Thread · 6 tweets · 7 Jan 2019

Very interesting challenge to Section 230 (against Grindr) using product liability to make tech companies responsible for the harassment they harbour. nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news…

The @EFF and @CenDemTech filed an amicus defending Section 230, essentially making the case that we have to live with harassment otherwise we won’t have free speech. It reads like it was written by cypherlibertarians in the 90s. eff.org/document/herri…

Section 230 was created to enable people to run a BBS on a home machine for maybe fifty people without being liable for stupid users but it’s being used to defend massive corporations from being responsible for the defective products they profit from.

It basically enables companies to get the full profit from intermediation with none of the responsibility. It allows those companies to grow by ignoring the massive externalities they create. Section 230 isn’t friendly to free speech; it’s friendly to monopoly.

If massive platforms had to price in the harm they create, we wouldn’t lose free speech — we would lose massive platforms. I wouldn’t mind. I don’t think that the @EFF and @CenDemTech should be in the business of defending platforms.

The platform model is only one way of architecting the Internet ecosystem. Why should the law encourage that over alternatives? More distributed models are possible; if the law didn’t chose sides they could become viable.