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Notes -
Senator Josh Hawley:
Huh? For reference, section 230 is here. In short, section 230 says that companies aren't liable for information posted on their websites by third parties. This means that Google can't be sued for showing ISIS.com on your search results, because ISIS is a third party, and ISIS.com is their content, not Google's. Section 230 doesn't apply to generative AI because generative AI isn't a third party. If Google Gemini replies to your prompt with, "Thank you for joining ISIS. Recommended pipebomb targets in your area are X, Y, and Z," Google can't use section 230 as a defense if Y sues them for being bombed, because Google generated the information.
If I were to steelman Hawley's point, I guess it would be that Google as a company benefits from section 230, and so repealing it would punish them for creating "woke" AI and cut off a source of funds for AI development, but I don't think Hawley's use of the phrase "these AI companies" is easily read as referring to only "AI companies which are bankrolled by social media products."
If you are familiar with simulacrum levels, you may have had a bit of difficulty grokking level 4. I think an intuitive definition of level 4 is, "politician speak that doesn't fit into levels 1, 2, or 3". Which level is the tweet by Hawley on? It's not 1, because it isn't true. It's not really 2, because it's not trying to convince you of a proposition. It's not 3, replace "conservatives" with "liberals" and "Google Gemini" with "𝕏", and it could be from AOC. That leaves 4. It's just word associations. Woke AI is bad. Tech companies make woke AI. Section 230 something something big tech censorship. Put it in a box, shake it up, let the manatees do their thing, post whatever comes out to Twitter.
I don't understand why conservatives want to repeal section 230.
Won't that lead to crackdowns on speech, and so forth? Like, isn't that just the direct effect? This is especially bad considering the already existing power differentials—it'll be somewhat lopsided.
This clearly seems like a terrible move, unless I'm missing something.
The main argument is that Section 230 as-is allows big tech to have their cake and eat it too. They can claim to be not liable for user content on the basis that they cannot control what is posted on them, then turn around and heavily "curate" content on political grounds. The idea would be to repeal Section 230 and replace it with an alternative that forces a consistent position; either you curate content and are liable for the content you allow, or you aren't liable but have to tolerate wrongthink on your platform.
They'd better have an alternative, then, and not just strip the protections and force the companies to engage in more censorship.
Pre-CDA 230 caselaw still recognized a split between publishers and distributors of content; it just held distributors liable if they passed along defamatory content knowing it was false, and wasn't clear enough on that divide and left potential lawsuits to hit court or appeal.
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You're not missing something, they are. Repeal empowers the big tech companies who have the lawyers to fight the interminable cases which would result. It gives them an excuse to censor when they want to ("we'd be liable if we didn't"). And it provides a means to strangle any upstarts who might want a less censorious environment. But conservatives are still the law-n-order group, and Section 230 looks like an affront against law-n-order.
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Maybe, but maybe not. Non-progressives are basically going for something along the lines of the Fairness Doctrine or the Equal-Time Rule imposed on Big Tech, because over the past 10-15 years progressives have been quickly enclosing the commons (we didn't need a Fairness Doctrine in 1995 or 2005 because the liberals were still pretty firmly in control of Big Tech back then- the iPhone would ultimately break them). Once your enemies start saying "build your own broadcast spectrum" it's not a surprise there are calls to violently reclaim it (which politics is, by other means).
Of course, their being able to articulate that is another matter entirely. But the Supreme Court has overridden amendments before- indeed, that's why those two laws persisted- and I think a solid argument can be levied (at least against ISPs and services that offer DDOS protection) that the "spectrum" is scarce enough to warrant an overriding government interest.
Is that going to make non-progressives as safe as they hope to be? Well, no- there are several vulnerabilities in different places on the OSI model that could allow progressives to claw back control, especially when combined with appliance computing and the DMCA ("iPhones only talk to progressive-approved websites, and removing that restriction is illegal" is always a few months' work away from becoming reality- it already effectively is when you consider how bad the App Store already is- to say nothing of any number of other "please drink verification can" schemes). And it still doesn't affect AI, which is another thing entirely... though it would quite easily be possible to ban sales of high-performance GPUs to US companies that refuse to sell uncensored models much like the US already does with respect to China and doing that doesn't even run into 1A issues.
That's not to say anyone's actually thought about it this much and we're going to get a half-assed measure that still fucks up everything, but a Red congress could get it done.
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I agree, this would be a huge own-goal for conservatives. You think that tech companies are bad on free speech now, when all they have to worry about is "someone made us look bad on Twitter"? Wait until you see how hard they crack down when they have legal liability for what it said on their platform. You'll never see any ideas to the right of ~Obama ever again on big tech.
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Conservatives are not libertarian free-speech absolutists, even if they also hate SJWs.
Conservatives by-and-large want crackdowns on all kinds of speech, from porn to trans activism to marxism to critical race theory to etc.
The fact that the internet already skews against them only reinforces the benefit. Under the current legal regime, they can already be shut up by corporate platform owners and activist moderators who disagree with them or find them bad for business. Meanwhile, their opponents get positive treatment.
They can't win the war for the internet by the will of the market. Turning the law onto it is their best hope to suppress the speech an punish the enemies they want to target.
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Just a blanket repeal could probably backfire*, I always thought you just have to make a carve out for small sites and forums, and let Facebooks, Twitters, and Reddits, fends for themselves.
*) Then again I do other countries have a section 230? If not did it result in a lawsuit bonanza? If American society is more litigious, and that's where the problems come from, can't small forums just host themselves offshore?
Every other Western jurisdiction (even the EU) has a Section 230 equivalent, although there are exceptions (eg. I think the EU imposes additional content regulation on the very largest big techs with tens or hundreds of millions of users).
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If section 230 is repealed, does this increase the probability that the major tech platforms can be destroyed?
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