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Wed, 03 Jul 2019
WSJ Op Ed Warns: Killing Section 230, Kills The Internet
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Rupert Murdoch and his Wall Street Journal have frequently attacked Google and other internet services, often in ways that suggest little understanding of how things actually work. Sometimes this has dipped into conspiracy theories and totally bullshit news stories whose sole purpose seems to be to attack Google in a misguided way. So, it's actually nice to see that the WSJ at least agreed to publish the latest Andy Kessler op-ed about the importance of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to keeping the open internet. The title, while a bit hyperbolic, is important: Kill Section 230, You Kill the Internet.Should Section 230 be repealed? Heck no. We don't want politicians, as Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley suggests, forcing private companies to host content they find objectionablea slippery slope. Facebook and others will likely end up neutral on their own, invoking the Michael Jordan rule: Republicans buy sneakers too. Leave Section 230 alone. Kessler highlights how most of the "proposed" ways of dealing with the power of big tech won't actually solve any of the problems they're targeting. Instead, he suggests much greater transparency in how these companies operate -- which I agree is a good start, but not nearly far enough. He also suggests a slightly odd "ratings system" using user voting to determine if content is trustworthy. That's a creative idea, but would be gamed so fast that it would almost certainly be useless about 30 seconds after launching.Either way, it's good to see that the WSJ isn't so on board with the "kill Section 230" nonsense that it wouldn't publish Kessler's op-ed...
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posted at: 12:00am on 03-Jul-2019
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