>I'm sure it's hard to imagine, but if they started silencing liberal views, there's no doubt there would be an uproar among democrats. Apart from any legal changes that may come, we vote with our clicks and platform usage, and there's a growing number of people who are tired of these political censorship games, so they're leaving for other platforms with less political bias. As censorship increases, that will likely accelerate.

Please remember that Section 230 doesn't just apply to the big players. It applies to any internet resource that allows third-party content. Including any site that you may host/own.

I suggest you actually read the sharp end of Section 230 (section (C)(1), which pretty much all litigation around it has been resolved). I present it here for your review[4]:

"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

That's it. Full stop.

I don't care about platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. I don't use them (well, okay, sometimes I listen to songs on YT and once in a while I'll dig up an amusing or enjoyable clip from a movie or tv show) because I find their business models personally offensive.

But you attack Section 230 at your own (and everyone else's) peril. And there are a bunch of reasons for this.

The impetus for Section 230 came out of the court decision in Stratton, Oakmont v. Prodigy[0], where the court ruled that if Prodigy did any moderation at all, they were then liable to be sued for third-party content they hosted.

But that didn't just apply to Prodigy. It applied to any connected device that hosted any content, whether that content originated from the owner or a third-party.

Try to imagine what the world would look like under such a legal regime:

A site like HackerNews, if they (as they do now) allowed the upvote/downvote/flag moderation system, would be liable to be sued for just about any post that someone didn't like, or for a submission that wasn't sufficiently up or down voted.

In such an environment, HackerNews (and every single other website, mailing list, Usenet group, Mastodon instance, Github repo, etc., etc., etc.) would be liable to be sued for just about anything that anyone posted if they did any form of moderation (like blocking spam, porn or any content unrelated to the purpose of the site).

If there was no Section 230, you could be sued if you hosted a mirror of the lkml[1] list and someone didn't like a snarky response from Linus about a rejected patch merge request.

You could also be sued just for forwarding an email that contained statements that someone didn't like. In fact, Section 230 protections stopped just such a lawsuit[2] in 2006.

Companies with deep pockets like FB, Twitter, YT, Reddit, etc., have the resources to fight most such lawsuits, but what about sites like HackerNews?

Do you really think we'd be having this pleasant conversation right now if YC could be sued for any post or submission on this site?

YC would run for the hills, because they don't want that sort of liability. If they moderated anything (and that includes user up/downvotes/flags), they could be sued for any content hosted here. The only alternatives they would have would be to shut down or not make or use any moderation tools at all.

Which would quickly turn this site into a cesspit of spam, porn, irrelevant postings and other garbage (essentially, 4chan/8chan/8kun).

Do you have a github repo? If there were no Section 230, and you blocked even one PR that contained spam, porn, discussions about placentas and/or other irrelevant content, you are now liable to be sued for any statements made by others in that repo.

As such, the result of removing Section 230 protections would create two kinds of Internet resources:

1. Sites which do not allow any third-party content;

2. Sites which allow all third-party content without any limit (think gay, midget furry porn plastered all over a knitting website)

And so, no. I wouldn't mind at all if a particular site moderated in favor of a political (or any other) view with which I disagree. If I don't like it, I'll go elsewhere.

Because of all this, I say that Section 230 is essential to free speech, not a hindrance to it.

Feel free to disagree, but you'll be wrong[3]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....

[1] https://lkml.org/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_v._Rosenthal

[3] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

[4] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

Edit: Fixed spacing issues.