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I doubt that very much. It takes a lot of qualifications that they don't have to understand the internet.

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Depends what you mean by understand. It's currently looking like they are stepping back and going to say it's not for them to decide. That's a form of understanding. Although it seems weird to me to write this headline since they haven't actually done that yet.

The current format with companies claiming 230 protections and then taking actions they shouldn’t get protected for can’t continue. Something needs to change but it’s probably not happening from the legislative branch at a federal level. The amount of things that got people throttled or banned but ended up being true in the past three years is unacceptable. You can disagree with an opinion but the platform shouldn’t be banning things that aren’t illegal and still get 230.

I mean this is a far left media outlet saying something positive about a right leaning court which is certainly interesting.

>The amount of things that got people throttled or banned but ended up being true in the past three years is unacceptable.

For instance I got banned from r/coronavirus for saying people should wear masks back when the government was saying they shouldn't. A few weeks later you'd get banned for saying they shouldn't wear masks because the government flipped positions. There were multiple rounds of mass banning in that sub for similar issues where the government or new cycle flip flopped.

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/02/supreme-court-oral-arguments-section-230-internet-algorithms/673199/

Article is saying they understand it because oral arguments seem like they’re inclined to leave it alone.

>taking actions

do you think you could be a little more vague

>You can disagree with an opinion but the platform shouldn’t be banning things that aren’t illegal and still get 230.

Why not

Safer to say that some of the octogenarians are aware of their own limitations and the slowness of the judicial process when compared to the legislative (such as it is).

I doubt any single member of either chamber could differentiate their ass from a UDP datagram, but so long as they're willing to acknowledge their lack of experience and lean on experts, we should be fine.

Nothing to worry about as long as one party doesn't become explicitly anti-technology and begins taking actual pride in their ignorance while attempting to solve complicated problems with simplistic (re incorrect) folksy wisdom designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

There is nothing wrong with banning people for saying things that are true. You can call me an asshole and I can ban you from my house party. Was it true? Yes--I'm an asshole. But it's also my house, so fuck off.

Telling people to ignore government advice in the middle of a health crisis should get you banned. The fact that the advice changed is irrelevant.

I could not possibly disagree more. Mindless obedience to authority in the face of contradictory facts is a massive problem. The government wasn't just wrong; they knowingly lied.

Yes they lied--to avoid worsening the public health crisis. From the POV of the welfare of the population, their lie was the right decision.

Telling the truth is not always the right thing to do. If telling the truth gets more people killed than lying, then you lie--lying is morally obligatory when it saves lives.

Sorry, but if your argument is that people who speak the truth the government doesn't want to you to hear should be silenced and government propaganda should be praised then we will never agree. Perhaps you would be more at home in Communist China? That sort of attitude is exactly WHY the Supreme Court needs to defend freedom of speech.

My argument is that people who do things that can get people killed or worsen a public health crisis should be silenced.

You're arguing for the principle of freedom of speech, but the moment any principle causes more harm than good, that principle should be immediately abandoned. I care about human lives--you seem to care more about blind ideology. That is, by definition, evil.

>You're arguing for the principle of freedom of speech, but the moment any principle causes more harm than good, that principle should be immediately abandoned.

If you abandon your principles as soon as its convenient then you don't actually have any principles. Besides, wearing a mask wasn't going to kill anyone to begin with so your hypothetical is kinda useless.

>If you abandon your principles as soon as its convenient then you don't actually have any principles.

And if your principles get people killed, then having principles is demonstrably not virtuous.

>Besides, wearing a mask wasn't going to kill anyone to begin with so your hypothetical is kinda useless.

It was going to deprive medical professionals of masks, which would lead to them getting sick and causing a shortage of healthcare professionals in the face of an unknown and deadly pandemic threat. Yes--it was going to. My hypothetical wasn't a hypothetical--it was an objective description of what was going to happen and what they avoided.

I'm with group of assembled numbers. The good of everyone is a societal problem, what's good for myself is an individual one. If the government is telling me not to wear masks in a pandemic, they have failed their end of the bargain and have done society a disservice. It is now my problem. I'm gonna go buy some masks and flip the ole red white and blue the bird.

That's about the most laughable opinion I've heard in a while. A long while.

Never paid much attention to the Atlantic but I'm gonna assume they're a garbage rag now.

Congratulations. You just failed the tragedy of the commons. This is why individuals shouldn't be allowed to make decisions that impact entire societies.

The Atlantic is far left? Seems more like long-form liberalism with progressive cultural values.

Yeah.. can we.. Nope I found it. I'm sure they'll do just as well as these fine Congress people.

I would send you a UDP joke but you might not get it.

Angry upvote

Please remind me why I should trust anything I’m told by a stranger without verification on my part. Especially when the statement is obviously wrong.

What is good for humanity as a whole isn’t the same as what is best for any individual. Why should the government get to tell me to expose myself to a virus with an initially reported mortality rate that would have resulted in death carts in the streets. If the government told you to take six six cylinder revolvers, load one round in one of the three pistols, and randomly select one to play Russian roulette with would you do it? The early reports of dying from covid were worse percentages than that.

But in this specific case, if they knew masks would be in short supply they could have recommended cloth coverings as a placebo that wouldn’t actually be harmful. The government is demonstrably not infallible.

Not if you claim to be a platform and not a publisher.

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Not when they claim they aren’t and are allowed to donate funds to political candidates. In an age where whatever google returns to your search on the first page is the truth it does matter if they filter topics, ideas, or statements that aren’t illegal and don’t indicate that it’s biased or an ad. It’s 15 years too late to compete with google as a search engine, 10 years to late for YouTube, and probably already too late for a small chrome competitor. gmail is the odd exception and you can replace it trivially. They are a monopoly just like bell and should be broken.

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Fox shows don’t get section 230 protections. Your examples do.

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But you can’t really go somewhere else in most cases. It’s a monopoly. Kill 230 or carve out these monopolies and you get a more free market approach.

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Well me hearty, when 98% of the market defaults to you that’s a monopoly. Businesses and the government largely aren’t on the others. Government shouldn’t use a private monopoly of a platform (twitter and YouTube for comma and google for finding info)that isn’t neutral for official communication.

It’s obvious we won’t come to a consensus, but it’s been nice having a discussion that didn’t include ad hominem attacks or bring up certain mustachioed men.

Good day!

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They don't, but they do understand money, and interested parties like Google have lots of it. They've donated heavily to the federalist society and I'd be shocked if they didn't have money closer to the court given how many undisclosed conflicts of interest keep coming up.

If a public company does not disclose that it operates with a substantial political bias, or that it coordinates with intelligence agencies to censor information, then it could be reasonably said that they are misleading investors about salient aspects of their operation.

So it was wrong to advise people to wear masks when the government was intentionally misleading the public and telling them not to? Blind and unquestioning fealty to big brother matters more than honest health information?

How did lying to people about the efficacy of masks and convincing them to not wear masks when at that point masking was better help the welfare of the population? Unless getting more people infected and killed was helping the population???

Awesome, so since the government lied about masks at the outset of the pandemic, which could have and probably did get people killed, they should be silenced, right?

Moreover, both the state of NY and PA forced nursing homes to take back in COVID positive patients. It is proven that in NY this resulted in many more deaths. So again, they should be silenced, right?

No they can't which is the entire point of this and the other internet related lawsuit at the SC. You are supposed to either be able to host all content and not be held responsible for the actions of its users or actively curate it and be responsible for its content. Not both simultaneously.

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But me going out to buy masks is a me problem, not a societal one. Society lied and said "Don't wear masks, they are useless!" and I said "I don't believe you" and wore masks.

Some people followed societies ill informed guidance, some people mocked it, some people just shrugged and did what worked for them because you can't trust a politicized agenda to actually know what's best for anyone but themselves. I'm in group c. The government was wrong, and I as a nurse could see it laughably so, and chose to take care of myself. Funnily enough, it worked.