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@DeanBaker13
This might be(?) the first time I've seen a well argued case for modifying 230. Still not sure I'm convinced that unintended consequences wouldn't harm more than it would help.

I wonder if @mmasnick has a counter point already...
@GreenFire

@timjan @DeanBaker13 @GreenFire I've done the counterpoint to Dean thing in the past. I can't do it every time he tweaks his proposal. Last I checked he still misunderstood the nature of the 1st Amendment & distributor liability if you removed 230.

https://www.techdirt.com/2021/12/29/those-who-dont-understand-section-230-are-doomed-to-repeal-it/

@mmasnick @timjan @GreenFire I have responded to Mike's posts in the past. (He seems upset that I modify the proposal based on criticisms -- I plead guilty on that.) Not to rehash everything, but he seems to argue that removing Section 230 protection would raise costs, but somehow not advantage smaller sites that still benefit from it. That seems hard to understand on this planet.

@DeanBaker13 @mmasnick @timjan @GreenFire I gotta admit I'm not even sure what sites he refers to when he's referring to smaller sites. Section 230 helped create the giant social media companies, and because of that, the smaller sites have mostly died.

@david1 @DeanBaker13 @timjan @GreenFire no, section 230 enabled tons of smaller sites and much greater competition. I did a whole research report on this.

And it enabled SITES LIKE THE ONE WE'RE ON.

@mmasnick @david1 @timjan @GreenFire
Unless I'm mistaken, this site does not sell advertising or personal information, which means it would still have Section 230 protection under my proposal. There are many other similar sites. Also, if 230 protection is valuable, sites that currently take ads or sell personal information can change the way they operate.

@DeanBaker13 @david1 @timjan @GreenFire "Also, if 230 protection is valuable, sites that currently take ads or sell personal information can change the way they operate."

Tell me you're an academic who has NEVER had to run a small business without telling me you're an academic who has never had to run a small business.

Holy shit Dean. That's embarrassing.

@mmasnick @david1 @timjan @GreenFire

Yeah, I will disagree with you and sorry, I don't find it embarrassing. Businesses change the way they operate ALL THE TIME. Sorry if you are not aware of that fact.

@DeanBaker13 @david1 @timjan @GreenFire I run a business. It relies on 230 to host a community and advertising to stay in business. You want me to lose the part of my business that's important to me (the community) if I want to be able to keep it in business.

That's insane. It's academic foolishness from an out of touch ivory tower with no actual real world experience.

@DeanBaker13 @david1 @timjan @GreenFire if we got rid of the community (as would be necessary without 230, we'd get less advertising and still die). if we got rid of advertising... we wouldn't make enough money to survive and would go under as well.

Congrats. Thanks for killing Techdirt in your grand experiment based on vibes.

@mmasnick @david1 @timjan @GreenFire I can't say I know Techdirt's business -- maybe you do post lots of things that are arguably defamatory. I have no idea, but I have to say, I would not design policy around ensuring one company's survival, even yours.

@DeanBaker13 Dean, come on. Those who do not post defamatory information get sued ALL THE TIME. https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/06/judge-dismisses-techdirt-lawsuit/

And I was giving you one example to show how it would create problems, not saying "just my business" faces this issue.

I've said in the past that I've regretted interacting with you. This is why.

@mmasnick Print and broadcast media deal with defamation lawsuits, I am at a loss to understand why you insist that Internet platforms can do it, especially when offered the safe harbor of removing potentially defamatory material after notice has been given.

@DeanBaker13 we get on average two dozen bogus defamation threats per year. I spend a ridiculous amount of money on lawyers dealing with them already.

If you put in your solution, that likely goes up an order of magnitude.

I'll make you a deal: will you agree to pay my legal bills and the legal bills of other small companies dealing with such things? If so, then we can discuss your proposal seriously.

@mmasnick The argument that this process is somehow a huge burden for you, but costless for Twitter and Facebook makes zero sense. They are not lobbying to give up their Section 230 protection. And, as we noted before, this site would continue to enjoy Section 230 protection -- hard to see how that is not a competitive advantage.

@DeanBaker13 @mmasnick Mastodon is more popular in Europe. And servers are much more likely to be hosted in Europe (like the one I use) than the US. EU internet is covered by the DSA instead of section 230. The DSA requires much more moderation by social media and is more like the DMCA than section 230. The DSA has been in effect for over 6 months. Amazingly social media companies, including Mastodon, are still running in Europe despite the replacement of section 230 with DSA.

@DeanBaker13 already we get TONS of complaints. You say "oh you can just ignore the frivolous ones." You have no idea. Without 230, YOU CANNOT IGNORE THE FRIVOLOUS ONES because the FRIVOLOUS ONES TURN INTO LAWSUITS.

You ignored my earlier question: will you agree to pay my legal bills? These lawsuits each will cost in the low six figures just to get a dismissal.

@mmasnick @DeanBaker13

230 is needed until there is strong, broad Federal SLAPP legislation, and probably still after that.

@rst @mmasnick FWIW, I did not say no businesses would be affected. Many would be able change their business model, some would not. The issue here is how many sites that rely on advertising or selling personal info could not take responsibility for monitoring comments and ads (like print or broadcast outlets). I'm sure the ones impacted would not be zero, but the reality is no change is ever going to have zero negative consequences.

@DeanBaker13 @mmasnick Let's turn this around. Elon's explicit plan for Twitter is to pivot from ad-based revenue to subscription services, including add-ons like payments. (Their revenue from sale of user data is negligible.) That won't work for Elon because he's insane. But it might work for Zuck.

Would you be happy if it did? Of course not, because your goal is to hurt Facebook and Twitter. And you're so maniacally focused on that that you don't care if it kills any plausible competition.

@rst @mmasnick Neither of us knows if switching to a subscription model would work for Musk or Zuckerberg, but one thing I would be very confident predicting is that both sites would be much smaller as subscription-based sites. If that is the case, their moderation decisions have less impact, which would be a very good thing.

@DeanBaker13 @rst if that's your goal, why not just pass a law requiring fb/twitter to use subscriptions? or get broken up?

@mmasnick @rst They could come to this site, what's the problem?

@DeanBaker13 @rst they... can come here now too. why must the law deny them other sites?

@mmasnick The law doesn't -- newsflash 97 percent of the people in the country have a cellphone -- I realize in Masnick world I guess that means they are all rich, but if people value seeing certain sites, they can pay for them like they do cell phones.

@DeanBaker13 @mmasnick cell phones are not a luxury item. you have to have one to function in society, and it's a pretty heavy weight on the budget, too.

@DeanBaker13 @mmasnick there were definitely months when cell phone bill and credit card minimums came before food.

@DeanBaker13 @mmasnick a huge number of people in america can't cover a $400 emergency. most of my life i was one of them.

i suppose what counts as rich or serious depends on where you are in the american system.

I guess if poor people don't deserve education, why should they deserve news?

@quinn @mmasnick hundreds of millions pay for cell phones every month, tens of millions pay for cable -- they must be able to afford it. They won't pay for what they can get free, but telling me people can't pay $10-$20 a month for access to a vast array of Internet sites is at odds with reality. Whether they choose to or not we would have to see, but they did pay this much for newspapers 30 years ago.

@DeanBaker13 @mmasnick cell phones aren't optional if you're poor. in a lot of budgets they come before food. they are required to participate in society, *especially* if you're poor. this is why homeless people pay at shops for monthly service.

@DeanBaker13 @mmasnick this is unnerving for me. i'd guess we have similar politics, but it feels like you don't know much about poverty as it is lived in america.

@quinn @mmasnick We have a real problem of poverty, which I deal with all the time in my writing. The fact that SOME websites may only be accessible by people who pay, does not qualify as a major crisis for the poor. Most news sites used to be free, now just about all are behind paywalls. That is unfortunate, but I don't see that as a huge crisis.

@DeanBaker13 @mmasnick access to high quality information when you're poor is a real issue. there's a bootstrapping problem, sure -- it exists, but if you don't have the skills you get from learning things from high quality sources, you don't know how to tell the free good from the free bad.

@DeanBaker13 @mmasnick if you're writing about the poor, you should spend some solid time with the poor. I can make some suggestions, if you'd like. not being cheeky, i would like to be helpful, not just argue on social media.

@DeanBaker13 @mmasnick Also, strange enough, I'm in Portland right now.

@mmasnick @quinn Yeah, there were 72 million cable subscribers last year (almost 100 million a few years back) --- sounds like I have a pretty crowded ivory tower. 112 million have Internet -- if the cost of the service went up $10 a month, they all would go hungry, right? (If we had public broadband we could easily lower it by that amount.) I'm also impressed that you now think everyone will go the subscriber route, before you said that big sites wouldn't care. Can't be both.

@DeanBaker13 @mmasnick the cable crowd skews pretty hard towards the over 50 crowd, which has a lot of the wealth in America.

but going hungry to keep your internet? i have done that myself. your internet and cellphone represent the main shot you have to make your situation better. when you lose that, your housing is not far behind.

@DeanBaker13 or in my case, i gave up housing before cellphone and a credit card, because I knew those things were hope. they were what i needed to improve my situation. along with a lot of piracy, yes. both for some pleasure (you take what you can get) and to get resources i needed to get work, like courses and books.

@crumbleneedy @mmasnick In this country we have cable packages where people can pay a fee, typically between $60-$100 a month) to subscribe to literally hundreds of cable channels. I imagine that if we went this route we would see similar bundling options and probably at considerably lower prices (you wouldn't be paying to watch NFL football).

@DeanBaker13 @mmasnick streaming services are fragmenting, the number of media outlets, podcasts, newsletters etc that i could potentially subscribe to grows daily - here, in the US (where i'm from originally), europe, etc etc. it's not scalable for consumers.

@crumbleneedy @mmasnick Can't see why it wouldn't be scalable -- say Musk wants to charge $3 a month for Twitter, and there are a number of smaller sites charging a $1 or $2 per month and maybe many will charge almost nothing. Why couldn't a service bundle 200 or 300 together and charge $30 a month? (People used to pay this much -- adjusted for inflation -- for newspaper subscriptions.)

@DeanBaker13 @mmasnick 'why couldn't?' maybe someone could, but nobody is, the infrastructure (means of bundling multiple outlets across different platforms, collecting payments, app(s) for consuming, etc) doesn't exist, and in the meantime, the trends are going in the opposite direction, so making it necessary for a content provider to charge in order to stay in business means putting more content out of reach of more people.

@crumbleneedy @DeanBaker13 also, the "bundlers" would immediately become the new gatekeepers, and way more powerful than the things Dean currently fears. Meaning... Meta, Google, Apple, and Microsoft would immediately take them over.

@mmasnick @crumbleneedy interesting hypothesis

@DeanBaker13 @mmasnick This, by the way, is Elon's explicit model for what he'd like to turn Twitter into. It won't work for Elon because by now, he's obviously crazy and there aren't enough potential customers who trust him. But if Zuck ever got away from trying to recreate 1990s sci-fi cliches (VR and AI), and made a serious run at Amazon and eBay, both of which are doing a lot to piss off their customers... many things could happen.

@jjoelson @DeanBaker13 honestly, i rarely view it through the impact on me personally. but dean was insisting that there were no issues for smaller companies, so I was expressing my own example.

I have advocated for many things that I think are right, but which are bad for me at a business level (e.g., I'm against link taxes, which would make me money and I'm against paying to scrape, which would make me money).