No, he says that the decision should be left up to local school boards. The historical antecedents here should be fairly obvious?

> “Meaning the parent who has complained about this has a case,” Inskeep interjected.
> “Sure,” Buttigieg said.

Not defensible, sorry.

get the kid in the brown hoodie a scholarship

Huh. Almost like people should have legal recourse against abusive conduct by platforms.

Wow, good thing nobody's making that argument then. "The price of protecting any act of moderation is granting complete immunity for all wrongful acts dressed up as moderation, even if they are as heinous as Facebook's promotion of genocide" seems way worse though?

Wow, sorry to hear that you've been sued over comments on your blog, such that you had to invoke section 230 protection! That's terrible! Definitely doesn't sound completely made up!

Apparently my unacceptable-on-Bluesky opinion is that equal access to justice is essential to a free society and special grants of tort immunity to privileged groups are objectively terrible policy. Works for me! Tort reformers fuck off, now and always.

Using "allow" to mean "provides a blanket grant of immunity" is a new one, thanks for broadening my linguistic horizons there. Neither of us are protected by section 230, yet it would not have occurred to me that meant we aren’t "allowed" to speak. Fascinating!

Working at EFF must be a trip. One minute you're doing genuinely important work to empower humans against oligarchy. The next you're all chanting about how tort reform is good and mere humans can't be trusted with access to the courts. Rough gig, man. Respect to those who make it work.

I mean, if that's what you thought I was referring to I can't even imagine what you thought my point was. But maybe lay off the condescending recs until you've learned the difference between state and federal court?

Sorry, I thought it was clear that I was referring to the Prodigy case in state court that section 230 was written to overturn, not the CompuServe one in federal court that was based on Smith v. California. CompuServe wouldn't have provided any basic for a legislative "fix."

There's nothing quite like seeing two ostensibly public interest orgs like EFF and WMF unite in support of barring the courthouse door against anyone wronged by an online platform.

Of course, whenever intelligent people put forward positions that don't stand up to scrutiny, it's worth considering why. Sadly, the most obvious answer to that is even more painful than the interview itself. 8/8

It's unclear whether the parties to this interview are clueless or just embarrassed by the position they're being required to take -- that access to justice for injured people is a bad thing, actually -- but either way it's painful to read. 7/8

And how can it be that EFF and WMF between them can't come up with a single person who can talk intelligently and honestly about what section 230 actually does and why it was written? This information isn't hard to find -- even Wikipedia has a decent article on it. 6/8

It's hard to make out the actual argument in this interview, but whatever it is, the linked WMF blog posts do not appear to support it. It appears, in fact, that less than 20% of the takedown or alteration requests even came from US where section 230 would apply. 5/8

If you want to argue that Section 230 is the one case in all of history where a special grant of tort immunity was good policy, you'd better have some strong evidence for that. The panics that gave us qualified immunity and the Right To Farm Acts were unambiguously bad -- why is this one good? 4/8

Meanwhile, section 230 does nothing at all to "protect Wikipedia's editors," for the obvious reason that individual creators have never been protected by section 230 at all. An individual Wikipedian is just as vulnerable to legal threats over their work as they would be without section 230. 3/8

Ironically, section 230 protects a right -- to become editorially involved -- that the WMF has consistently refused to exercise, preferring instead to stand back and let the worst of online community dynamics take their course. So it's hard to see what bearing section 230 has on the WMF at all. 2/8

As a Wikipedian and legal worker, this interview bothers me a lot. There's nothing quite like seeing two ostensibly public interest orgs like EFF and WMF unite in support of the idea of barring the courthouse door against anyone wronged by an online platform. 1/8

Sure, if we take an expansive reading of an unappealed state trial court decision as the last word on existing law. Perhaps worth noting that the case attracted attention precisely because it broke with precedent. Newsstands don't generally become liable because they refuse to carry porn, etc.

I mean, no? Section 230 was adopted to protect platforms' exercise of editorial control. A platform that simply republished user speech (as Yelp implausibly purports to do) would have been amply protected by existing law.

Surely y'all must have better arguments than this. Why not use them?

"'Right to farm' legislation preserves the freedom of rural communities by ensuring that industrial-scale agricultural operations can pollute and contaminate them without consequences."

I'd like to believe in Section 230 but this is just not persuasive.

You can apply this to literally any other special grant of immunity:

"Qualified immunity preserves the freedom of the people by ensuring that cops can violate their rights without consequences."

If you want to argue that Section 230 is the one time in history when a special grant of tort immunity was Good Policy, Actually, you've got to bring your A game. And if this is your best argument it would follow that you don't actually have any good ones.

"Section 230, which protects internet users’ speech by protecting the online intermediaries we rely on"

Sorry, but "requiring us to face consequences for exploiting people takes away *their* freedom" is the same argument Uber & ilk have used to fight against worker empowerment legislation like AB5.

U.S. Southern Command @Southcom X.com On Feb. 9, at the direction of #SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations. Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations. Two narco-terrorists were killed and one survived the strike. Following the engagement, USSOUTHCOM immediately notified U.S. Coast Guard to activate the Search and Rescue system for the survivor. @DeptofWar #OpSouthernSpear UNCLASSIFIED

We murdered two more people in a boat today. One apparent survivor.

Maybe a company whose business model is built on extorting small businesses isn't the perspective you want to surface when arguing for the value of a law that grants immunity for precisely such wrongful acts?

*enweirden

"accidents involving Advanced Driving Systems occur more frequently than Human-Driven Vehicle accidents under dawn/dusk or turning conditions, which is 5.25 and 1.98 times higher, respectively."

So in safe situations they may be safer, but in dangerous situations they're REALLY dangerous.