Content warning Long thread/47
The First Amendment makes it very hard to get a libel judgment, and even when these judgments are secured, damages are typically limited to "actual damages" - generally a low sum. Most of the worst online speech is actually *not* illegal: hate speech, misinformation and disinformation are all covered by the First Amendment.
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Content warning Long thread/48
Notwithstanding the First Amendment, there *are* categories of speech that US law criminalizes: actual threats of violence, criminal harassment, and committing certain kinds of legal, medical, election or financial fraud. These are all exempted from Section 230, which only provides immunity for *civil* suits, not criminal ones.
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Content warning Long thread/49
What Section 230 really protects platforms from is being named to unwinnable nuisance suits by unscrupulous parties who are betting that the platforms would rather remove *legal* speech that they object to than go to court. A generation of copyfraudsters have proved that this is a very safe bet:
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Content warning Long thread/50
In other words, if you made a #MeToo accusation, or if you were a gig worker using an online forum to organize a union, or if you were blowing the whistle on your employer's toxic waste leaks, or if you were any other under-resourced person being bullied by a wealthy, powerful person or organization, that organization could shut you up by threatening to sue the platform that hosted your speech. The platform would immediately cave.
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Content warning Long thread/51
But those same rich and powerful people would have access to the lawyers and back-channels that would prevent you from doing the same to them - that's why Sony can get your Brahms recital taken down, but you can't turn around and do the same to them.
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Content warning Long thread/52
This is true of every intermediary liability system, and it's been true since the earliest days of the internet, and it keeps getting proven to be true. Six years ago, Trump signed SESTA/FOSTA, a law that allowed platforms to be held civilly liable by survivors of sex trafficking. At the time, advocates claimed that this would *only* affect "sexual slavery" and would not impact consensual sex-work.
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Content warning Long thread/53
But from the start, and ever since, SESTA/FOSTA has *primarily* targeted consensual sex-work, to the immediate, lasting, and profound harm of sex workers:
https://hackinghustling.org/what-is-sesta-fosta/
SESTA/FOSTA killed "bad date" forums where sex workers circulated details of violent and unstable clients, killed online booking sites that allowed sex workers to screen clients, and killed the payment processors that let sex workers avoid holding unsafe amounts of cash:
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Content warning Long thread/54
SESTA/FOSTA made voluntary sex work more dangerous - and also made life harder for law enforcement efforts to target sex trafficking:
https://hackinghustling.org/erased-the-impact-of-fosta-sesta-2020/
Despite half a decade of SESTA/FOSTA, despite 15 years of filternets, despite a quarter century of notice-and-takedown, people *continue* to insist that getting rid of safe harbors will punish Big Tech and make life better for everyday internet users.
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Content warning Long thread/55
As of now, it seems likely that Section 230 will be dead by then end of 2025, even if there is nothing in place to replace it:
This isn't the win that some people think it is. By making platforms responsible for screening the content their users post, we create a system that only the largest tech monopolies can survive, and only then by removing or blocking anything that threatens or displeases the wealthy and powerful.
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Content warning Long thread/56
Filternets are not precision-guided takedown machines; they're indiscriminate cluster-bombs that destroy anything in the vicinity of illegal speech - including (and *especially*) the best-informed, most informative discussions of how these systems go wrong, and how that blocks the complaints of the powerless, the marginalized, and the abused.
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Content warning Long thread/57
On July 14, I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth Hackers On Planet Earth, in Queens, NY:
https://www.hope.net/talks.html
On July 20, I'm appearing at Chicago's Exile in Bookville:
https://exileinbookville.com/events/39808
--
Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!
https://clarionwriteathon.com/members/profile.php?writerid=293388
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