and, what about this issue of liability and s. 230?

well, i went through the long version of this previously - either the platform owns the content, or the user does, and this kind of in between reality is sort of muddling it up.

as a heavy user of these services, my primary concern with this discussion is the potential outcome that i may lose ownership over my content. i'm happy to take full responsibility for what i'm posting, for better or worse. just don't mess with my content.

i've argued against the concept of limited liability in investments rather heavily, but i actually don't see the parallel, here, and kind of take exception to the language as it was used in the executive order. limited liability allows shareholders to invest in unethical corporations without being liable for the crimes they commit, which could include genocide, rape and environmental desecration - the worst things that humans can do, and they're done all the time by resource & extraction companies. these are terrible rights abuses that need to be ended and i am quite confident that eliminating the shield that shareholders have from the actions of the companies they invest in would have a huge effect on their investment decisions.

are we going to compare posting a mean tweet to burning down a village in guatemala, or the deepwater horizon oil spill? it's a difference of scale that is so tremendous as to be bluntly comical to even consider.

so, do i think that we should make these companies liable for the content of their users in order to stop them from being so mean on the internet? would this eliminate the profit motive in hosting the content? well, broadly speaking, i'm not sure there'd be a lot of liability in most cases, anyways, so long as users own the content, but it would give the hosting companies a greater excuse to take down content they don't like, and more of a prerogative to be proactive in policing speech - which is a bad thing to anybody that believes in free speech, even if this creepy new breed of progressive/conservative seems to think it's so important for some reason. i actually don't think that the law as it exists is really making much of anybody much of any extra money (just about the only thing you could actually prosecute is libel), but it is allowing for a more open internet by preventing the companies from acting like actuaries.

that said, if people feel that laws against things like libel are not being strongly enough enforced, then steps should be taken to better focus actions against the specific actors being accused of breaking the law.

further, i would support a greater role for the courts in determining what kind of speech is acceptable and what kind of speech isn't. decisions should be subject to appeal and rooted in precedent, not made on the whim of some faceless corporate executive in an empty suit, based on opinions about ad revenue.

limited liability is a major problem in existing capitalism. we shouldn't be allowed to invest in companies that we know do bad things, and be shielded from the consequences of it. but, i just don't see the connection between the need to reign in investor rights and s. 230 of the communications decency act in the united states; the former is a pressing concern that should be at the front of the political agenda on the left, whereas the latter is largely a triviality, except in it's negative implications for the intellectual property rights of internet platform users.

go after the users, not the companies.