> Interesting position - when somebody posts illegal content on YouTube, they are not liable, it’s not their speech.
> But when I want to post something they don’t like, suddenly it’s their freedom of speech to remove it.
There is no contradiction there.
Imagine a forum about knitting. Someone, who has it in for the owners of this knitting forum (or perhaps even just a SPAM bot) starts posting illegal, or even just non-knitting content on this forum.
The entire purpose of the forum is to be a community about knitting.
Why is it the legal or moral responsibility of the knitting forum to host SPAM content? And why should they be legally liable for someone else posting content on their platform?
You're equating specific pieces of content with the platform as a whole.
There is no reality where I will accept that if I create something. I spend and risk my money on web hosting. I write the code. I put something out there... that other people get to dictate what content I have to distribute. That's an evil reality to contemplate. I don't want to live in that world. I certainly wont' do business under those terms.
You're effectively trying to give other people an ultimatum in order to extract value from them that you did not earn and have no claim to. You're saying that if they don't host content that they don't want to distribute that they should be legally liable for anything that anyone uploads.
The two don't connect at all. Anyone is, and should be free to create any kind of online service where they pick and choose what is or is not allowed. That shouldn't then subject them to criminal or civil liability because of how others decide to use that product or service.
Imagine if that weird concept were applied to offline things, like kitchen knives. A kitchen knife manufacturer is perfectly within their rights to say "This product is intended to be used for culinary purposes and no other. If we find out that you are using it to do other things, we will stop doing business with you forever." That doesn't then make them liable for people who use their product for other purposes.
This isn’t really what’s being argued. We’re not talking about a knitting forum. We’re talking about content neutral hosting platforms. There is a distinction in the law. If you want to not be liable for the content posted to your platform then you may not moderate or censor it seems like a fair compromise to me. Either you are knitting forum carefully cultivating your content and thus liable for what people see there, or you are a neutral hosting service provider. Right now we let people platforms be whichever favors their present goal or narrative without considering the impact such duplicity has on the public users.
> We’re talking about content neutral hosting platforms.
There is no such thing as a "content neutral hosting platform." I know that people like to talk about social media services in the same umbrella as the concept of "common carrier", which is reserved for things like mail service and telecommunications infrastructure. And that might be what you're conflating here. If you're not, then please point me to the law, in any country even, where "content neutral hosting platform" is a legal term defined.
> If you want to not be liable for the content posted to your platform then you may not moderate or censor it seems like a fair compromise to me.
Compensation for what? The "platform" built something themselves. They made it. They are offering it on the market. If anyone is due compensation, it is them. No matter how much you don't like them. You didn't build it. You could have, maybe. But you didn't. I bet you didn't even try. But they did. And they succeeded at it. So where does anyone get off demanding "compensation" from them just for bringing something useful valuable into existence?
That is a pretty messed up way of looking at things IMO. It is the mindset of a thief.
> Either you are knitting forum carefully cultivating your content and thus liable for what people see there,
Thank you for conceding my argument and shining a spotlight on how ridiculous this is. You agree that according to your world view, the knitting forum should be liable for the content others post on it just because they are enforcing that things stay on topic. Even just for removing SPAM bot posts this would expose them to this liability.
> Right now we let people platforms be whichever favors their present goal or narrative without considering the impact such duplicity has on the public users.
The beautiful thing about freedom is that along as people don't infringe upon the rights of others, they don't need your permission to just go build things and exist.
The YouTube creators didn't have to ask you to "allow" them to build something useful and valuable. They just went and did it. And that's how it should be.
I get that certain creators run into trouble with the TOS. Hell, I've tried to create an Instagram account on several occasions and it gets suspended before I can even use it. And when I appeal or try to ask "why?" I never get answers. It's frustrating.
But the difference between you and me, is I don't think that people who build and create things and bring valuable shit into existence owe me something just by virtue of their existence.
> The beautiful thing about freedom is that along as people don't infringe upon the rights of others, they don't need your permission to just go build things and exist
This is hollow sophistry, and it’s not how things actually are.
You don’t have freedom for
Self dealing, price fixing, collusion, bribery, false marketing, antitrust violations, selling baby powder with lead and many other things.
In some states you can’t even legally collect rainwater.
Also the government will come after you with guns and throw you in jail if you violate some bogus and fictitious “intellectual property rights” that last for 70 years after creator has died.
It’s u helpful to pretend we live in Wild West of liberty
> You don’t have freedom for Self dealing, price fixing, collusion, bribery, false marketing, antitrust violations, selling baby powder with lead and many other things.
It's funny how often people will not read what you wrote, and instead read what they want to read.
Not only did my comment preempt that specific reply of yours in the very sentence you quoted, but you seem to have a warped working definition of the word "freedom": where you think that if someone uses it they mean "freedom to do literally whatever the hell they want to no matter who they hurt."
That means that your mental model of the word "freedom", at least when you hear others say it, begins with a straw-man.
No discussion is possible under those conditions.
I'll help you out: my personal operating definition of "liberty" is "An environment in which all interpersonal relations are consensual."
That's why, as long as you are not infringing upon the rights of others (the part of my quote that you just completely dropped and ignored so that you could react to what you wanted to read instead of what I actually wrote) you don't need the permission of others to build something. You can just go and do it.
So then, your actual opinion is Yes a "content neutral hosting platform." does exist?
Its seems very obvious here that people are saying that the laws that apply to common carriers could be changed so they apply to social media platforms.
Problem/confusion solved here, and the world doesn't fall apart. As we already have these laws, and the world didn't fall apart before.
> So then, your actual opinion is Yes a "content neutral hosting platform." does exist?
No. Common carrier and "hosting platform" are not the same thing. If someone wanted to apply common carrier status to broadband infrastructure, it might make sense. Applying common carrier to knitting forum does not. They are two very different things. One facilitates discrete communication between two distinct parties while the other publishes and distributes content to a wide audience. Conflating the two is an exercise in mental gymnastics that only makes sense if you have a political agenda and don't care about being intellectually honest.
I honestly don’t know what you are spewing off about. At one point you quote me saying “compromise” then proceed to argue as if I said “compensation”. I’m not going to respond to a mischaracterization.
To your challenge:
> In the United States, companies that offer web hosting services are shielded from liability for most
content that customers or malicious users place on the websites they host. Section 230 of the
Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230 (―Section 230‖). protects hosting providers from
liability for content placed on these websites by their customers or other parties. The statute states
that ―[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or
speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.‖ Most courts find
that a web hosting provider qualifies as a ―provider‖ of an ―interactive computer service.‖
>Although this protection is usually applied to defamatory remarks, most federal circuits have
interpreted Section 230 broadly, providing ―federal immunity to any cause of action that would
make service providers liable for information originating with a third-party user of the service.‖
There is clear legal handling in the US beyond common carrier provisions for hosting providers on the internet.
The nuance here is an argument over what constitutes a hosting provider and how far we extent legal immunity.
My “worldview” is that if you want to claim your business is a hosting provider so that you are granted the legal protection from content liability, that you have a responsibility—which I’d argue we should codify more formally—to remain a neutral hosting provider in spirit, because it is in line with the type of liberty (freedom of expression) we aim to protect in the US. You are saying “legally I’m a neutral hosting provider”, and we already tolerate removal of spam and legally obscene/objectionable content so your point there is moot, so if you are making that claim legally then it’s two faced to turn around and say “IMA private entity I can do whatever I want to curate the content on my platform because I’m responsible for the brand and image and experience I want to cultivate in my house”.
I’m okay with hosting providers not being liable for user content, and I’m okay with yarn forums deleting any post that doesn't reference yarn. It’s the mix of both that I feel is partly responsible for the poor state we’re in now where users get demonetized on YT for questioning the efficacy of new vaccine technology.
Hopefully it’s clear what the nuance is here. And if you don’t think there’s a whole conversation that has been happening here read up on Cloudflare’s philosophy and what Prince has written about the topic. Because they were faced with the same dilemma with The Daily Stormer (but not quite as flagrant as Google/YT trying to play both sides for profit).
The issue is that the knitting forum is a different beast from youtube. The latter is a platform. Its scale makes it QUALITATIVELY different. And there's network effects, there's dumping behaviour, there's preinstalls on every phone, there's integration with the ad behemoth, all to make sure it remains a platform.
> But when I want to post something they don’t like, suddenly it’s their freedom of speech to remove it.
There is no contradiction there.
Imagine a forum about knitting. Someone, who has it in for the owners of this knitting forum (or perhaps even just a SPAM bot) starts posting illegal, or even just non-knitting content on this forum.
The entire purpose of the forum is to be a community about knitting.
Why is it the legal or moral responsibility of the knitting forum to host SPAM content? And why should they be legally liable for someone else posting content on their platform?
You're equating specific pieces of content with the platform as a whole.
There is no reality where I will accept that if I create something. I spend and risk my money on web hosting. I write the code. I put something out there... that other people get to dictate what content I have to distribute. That's an evil reality to contemplate. I don't want to live in that world. I certainly wont' do business under those terms.
You're effectively trying to give other people an ultimatum in order to extract value from them that you did not earn and have no claim to. You're saying that if they don't host content that they don't want to distribute that they should be legally liable for anything that anyone uploads.
The two don't connect at all. Anyone is, and should be free to create any kind of online service where they pick and choose what is or is not allowed. That shouldn't then subject them to criminal or civil liability because of how others decide to use that product or service.
Imagine if that weird concept were applied to offline things, like kitchen knives. A kitchen knife manufacturer is perfectly within their rights to say "This product is intended to be used for culinary purposes and no other. If we find out that you are using it to do other things, we will stop doing business with you forever." That doesn't then make them liable for people who use their product for other purposes.