Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
The Section 230 talk is often misunderstood.
I don't want to see it repealed. Section 230 protects me and this site, as it disallows treating me as a "publisher", thus protecting me from liability if users here post illegal or libelous content.
However, Republicans make a valid point that Twitter and other large social media companies ARE turning themselves into publishers, by curating their content for editorial reasons. Thus, if they don't want their platform to distribute a story about Hunter Biden's laptop, and edit/remove such content because they simply don't like it, then they start to look a lot more like publishers.
Notice that I don't do that here. I have never once removed content about politics or current events I disagree with.
Of course, a site owner should always have the right to remove material which violates internal rules -- such as illegal material or harassment. However, removing material based upon political affiliation does start to make one look a lot more like an actual publisher.
Now, I still think people should have the right to put up their own forum where they censor ideologically. I don't agree with running forums that way, but I don't think that should strip people of their section 230 protections.
However, there's a large difference between a hugely influential platform like Twitter, and an 8th tier poker forum.
I think Section 230 needs to be modified, clearly defining the difference between large social media and everything else, and then making two sets of rules -- one for the smaller, specialty sites, and one for the large, influential sites.
I think that would fix it. Basically tie the large sites having Section 230 protection to the fair and equitable treatment of political censorship, sort of along the lines of the now-antiquated Fairness Doctrine for TV and radio from several decades ago.
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