social media network goes away including HN in that case, the only way any of it works is because they have it both ways.
  - LegitShady 7y ago
    Alternately there would be open forums and corporate forums and they would be very different. But tech companies wouldn't own speech and would be liable since they can police their platforms as they demonstrate.

jeffdavis 7y ago

Common carriers (like a telephone company) are content-neutral (unbiased) and have no legal responsibility for what is said. If someone mails you a threatening letter, you can't sue USPS. Publishers can publish (or decline to publish) whatever they want, but they do have some responsibility for what they say. Libel, copyright infringement, and threats all carry consequences even if the publisher is not the author. Publishers can be as biased as they want. Is FB a publisher or a common carrier? What about Google? Youtube? Instagram? Twitter? (The answer is that they are kind of either depending on the exact part of the organization. And they are having it both ways: control without responsibility.)

woopwoop 7y ago
Here is section 230, the law protecting websites from liability for things published on them by third parties. [0] I do not see anything about a provider needing to be content neutral. In fact, part c2a seems to be explicitly saying the opposite. IANAL. Where does this legal concept of a distinction between a "carrier" and a "publisher" appear? [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
- schoen 7y ago
  It appears in the pre-230 litigation about intermediary liability, to which section 230 was a response. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
- heavyset_go 7y ago
  There is no distinction, it's a red herring.
koboll 7y ago
>Publishers can publish (or decline to publish) whatever they want, but they do have some responsibility for what they say. It is abjectly insane to label a tweet as something Twitter, the company, is "saying". If we're retooling the law to orient it toward that definition, then the inevitable endgame, after the avalanche of litigation, will be that the concept of posting text on social media or blogging platforms is dead. It kills Web 2.0 in its entirety. It regresses the United States back to the dark ages of a completely one-directional media, where the best you can do as an outsider is to submit a letter to the editor.

protomyth 7y ago

You are correct, publishers don't have a legal requirement to be unbiased, but publishers can be sued. Service Providers cannot be sued for what appears on their service[1]. The argument is that "biased" decisions on what to publish makes them publishers and not service providers. 1) ok, in the US anyone can get sued and there seem to be some specific things people can sue and win on, but that is outside the scope of 230.

mirimir 7y ago
This has been my understanding for many years. And so it's ironic how increased moderation to increase marketability brings immunity of service providers under 230 into question. It's almost like 230 has been a bait and switch ploy. With 230, mega social media corps developed, with nothing else to protect them against liability. But instead, we could have had decentralized systems that made liability impossible. And if stuff like this goes forward, maybe we can. Someday, anyway.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > This has been my understanding for many years. And so it's ironic how increased moderation to increase marketability brings immunity of service providers under 230 into question. Especially since allowing providers to increase (automated and best-effort, but not comprehensive human) moderation withour incurring general liability for content was the explicit and overt justification for Section 230, because the kind of complete human editorial control expected of publishers in traditional media was viewed as preventing scalable systems on the internet (where traditional media had other scaling limits that make content liability far from the limiting factor.) > But instead, we could have had decentralized systems that made liability impossible. Decentralized systems probably wouldn't have made liability impossible, just ineffective at it's objectives, because no matter how many operators were ruined by liability. the content would still thrive and you'd never hit enough operators.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Yes, decentralized wouldn't be enough. I'd want anonymously decentralized.