Regarding social media responsibility:
No, online platforms should NOT be responsible for anything anyone posts in their site, and they are NOT good at detecting and shutting down copyrighted material precisely because they consistently shut down fair-use of music and other media. It is not the role of tech companies (or of self-entitled users within their platforms going after people they personally don't like) to make legal determinations about ANYTHING. They're not lawyers, they're not legal scholars or judges or law enforcement and have NO role in the government or legal procedures. These are NOT functions that fall within the purview of fucking monopolistic tech giants. It is not their job and they are not properly equipped to determine whether or not a supposed "tHrEaT oF vIolEnCe" or any other questionable post is legally actionable material. That is the job of the FBI, or equivalent agencies when it comes to users outside of the US. It's supposed to be THEM who make that determination, not our self-appointed tech overlords. That is why section 230 exists, and their insistence on stepping beyond their bounds is precisely why we're on this mess.
What do you think about Trump's calls to remove Section 230 protections for social media?
https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/23/trump-ndaa-veto-section-230/
Guy's an idiot who's just repeating what some people said about removing section 230 protections from big tech companies that insist on acting like publishers without looking into what section 230 does. I mean, the guy was a better choice than Biden, but he's not perfect. Section 230 should be reformed so that section 230 still exists, but any company that behaves like publishers lose their protections but the rest of the internet keeps theirs. But outright removing section 230 rather than reforming it would be disastrous for the internet as we know it.
I'm not sure exactly where I stand on how to reform Section 230, but I do think that it is *not* simply the purview of the FBI and police to handle all lawbreaking. Citizens have a responsibility to report crime and not participate in it.
For example, someone tells me a slanderous rumor about someone else - I then write it up and send it to a newspaper, which prints it. I think both I and the newspaper have some responsibility here - both legally and ethically. Just mindlessly repeating what one is told is wrong. People should be responsible for what they say and publish. That is a standard that newspapers are held to, but social media companies get a special legal loophole.
I mean, I'm not hot about people ratting out other people for petty crimes. I'd never call the cops on someone for using drugs, for example. Victimless "crimes" are none of my business as far as I'm concerned. But any serious crimes need to be reported.
The stuff about newspapers is a tricky business, though, cuz it's one thing for some random person to idly speculate about potentially slanderous stuff down the street, or even in social media. It's another thing for a newspaper or other news publishers with broad reach and credibility to just run with it and publish it as fact, as they often seem to do (particularly when discussing broad groups of people, like GamerGate or Trump supporters, as opposed to specific individuals, where "slander" would more properly apply legally speaking from what I understand). People have a right to discuss potentially false or inaccurate stuff, particularly since no one has perfect knowledge of every topic, so they might simply be wrong or just speculating about something. But when "authoritative" sources disseminate false claims to a credulous public it becomes an issue because they may take it as fact. But they might not take as fact something some random anonymous guy told them in social media one time.
That said, I'm not eager for social media companies to be the determiners of truth. *If* we give them a legal loophole to avoid responsibility, though, then there need to be strings attached that make the social media more functionally public and allowing of free speech.
Pretty much agree.
