Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

That is not how it works. It’s a complete legal myth that there is some sort of “Platform” v “Publisher” distinction in the law.

Section 230 of the CDA was created 25 years ago to avoid this being the case. It gives companies the ability to moderate user generated content on their platforms without being held responsible for other UGC posted to them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

> One of the first legal challenges to Section 230 was the 1997 case Zeran v. America Online, Inc., in which a Federal court affirmed that the purpose of Section 230 as passed by Congress was "to remove the disincentives to self-regulation created by the Stratton Oakmont decision".[8] Under that court's holding, computer service providers who regulated the dissemination of offensive material on their services risked subjecting themselves to liability, because such regulation cast the service provider in the role of a publisher. Fearing that the specter of liability would therefore deter service providers from blocking and screening offensive material, Congress enacted § 230's broad immunity "to remove disincentives for the development and utilization of blocking and filtering technologies that empower parents to restrict their children's access to objectionable or inappropriate online material."[8] In addition, Zeran notes "the amount of information communicated via interactive computer services is . . . staggering. The specter of tort liability in an area of such prolific speech would have an obviously chilling effect. It would be impossible for service providers to screen each of their millions of postings for possible problems. Faced with potential liability for each message republished by their services, interactive computer service providers might choose to severely restrict the number and type of messages posted. Congress considered the weight of the speech interests implicated and chose to immunize service providers to avoid any such restrictive effect."[8]




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: