So... can anyone explain to me why social media gets special protections from defamation?

[Wolven_Hour]

Only if there are economic damages. WH thinks any lie is defamation or libel or slander, it is not. To prove it in court, you must prove 1) jurisdiction of the court, 2) that the statement was a lie, and 3) that you suffered actual damages.

If someone accuses you of a crime, you don't have to proven financial damage.

 

[Visbek]

That is the problem, sometimes they do not have the info and even if you do track down the person who wrote it and sue them the publisher can still keep up the defamatory info forever with no recourse for the victim.

Welcome to the Internet.

Hey, I have a solution! Everyone anywhere who wants to post something to a site needs to submit proof of identity. That can't possibly go wrong....

 

[ASHES]

If you accuse someone of a crime, you don't have to proven financial damage.

Yes you do.

 

[Helix]

Sites like those in which people piss and moan about section 230 would not exist without section 230. It is not possible to monitor every post before it is posted and have any sort of functional community.

 

[Wolven_Hour]

Welcome to the Internet.

Hey, I have a solution! Everyone anywhere who wants to post something to a site needs to submit proof of identity. That can't possibly go wrong....

Slippery slope fallacy. All tech companies would have to do is review content before allowing it to be posted.
Many already do this.

 

[Allan]

Yeah, but hypothetically if I couldn't track you I couldn't sue you and the defamation would stay online for life giving me no recourse and potentially ruining my life.

You have avenues to pursue remedies as I've pointed out before. Courts can order the content removed, but it probably wouldn't even get that far. If I call you a crack dealer and you write to the owner of this site they're going to remove it. The other remedy I've also pointed out is a subpoena for the IP. The average online jerk who calls you a crack dealer is not going to be using a sophisticated proxy.

 

[phoenix2020]

If someone accuses you of a crime, you don't have to proven financial damage.

If this were true, Trump would be in so much trouble.

 

[ASHES]

Yeah, but hypothetically if I couldn't track you I couldn't sue you and the defamation would stay online for life giving me no recourse and potentially ruining my life.

There is no reason you couldn't subpoena the host for the identity of whoever posted the allegedly damaging statement.

 

[Wolven_Hour]

Sites like those in which people piss and moan about section 230 would not exist without section 230. It is not possible to monitor every post before it is posted and have any sort of functional community.

Why is it not possible? Just hold them for review. Even if it did kill websites why is protecting websites more important than protecting innocent people's lives from being destroyed?

 

[Visbek]

Court orders don't always happen and there will be no lawsuit to begin with if you can't track down the person who wrote it.

Yes, you can.

Again, see link above re: Justin Bieber. Two anonymous Twitter accounts accused him of sexual assault. He was granted a motion to compel Twitter to reveal the identities of those accounts, obviously before he actually knew who they were. He's suing them for $20 million in damages.

 

[Wolven_Hour]

There is no reason you couldn't subpoena the host for the identity of whoever posted the allegedly damaging statement.

People can be anonymous with proxies.

 

[Allan]

Slippery slope fallacy. All tech companies would have to do is review content before allowing it to be posted.
Many already do this.

This and all other discussion forums would disappear overnight. We'd be back to newspaper delivery.

 

[BlueTex]

Yes it does, 230 grants complete immunity. Even if you do sue the person who created the content they still don't even have to take it down so people can be slandered for life.

Only exception is for child porn.

Nonsense.... They comply with subpoenas and warrants all the time...

 

[Buckeyes85]

They have no recourse if they cannot track them down. People can use proxies to post anonymously on the internet and since publishers are shielded that means no recourse for defamation victims.

Since you have such an issue with Section 230, I'd suggest you lobby your congressman or senator to get it repealed. Your lobbying efforts here won't do much good. But as others have pointed out, it would destroy online social media as we know it. That may be an ok trade off for you but for the vast majority of people who use social media, it would not be ok.

 

[Wolven_Hour]

Since you have such an issue with Section 230, I'd suggest you lobby your congressman or senator to get it repealed. Your lobbying efforts here won't do much good. But as others have pointed out, it would destroy online social media as we know it. That may be an ok trade off for you but for the vast majority of people who use social media, it would not be ok.

Social media is what has led to the proliferation of conspiracies like qanon which has caused violent radicalization.
230 is what prevents any accountability so reasonable Americans should be OK with social media's destruction.

All 230 does is protect otherwise criminal activities.

 

[Mr Person]

And why is that more important than protecting people's lives from being destroyed through defamation?
Oh it doesn't affect you personally? GTFO.

Defamation lawsuits are the remedy, and those are against the person who did the defaming.

Getting rid of 230 would effectively destroy the vast speech-space that came into being with the internet. Facebook, twitter, all the way down to sites like DP, would simply not find it in their interests to allow posts if they had to be curated. There would be nowhere anyone could go to communicate freely using the internet, because nobody would want to risk getting sued every time someone got butthurt that someone else said something about them. You couldn't even go back to AIM and chatrooms because, again, the site owner could get sued if someone decided they were defamed.

If you then say "but what if you cannot recover anything from the defamer because they are poor?", my response is: welcome to real life. It's the same way in any suit context. Get hit by an uninsured poor driver who stole the car they hit you with? Tough titties, except to the extent you have coverage for that. Maybe an enterprising Trumper can sell "defamation insurance." That way, if you purchased it and got butthurt by something a person too poor to sue said, you could file a claim and collect.



Maybe there would be a niche board here and there catering to people willing to pay substantial membership fees, which then curated every single post before it appears, but that's it. Before landing here after leaving the last site, I briefly joined one where every single post was pre-moderated for appearing. This meant you thought of something to say, hit post, and it would be hours or days before it appeared. That's no way to have a conversation.

 

[BlueTex]

Social media is what has led to the proliferation of conspiracies like qanon which has caused violent radicalization.
230 is what prevents any accountability so reasonable Americans should be OK with social media's destruction.

All 230 does is protect otherwise criminal activities.

Removing section 230 would do nothing to prevent the spread of this kind of stuff. That stuff would just move to sites offshore. How would you sue a site located in another country?

 

[joluoto]

Yeah, but hypothetically if I couldn't track you I couldn't sue you and the defamation would stay online for life giving me no recourse and potentially ruining my life.

If you have a legitimate reason to sue you can sue a John Doe and ask the court to demand the Service Provider to unmask the IP and then demand the Internet Provider to unmask the person behind the IP. Has happened many times. There are lawyers that specialize in these kinds of requests, and also trolls that use them to harass people.

 

[Buckeyes85]

Social media is what has led to the proliferation of conspiracies like qanon which has caused violent radicalization.
230 is what prevents any accountability so reasonable Americans should be OK with social media's destruction.

All 230 does is protect otherwise criminal activities.

I don't think anyone here has argued that there is no downside to section 230. The issue is whether the fix (repeal 230) is worse than the problems section 230 leads to. And as Tex pointed out, the internet is obviously global and the law only protects US companies.

 

[NWRatCon]

Under section 230 internet publishers can post whatever defamatory information they want about anything and be completely shielded from any lawsuit. People deny this is what 230 does but it's true, look it up. The only exception is for child pornography.
Even revenge porn websites are shielded by section 230.
Victims of defamation can still sue the people who create defamatory content but it is easy to be anonymous on the internet which has left victims powerless to take down defamatory, libelous information said about them online.

But I am not posting this to debate 230, rather I'd like to ask defenders of 230 why shouldn't other publishers also be granted 230's protections?

Newspapers, cable News, and book publishers can all be sued for publishing defamation yet online publications which is where 50 percent of Americans get their news get complete immunity.

What is the justification for this?

Let me start here: I don't think your description of the situation is accurate. Here's why: you are describing them as "publishers". The question really boils down, philosophically, is whether an internet "site" is more akin to a "utility" or conduit (like a phone line), or a publisher. It's about exercising editorial control.

That, I think, is the conundrum of 230.