Some people feel repealing 230 will backlash. Kind of hard for me to understand myself. Is section 230 is gone websites can no longer claim they cannot be sued if a user posts something hateful.
But from now on websites can just claim they did not see the post then censored it as soon as possible. Facebook does this all the time. Sure people post messed up racist crap. Then like a year later all of it gets deleted and the user gets blocked. Its not like Facebook itself did not care to not censor the user. They simply have over a billion or so members and some stuff can just not be notified of fast enough and still they have to deal with every other user.
Now the truth they have to investigate what they are censoring before they censor it. Some things are blatantly hateful. Others are borderline hateful. Others are opinionated like "this black person pisses me off they raped 4 people and got away with it. Just like a black person would."
Anyone who investigates this claim can see its blatantly racist and hateful. The part at the end where they say "just like a black person would" gives it all away. But if people are just browsing key words and phrases trying to police 2 billion social media users then the first statement does not necessarily set off a red flag. The person pisses off the community they raped people and got away with it. At first glance it looks like a piece of opinion stated entirely openly. The account would have to be investigated to truly see a long history of racial discrimination. Hard to do with protection acts.
I was watching a show the other day about the history of MASH. You know the 70s Vietnam sitcom about doctors during the Vietnam war? Many people tried to remove the show saying it was too graphic for family tv and glorified people being hurt in war. It was ruled out in court nothing about the show discriminated against one race being more important in a war when surgery was done for a patient it did not discriminate against white or Vietnamese people although really you never did see a Vietkong being saved in the medical tent. Regardless the courts ruled the show could not be taken down as it was protected under the 1st amendment rights.
So what does this have to do with section 230? Well with section 230 around if someone is saying bad things about races or aspergers calling them spergs well lol the website just says "we will remove that user."
The problem is some sites are set up to let people say that stuff all day. Sites like....
.... Well like this one.
LOL
But still removing section 230 just means now you can sue a site directly for things a person is putting on the site. But still the site can just say "we got to the comment on time and edited out when we saw it. The site gets a million comments a day its hard to keep up with all of them." So back to square one. Will all the lawsuits stick? No only a rare few will stick.
In a way it kind of doesn't change things. Even with section 230 you can still sue a site if comments exist that are not removed even if the site owners say they are not responsible for a user its still possible to prove they invoked the user rights to create the hate speech therefore they are responsible. But with section 230 its a lot harder.
I am sure if 230 is removed something else will be written in its place. Some guideline on pursuing legal action against a site for the content users create.
Its not like hate speech is legal or has been. Its just hard to filter out what is and isn't hate speech because under Amendments that protect freedom of speech a person can state their opinion that "I think black people rob the most out of any race." Some interpret that as hate speech. Others interpret it as 1st amendment protected expression of opinion.
Removing section 230 means you can directly after the site a lot quicker then you could by trying to first get the site to help you pursue and censor a hateful user.
in a way only sites that really promote hate speech will be in trouble. Ummm.... Those sites. Ummm... You know the ones. We have ummmm...... Heard of them.
But guidelines will still be set on how to pursue sites for promoting hate speech even without section 230 it will be a process. Likely a new section will be written in. What it will be we have yet to know.
