Repealing Section 230 is not unconstitutional at all. Most countries don’t have it.

Most countries also don’t place such a heavy emphasis on free speech. I’m not saying that repealing §230 is unconstitutional, per se. I’m saying that it’d be unconstitutional to regulate platforms based on their moderation decisions. It’s also unconstitutional to hold platforms responsible for speech they had no role in creating or developing.

Seriously, pointing out that other countries don’t have this or that law, or anything else about countries other than the US, has literally nothing to do with what is or isn’t constitutional in the US. Other countries don’t enter into it. Only the US Constitution, as interpreted by the US Supreme Court, has the final say over what is or isn’t constitutional in the US. Plus, it’s long been established that freedom of speech in the US is much broader than in other countries. Whether that’s good or bad or neutral is irrelevant.

Also, while repealing §230 entirely may not be unconstitutional, making its protections conditioned upon being a neutral platform is. Which is what we were discussing. (More on that later.)

Take the example of a judgment-proof or terminally ill person with an axe to grind who accused Masnick of being an arsonist (not that anyone should do this, it’s just an example), or accused someone he cared about of doing something horrible (not that they should do that either). You can bet his position on Section 230 would change overnight, as he’d know that the poison would spread globally, and his protests would only cause those uninformed masses he’s always writing about to believe the lies even more.

Nope. The Constitution doesn’t care. Only the person who wrote the defamatory content is responsible for its defamatory nature. Period. That’s according to the Supreme Court, BTW.

And again, whether or not you think it’s good policy is irrelevant. That doesn’t really change the fact that platforms are protected this way by the Constitution.

And as for Mike specifically, it should be noted that he thinks that defamation law should only be a last resort and, even then, is often too counterproductive to be a good idea even when directed against the right target. Plus, your stated example is highly improbable to happen at all, let alone to Mike specifically. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’d realize that suing over the false speech would only cause it to spread even further thanks to the Streisand Effect, making it even less likely he’d change his mind in your scenario.

Search engines spread libel which is why every country BUT the US has no Section 230 and does fine with it. A few reputations of innocent people is not acceptable loss for the greater good of the internet.

Again, we value free speech over the reputations of a few innocent people. That’s why defamation has such a high bar here. And again, §230 isn’t your only problem here; it’s also the 1A and basic jurisdiction issues. And, like I’ve said already, what happens in other countries has no bearing on whether it’s constitutional in the US.

Also, other countries don’t have such large search engines as Google or Bing or such large social media platforms as Facebook or Twitter. That’s because §230, the 1A, and the SPEECH Act protect online platforms from liability for third-party content and have more freedom to moderate or not as they wish here more than in any other country or under any other country’s laws. The SPEECH Act prevents international forum shopping, too.

Look, under the 1A, US laws at any level cannot recognize a separate harm for simply being the medium by which defamatory content gets found or posted. §230 doesn’t even matter that much there; it just shortcuts the process.

Without Section 230 there never would have been revenge porn.

Again, the problem there isn’t §230. In fact, the problem that every revenge-porn law in the US has run into has never been §230 but the 1A. They’ve pretty much all been declared unconstitutional. §230 was never the problem there. Forget holding platforms and search engines accountable for revenge porn; there’s been difficulty even getting the original posters accountable for revenge porn because of the 1A.

Look, just face it. The problem you have isn’t §230; it’s the 1A. That’s the point I was making. Even without §230, what you want can’t happen under the Constitution.

But really, you’re talking about a completely separate aspect of §230. When I mentioned unconstitutionality, I was talking about the moderation aspect, which is not the same as the part that shields platforms from liablility for third-party content. Specifically, I was discussing the fact that it is unconstitutional for the government (Federal, state, or local) to force a privately owned platform to be neutral, let alone a neutral public forum. You’re talking about a different prong of §230—the prong that deals with liability for third-party content for which the ICS provider/user played no part in developing. While this is also protected by the Constitution and basic jurisdictional issues, it’s not the same thing as what was being discussed. Poking holes in my argument with regards to liability for third-party content is missing the point of my argument, which, again, is about moderation. (We were also discussing social media platforms, not search engines.)

It’s still worth pointing out that such protections still exist without §230 and are far from unprecedented (see, e.g., letters to the editor in newspapers), but it’s not really the same thing as what I was talking about.

Here’s what I was saying before:

• The protections offered by §230 (in toto) are not unprecedented under US law, serve the public good, and are not limited to protecting only large corporations but also small corporations/NGOs and private individuals
• These points have been explained—in detail—multiple times to this same person
• This person needs to provide evidence of corporations abusing their rights over their platforms before I can accept their allegations as true.
• Neutral public fora cannot exist. They are effectively impossible.
• There are times when people want a nonneutral forum.
• It is unconstitutional for the government to force a privately owned platform, no matter how large, to be a “neutral” forum, let alone a “neutral public forum”.
• Pointing out these facts doesn’t necessarily mean that one is inherently against the existence of neutral public fora.

That’s it. Nothing about whether or not repealing §230 at all, let alone entirely, would be unconstitutional. Nothing about search engines in particular (a search engine isn’t a forum, after all). In fact, your entire post had little to do with anything I actually said.

Also, with the exception of §230 being good for the public, everything I said was demonstrable fact. And even with that one, the point was simply that a decent argument could be made in favor of that, and it was limited to whether it offers any benefit to the public, not whether or not those benefits outweigh any or all downsides to §230. That would be a separate discussion, and the OP didn’t ask for that. That part is still opinion, though. Everything else is factual, however.

We can still argue about whether or not §230 is good policy, and I’m willing to have that conversation in a different thread, but those policies are rooted in the US Constitution, and that doesn’t change based upon what other countries do or don’t do. It also doesn’t change based upon what you or I think the law should be. All it does is establish our respective opinions about the protections offered by §230 (which are also protected under other areas of US law, including the US Constitution). §230 is just a shortcut to keep websites running smoothly. After all, websites have a bigger issue with the law of big numbers.