> They could be sued over any comment that appears for any amount of time. There are definitely comments that have appeared on HN that are libelous.

1) You could be sued now for [potentially] libelous comments you write on HN. What's the average wealth of HN posters? How many times has HN had to field user account disclosure requests so commenters could be sued?

2) There are scenarios where HN could be sued now for [potentially] libelous material. For example, in the way moderators reword titles. Not sure how likely they would be to succeed, but it's certainly plausible, and it would be relatively cheap for a lawyer to test the waters. I'd be curious to see how many letters Y Combinator has had to field regarding its content. I suspect greater than 0, but still relatively few. Do its lawyers toss them in the trash, discounting to $0 the risk of liability? I doubt it--while they may consider the risk low, it's still something, and that something presumably effects HN's policies today.

A few months ago I learned a memorable phrase from an HN comment: think in probabilities, not possibilities. Regarding Section 230, most people seem to be in a mode of thinking where they simply compare a world with existentially oppressive liability vs no liability whatsoever. The world doesn't work that way, not even U.S. law. We're all subject to the possibility of financially existential liability every time we drive a car, but we're not crippled by it. How many Silicon Valley engineers with million-plus dollar homes and assets even have umbrella coverage? While I suspect the number is far fewer than what would be rationally called for, the reason is nonetheless because the probabilities are far less ominous than the possibilities.

Would HN's liability exposure grow? Absolutely. Would their legal costs, including possible settlements, increase? I would think. How would the site change? It's hard to say, but I'll go on record as saying that I don't think it'd be taken down, and I seriously doubt there would be many, if any, substantive changes to current policies and practices.

> Sure and sometimes your ISP got successfully sued because someone didn't like a comment posted on a message board they hosted.

To be clear, my only claim is that I don't think it would be the end of the internet or even social media. It might be the end of Twitter and Facebook as we know it, but the U.S. grants to participatory websites one of the, if not the strongest defenses to libel liability in the developed world, and yet the internet works much the same everywhere else lacking such a strict defense. Likewise, many people consider civil tort liability entrepreneurially oppressive in the U.S., and yet private enterprise--grocery stores, manufacturers, schools, etc--exist much the same here as they do elsewhere, especially in other developed countries. In fact, often they willfully subject themselves to more risk than they would elsewhere. (That's one benefit of a system that relies on private suits as opposed to regulatory mandates or criminal sanctions.) And yet the worst figures I've seen for the supposed comparative cost to the immensely successful U.S. economy of it's overly litigious civil legal system is something like 5% of GDP.

There's alot of hyperbole and hand-wringing surrounding this issue, and a big reason, IMO, for it relates to our contemporary, radical narratives regarding Free Speech on the one hand and American litigiousness on the other. While anxiety regarding both may be rooted in a kernel of truth, the full truth and reality--legal, political, social--doesn't support the extreme reactions and doomsday predictions.

While I'm not advocating for repeal of Section 230, I'd trade it in a heartbeat for legislative voiding of Qualified Immunity, if that sort of compromise was on the table between Democrats and Republicans. That's the sort of flexible, pragmatic thinking I wish there was more of in our public discourse. But it can't happen if we're all single-issue voters on every issue, which is what absolutist, possibility-not-probability thinking has turned us into.