Attaching a disclaimer to the speech of another though is not straightforward. Will they get into the business of fact checking everyone over certain number of followers? Will they do it impartially world-wide? How can they even be impartial world wide given the different contradictory points of view, valid from both sides? Cyprus? What’s the take there?
I love the theoretical situation that doesn't exist as a justification for not doing the right thing. This isn't a "different points of view" - this is the leader of the United States LYING on their platform, and them choosing to provide a link to FACTUAL INFORMATION. There is no "contradictory point of view" - he claimed there was massive voter fraud and there's literally 0 proof to back up his claim and mountains of evidence to counter it.
It's even worse than just spreading his usual distract-from-the-day's-real-news nonsense. He's actively dissuading _some number_ of people from voting.
As always with him, the proof is in the projection: he's accusing others of interfering in the election (states expanding mail in voting, Twitter, etc.) while he's actively doing it himself.
I think news organizations are unfortunately choosing to do non-news for ratings, though. And how is Trump interfering with the election? In principle, there are real risks with unjustified mail-in voting, and I think restrictions would protect the integrity of my vote. Do you have evidence Trump is doing this to interfere with the 2020 election?
There are no facts to support your principle though, just your imagination. For example, Oregon, where I live, has, in reality, been doing mail in ballots for nearly two decades. In those two decades there have been hardly a hand-full of convictions for mail fraud related to ballots that entire time, with millions of mail-in-ballots cast. And there are no indications or notions of any subversive fraud.
There is simply nothing that indicates voting by mail is less secure than our wonky voting machines, but there is plenty of evidence that ballots by mail help more people vote.
The only reason to oppose mail in voting, much like supporting rejiggering districts (gerrymandering), is to rig the vote. Your feelings of insecurity simply don’t matter, as they are entirely unfounded as well as flat out wrong.
I am not a maths person, but 10 out of millions fits my definition of a “hand-full”. And if you read the article that you linked to, which definitely does not stand for what you think it does unless you based your opinion on the title, it in no way contradicts what I said, which is effectively: voting by mail is at least as secure as any other method we have, and it makes it easier for more people to vote.
Here’s an excerpt from your article about the devious voter fraudsters: “At the time of the election, (Robbins) was suffering from kidney infections which impacted his cognition,” said Oregon Department of Justice spokeswoman Kristina Edmunson. “He does not remember voting two ballots, but acknowledges that he did and is extremely remorseful.”
> In those two decades there have been hardly a hand-full of convictions for mail fraud related to ballots that entire time, with millions of mail-in-ballots cast. And there are no indications or notions of any subversive fraud.
But that's the objection. Mail in voting is problematic because the fraud is so hard to detect.
Suppose someone obtains and submits a bunch of mail in ballots. Ballots of people who don't normally vote etc. How would they even get caught? "We haven't caught very many of them" is the problem.
> The only reason to oppose mail in voting, much like supporting rejiggering districts (gerrymandering), is to rig the vote.
You could say it's to prevent someone else from rigging the vote.
So if it doesn't really affect the balance of legitimate ballots and only makes fraud more difficult, why would somebody be against it unless they're legitimately concerned about fraud?
I guess I have not seen any factual basis to conclude that mail-in voting is problematic. I get the theoretical argument, and can imagine all sorts of USPS conspiracies to rig the vote, but the fact is we have multiple states that allow mail-in voting, where millions of voters have cast ballots by mail, and both parties have won and lost elections while watching and recounting numerous votes... and there is no indication that this process has been problematic, ever. And certainly no evidence that it is not at least as secure as the voting machines we have, while still facilitating more people voting.
All those articles are about absentee ballots which absolutely nobody in DC is trying to stop entirely. It is how deployed military persons vote. Trump and the republicans are trying to stop States from implementing state-wide voting, or expanding absentee ballots for all citizens which more states are trying to implement due to a friggin’ pandemic. And yes, every system will have people that try to mess with it. But as Oregon’s nearly 2 decades of state-wide-vote-by-mail demonstrates, voting by mail is no more problematic than any other method of voting and it is more convenient for voters.
Were there a persistent, large-scale problem, a small sample over many elections would detect it, but actually the process is that each signature is matched before the inner ballot envelope is moved forward to be counted.
Rules around mail in votes vary by state (some disallow entirely for legitimate reasons). My imagination can not determine what you mean by ‘hardly a handful of convictions‘, but here is a list of quite a few specific convictions for fraudulent absentee voting (along with other forms of voter fraud): https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p...
That is some evidence that mail-in votes can be abused. And you should consider how hard it is to detect such abuse. I’d love to see some evidence on why the benefits of mail-in voting outweighs the risks.
Also some evidence on your claims that mail-in voting favors one particular party would be enlightening.
The 300+ page document you cited to proves my point - almost none of those cases are related to states with mail-in voting. Absentee ballots =/= mail-in voting. ALL states have absentee ballots, regardless of whether mail-in voting is a statewide practice. And nobody is suggesting getting rid of absentee ballots, especially not republicans or Trump, because it is how many enlisted persons vote. Of all the states that have statewide mail in voting, none have voter-fraud issues that are unlike states without mail-in voting. All of this is very well demonstrated by the extensive PDF you posted.
And I certainly did not claim that mail-in voting favors one particular party, simply that it enables more people to vote and is at least as secure as any other system of voting that we have in the US. That said, I think it is worth asking - why is one party, with truly zero supporting facts, so vehemently opposed to voting by mail? And why is it the same party that so unabashedly gerrymanders voting districts: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/how-the-...
I know political rants are semi-frowned upon these days on HN, but it is deeply important that we as a society figure this stuff out.
I don’t think it ‘proves’ your point, because:
1. Absentee ballots are similar if not easier to detect, e.g. you might expect mail-in voter fraud if you see absentee voter fraud or vice-versa. For example, in Pennsylvania right now, the only difference in requirement for getting an absentee vs mail-in ballot is that you need a reason for the absentee, which gives one avenue of verification. Mail-in ballots don’t need any reason.
2. there are a number of categories that could have been done on mail-in votes, because it’s harder to detect with mail-in votes. It may just be a matter of how the convictions were categorized.
I think your distinction is valid and correct, but somewhat pedantic.
You said the only reason to oppose mail in voting is to rig the vote. That’s a pretty strong implication. But I would say an open mind would ask the other direction: why is anyone opposed to increasing voter integrity? You can’t simply ignore that. Voter integrity appeals to me as a normal-ass American with 1 vote.
You may have noticed I haven’t been political, and stay on principle. We as a society should be able to talk openly about principle without corrosive contempt for those with differing viewpoints.
What risks to mail-in voting aren't already covered by mail fraud laws? AFAIK those laws are sufficient for normal crimes that one can easily commit by mail, so elections don't have any special treatment.
Personally, I'd like to vote by mail because there's a bit of a global pandemic going on. Preventing me from voting in a safe way (with a simple, well-tested solution, I might add) is an outright assault on my right to vote. So the integrity of your vote is really harmed far more by the willful incompetence of those in power.
> What risks to mail-in voting aren't already covered by mail fraud laws?
With ordinary mail fraud, the victim tends to notice. You have a bill for something but the something never arrives.
With mail in ballots, if someone registers people who didn't register themselves and then takes their ballots, the real constituents weren't expecting to get a ballot and then don't notice when none shows up.
There are also a lot of problems that have really nothing to do with mail fraud. When people fill out their ballots outside the context of a polling place with election monitors, anybody could be intimidating them or paying them to vote in a particular way and then verifying that they do.
I suppose the pandemic is a valid point for wanting to vote by mail, but concerns for voting integrity are still there. I think there should be an easy-to-implement contactless yet in-person way to vote (maybe similar to how you get a coronavirus test), which would avoid the rather drastic action of allowing universal mail-in voting. Know that there are many states who ban / regulate it for good reason.
Those are the ones that just got caught. (And first page says it is a sampling not a comprehensive list...) It shouldn’t happen at all. And it will get worse with less stringent forms of mail-in voting, wouldn’t you agree?
A quick Google shows that paper ballots have a 1-4% inaccuracy rate in correctly recording voter intent. That's about 5 orders of magnitude higher, so we should stop using paper ballots entirely, since any amount of inaccuracy is unacceptible.
It seems the best way to do this is to move away from in-person voting.
As has been demonstrated at DEFCON for years now, voting machines used in dozens of states are laughably insecure and easily tampered with. Mail-in ballots would be much more difficult to pull off large scale voting fraud with due to their distributed nature.
Don't they still use the same voting machines for the mail in ballots?
And the distributed nature is the problem. At the polls you have representatives of both major parties there to make sure nothing untoward is happening. How are you supposed to secure something that happens literally anywhere?
> Voter intimidation is a lot easier, for example, if you know where and when to turn up.
But for the same reason it's a lot easier to prevent. If you show up at the polls to intimidate voters you get arrested. If you do it to other members of your household, or your employees or union members, nobody there is independent. Anybody who reports it still has to live or work with those people the next day, so people don't report it.
> You would probably find it easier to tamper with a voting machine if you know where they're going to be, and if more people have access to them, too.
Not when there are election monitors there watching you. With paper ballots you fill out your ballot behind a screen, but you drop it into the machine in front of everybody.
Also, many of the voting machine vulnerabilities are as a result of submitting specially crafted ballots. Which is another reason you want to give people their ballot and have them fill it out by hand and submit it immediately, instead of giving them an unlimited amount of time and access to a computer and a printer while "filling out" their ballot.
Of course the better solution in either case is to use voting machines without security vulnerabilities, but there aren't always enough ponies for everybody.
> If you show up at the polls to intimidate voters you get arrested.
Yes, if this is consistently and fairly enforced, I agree - only doubting that it is because I honestly don't know, and hopefully never have to find out firsthand.
> many of the voting machine vulnerabilities are as a result of submitting specially crafted ballots
Yeah, fair enough. I don't know enough about the vulnerabilities, but if this is the case, I agree.
Hmm. I don’t think that is evidence. He is not admitting to trying to unfairly influence The 2020 election, but stating a symptom of his belief (incorrect or not) that fraudulent votes tend to be for the party opposing his, which is a legitimate, provable view.
I agree with you that his view fraud tends to be committed by Democrats is something that can be determined to be true or false. Unfortunately for our president, most fraud is committed by Republicans and not democrats.
The single largest case of voter fraud in this countries history happened in North Carolina in 2018. That was committed by a Republican.
If you investigate the voter fraud instances in Trumps own listing you will find that the majority of them are committed by Republicans.
Combine this information with the efforts by Republicans to suppress the vote and you can see the problem. In North Dakota, the Republican-controlled legislature passed a law that required all citizens to have a physical mailing address to be able to vote. Sounds resonible right? Well, this was after a Democrat won a Senate election in that state thanks in large part to the Native American population. Most Native Americans live on reservations in that state and part of living on the reservations is a lack of physical mailing addresses.
Nothing about having a physical address is going to make voter fraud less likely. It's plain as day that Republicans are just interested in suppressing the votes of people who vote against them.
You are the first person to engage me with intellectual honesty, so thank you.
I don’t care who commits the fraud. I want my vote to count as it should. So that’s a why I believe we should be vigilant about mail in voter fraud.
Your Native American example is an example of a corner case that should be addressed properly. Indeed it is unfair if there were no other ways for Native Americans to vote (surely they could vote in person? If not, I’d classify that as a violation of rights). But this doesn’t extend generally, not does it nullify general mail vote fraud concerns.
And I would add more evidence under the claim ‘majority of fraud committed by Republicans’ in order to be more convincing.
> Well, this was after a Democrat won a Senate election in that state thanks in large part to the Native American population. Most Native Americans live on reservations in that state and part of living on the reservations is a lack of physical mailing addresses.
There is nothing about a reservation that prevents it from having a mailing address. People on reservations receive mail all the time. Even someone who doesn't currently know what it is can find out. And it seems like a pretty crappy voter suppression method if it at best only works until people figure out what their mailing address is.
> Nothing about having a physical address is going to make voter fraud less likely.
Having a physical address proves you live in the district. It prevents people from making a mistake and voting in the wrong elections, or voting in the wrong elections on purpose. It gives the government something to investigate if they suspect fraud. The perpetrator will either have to give their real address (leading investigators right to them) or a fake address (allowing investigators to prove that person doesn't live there).
> It's plain as day that Republicans are just interested in suppressing the votes of people who vote against them.
The Democrats do the same thing. They regularly e.g. schedule school board elections off-cycle (a separate election day than the major elections for statewide offices) so that most people don't show up, which allows the election to be dominated by teachers unions. And there isn't even a pretext for doing that -- it has no other purpose, and wastes a ton of money to hold a separate election.
Trump is using his position of authority to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about the legitimacy and reliability of mail-in voting. There's a strong possibility that this will result in _at least_ one person deciding not to vote if they're unable or unwilling to vote in person in this year's election. By definition, this is interference.
It’s not interference in the scenario you’ve described, because there’s no way to tell such a person would have voted against him. And you can’t ignore the main point, which is voter integrity, which I as a normal American agree with.
So you care about voter integrity? What effect on voter integrity is there when the president of the United States goes around spreading lies about the integrity of the voting system?
The effect may be large or it may be small, but there will be an effect. If you truly cared about voter integrity you would care about this too.
I do care, but maybe our current views differ. Can you be specific about what you think the lies are? I believe mail in fraud is a real concern, and here is a list of convictions for mail in voter fraud (and other forms): https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p...
It's not a concern at all. Colorado has had mail-in voting for years by default, with the option to show up at a precinct. Every ballot is bar coded. I get an email when it's mailed. I get an email soon after I've dropped it off at an official drop box.
Every current and past Secretary of State from each state will tell you election fraud happens, and that it's rare enough it doesn't have an effect on the outcome.
Trump is lying when he said there is a 100% certainty of a rigged election if there's widespread mail-in ballots. Be clear about what he means by rigged. A system-wide fraud that influences the outcome of an election.
It's the same kind of lie about 3 million voters being "illegals" in 2016 and why he lost the popular vote. It's the same kind of lie he told about buses being shipped up from Massachusetts to New Hampshire to explain why he lost New Hampshire. The same lies about "you will not believe what my people are finding in Hawaii" about Obama's birth certificate. And the thousands of people cheering on 9/11. And the hundreds of people he knew who died on 9/11 yet went to no funerals, zero zip.
And it's the same tactic he used in 2016 to set the stage for his loss. When asked if he would accept election results if he lost he refused to say yes, he only said he'd accept the election results if he won.
He excels at creating doubt and confusion. That's his entire life history way before he was in politics.
He's an asshole. He's a complete waste of space. He's a whiny little bitch. He's always been this way. It's not new. He was this way when he was a Democrat too. As president. As candidate. Before he was even in politics. He has always been a piece of shit asshole. He will always be a piece of shit asshole. And hilariously this is a completely unremarkable observation. The absurd claim would be that he's a compassionate person of strong ethical and moral character, a role model you want your kids to look up to, mimic, and be like when they grow up.
> It’s not interference in the scenario you’ve described, because there’s no way to tell such a person would have voted against him.
Who they would have voted for isn't actually relevant. The fact that they didn't (in our hypothetical) vote as a result of the FUD is evidence of interference.
If someone was making robocalls telling voters that voting machines in their district weren't to be trusted and some number of people didn't vote, would you consider that to be interference?
> And you can’t ignore the main point, which is voter integrity, which I as a normal American agree with.
What is a "normal American" and why would you say that in this context?
By definition, I'm a "normal American" and I also care about "voter integrity". However, I just have absolutely no reason to believe that mail-in voting, which has been used widely for decades by the select states (blue and red) which allow everyone to do it and by _every_ state which allows for absentee voting, is any less secure than any other method.
If you've seen any of the presentations/POCs from Defcon's Voting Machine Hacking Village, read anything about how easily Diebold machines can be manipulated, etc. I just can't believe you'd make the argument that mail-in voting is less secure in good faith.
I look for the perspective here and Sweden, and if its an established fact that the mail-in ballot system used by California can not be abused, why does Sweden then have a significant more restrictive and expensive rules around mail-in ballots?
To be specific, here you can only use mail-in ballots as an exception if you live outside the border of Sweden, and you can only make a request to use the mail-in ballot if you visit an embassy first or use the digital identity system through one of the Swedish banks, which then operate similar to the embassy in its role in identification processing.
Naturally using less security does not mean fraud has happened in the past, but it should be relevant to the question if fraud may happen in the future. If we have factually evidence it won't happen then Sweden should change it rules to make it easier for people to vote and reduce costs to embassies. If we are uncertain, well, then the question is a fair game to ask what is good enough security and what isn't.
As I commented in another thread, this is an argument for letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. (The person I was commenting to there utterly missed my point.)
We don't know that the mail-in ballot system here in California is absolutely, with 100% certainty, immune to abuse. We do have reasonably good circumstantial evidence at this point that it does not appear to increase the chance for voter fraud, and furthermore, we have reasonably good evidence, based on multiple studies conducted over many years that anyone can easily find if they care to, that there are very, very few fraudulent ballots cast in American elections. There is, however, also reasonably good evidence that American elections have a history of efforts to prevent eligible voters from casting votes at all, and that this is far and away the kind of "voter fraud" that we need to be concerned about.
As a general axiom, therefore, in American elections, campaigns that have as their goal making it more difficult for eligible voters to vote in the name of "reducing fraud" should be viewed with, well, a high degree of suspicion.
I have never heard anyone describe the Swedish system as perfect. Voting participation is close to 90% so there is very good evidence that we do not need mail-in ballot for people living in Sweden in order to make it easy for eligible voters to cast their votes.
If we are going by evidence then finding the cause of the lower voting participation in the US should be the goal, for which there exist plenty of research studies conducted over many decades. A lot of people have wondered why there is such a large difference between EU and US. The general conclusions is not the lack of more easy to use internet based solutions, but rather to concepts like minimum wages, trust in government, belief in the efficacy of voting, combining the system of taxation to voter registration, access to voting centers, and voter fatigue when people have to vote in multiple elections in close proximity.
The resistance and general suspicion to internet based solutions with weak security should not be taken as a campaign to make it more difficult for eligible voters to vote. A government website where an anonymous user can put in a a registered person postal address in order to trigger part of the voting process should be viewed with legit suspicion.
Yes, which is why Mr Trump should address those issues:
- minimum wages
- trust in government
- belief in the efficacy of voting
- combining the system of taxation to voter registration
- access to voting centers
- and voter fatigue when people have to vote in multiple elections in close proximity
(Let me add disenfranchisement after a prison sentence etc, too.)
And he should not make a stink about mail votes and any number of random accussations. Look at the big picture. He has us debating the finer nuances about one tiny individual bomb in his ground covering barrage of crap. Mission accomplished. How's the Corona effort going, by the way?
Pretty good if you don't live in Stockholm. The worst hit areas is the retirement homes around the Stockholm region, which account for most deaths. The other areas of Sweden are operating mostly like normal except for industries that been effected by closed borders. Economically we are currently a bit ahead compared to our neighbors because of difference in tactics in handling the pandemic, but it is expected to go down as the Swedish economy is comparable more depended on exports. Most news focus on the economic depression as a result of the pandemic rather than on the health sector. Latest news is that a few airports are closing down, and that the partially state owned airline is having economical problems.
The election infrastructure is vulnerable in multiple ways.
The fact that there's a new conservative talking point about the dangers of voting by mail (and no other aspects of voting security) shows that this message is bullshit.
The reality is that the conservative party actively works to curtail voting because they are in the minority and it's the only way for them to stay in power.
> The reality is that the conservative party actively works to curtail voting because they are in the minority and it's the only way for them to stay in power.
Well, that's the tactical reason.
Bigger picture, conservativism is about narrowing and liberalism about broadening and equalizing access to the levers of power; conservatives for narrowing the franchise both because of immediate tactical advantage and because of fundamental ideological reasons.
Look, I grew up as a prototypical SF Bay Area liberal. But I'm not a kid anymore and I can recognize the value of many elements of true conservatism.
I've had little love for every Republican administration, but this is the first time I'm actually afraid of them. What is happening now is not conservatism, it's fascism with a dash of Christian Dominionism.
> Bigger picture, conservativism is about narrowing and liberalism about broadening and equalizing access to the levers of power; conservatives for narrowing the franchise both because of immediate tactical advantage and because of fundamental ideological reasons.
Are you in marketing? Because you sound like it, and I'm not buying what your selling.
Let's try Wikipedia for grins:
"Traditionalist conservatism, also referred to as classical conservatism, traditional conservatism or traditionalism, is a political and social philosophy emphasizing the need for the principles of a transcendent moral order, manifested through certain natural laws to which society ought to conform in a prudent manner."
Now that's a bit better. Using that definition tell me how that applies to Trump's GOP.
Disclaimer: I have no love for the DNC either, but at least with them it's a more genteel corruption and their ostensible goals are not entirely unpalatable.
p.s. @dang, I'm in dangerous territory here being political on HN, but it was meant to be germane to the OP.
This feels a weird position to be in as a liberal, but:
You're ascribing to conservativism what should belong to a particular political party at a particular time. Yes, the current Republican party does intend to limit franchise by minorities, and this has literally been stated ala Hofeller.
That is not a conservative position and many things the Republican party does are not actually conservative.
Just as Democrats at their worse can be about finding equality by restricting rights and treating people like zoo animals, the Republicans at their worse are about winning the power grab ethics be damned. And at those extremes, neither party represents the values of liberalism or conservativism.
> You're ascribing to conservativism what should belong to a particular political party at a particular time
No, I'm ascribing to conservativism what has defined it since the classic liberal/conservative divide emerged in the Enlightenment (well, except that at the very beginning the conservative position was merely to retain the existing narrow distribution of access to the levers of power, resting on appeals to religious and other traditional bases; it's only after the liberal side had some success in broadening access that the conservative position became actively reversing that progress, but it has remained so since.)
There was plenty of voter fraud, like when he was 'elected' but all the ballots were destroyed in an unreasonable quick time frame. Then there were the precincts with more than 100% voter turnout.
Free speech means you have the right to express yourself. It does not mean a private company is at all required to give you a platform... They can moderate content as they choose.
As far as tagging an individual user account in this way, I'm sure there are provisions for that in the TOS that Trump agreed to in order to use the site.
On a legal level, I can't imagine anything has been done wrong. On an ethical level, the only problem I see so far might be that Twitter is taking it upon themselves to be fact checkers, and personally I don't mind so far, I think the public benefit probably far outweighs any negatives.
WHY do you say he is lying ? He has sufficient evidence that there is indeed voter/absentee ballot fraud going on. Saying that he has ZERO proof is the REAL lie.
The below is just a snapshot. Just a teensy-weensy bit of research will give you hundreds of articles like the below.
wait, 938 convictions over what looks like is over two decades? Just in the presidential election years that's something like 625 million votes. That's very little fraud.
(and there's some nonsense in there if it's trying to present itself as voter fraud...like the California cases of candidates misrepresenting their home address. What does that have to do with any voters?)
Not sure where 15,000 to 45,000 comes from, as the report itself concludes only c.8500 cases of duplicate voting.
I'm also not sure about the methodology there, so perhaps someone could explain it to me.
From what it looks like, GAI started with 60,000 matches from the state data. Then they... added additional identifiers and confirmed c.7000 of them? How do you get from uncertain data to more certain data in this way?
There seem to be c.15,000 instances of prohibited addresses being registered, which I don't believe alone indicates voter fraud.
"Extending GAI’s conservative matching method to include all 50 states would indicate an expected minimum of 45,000 high-confidence duplicate voting matches"
GAI was unable to conduct a comprehensive review since a complete data set of state voter rolls is currently unobtainable. (it was denied)
I don't quite understand why the expect that there would be ~6x the number detected, though, assuming that the ~8500 cases detected is accurate. It would be very (and probably statistically naive) if the minimum total cases was simply because they have only ~1/6 of the total number of state pairings.
I think the other major concern I have, other than the methodology, are the definitions - I still don't know whether 8500 represents 8500 people who voted twice (17000 total votes cast), or 4250 people who voted twice, or something in between, or some thing completely different. Perhaps I missed this.
As a US citizen, I would prefer to have 0 such convictions. I would not belittle these results, as these may not be all convictions, and these are just the ones that got caught.
And of course even if the sheer number of votes is not on the same order of magnitude as all votes cast, we should still worry because a relatively small number of votes can have an outsized effect when placed appropriately.
Edit: as the first page states, this is not a comprehensive list, but a ‘sampling’.
> As a US citizen, I would prefer to have 0 such convictions
great, but what does that have to do with providing evidence that
> There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent."
is not substantial nonsense based on zero evidence, but more importantly (given that this thread is about "lying"), that
> The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one.
I think he was just pointing to the larger problem. If we accept the premise that these companies are unable to be unbiased and accurate with the application of their rules at scale, which we have every reason to believe, then the problem is the platform itself.
I think the claim is an exaggeration, but I don’t think that the method is fraud proof.
Let’s see fact checks on diet claims, exercise, claims about social solutions, claims about the economy, etc., etc. Let’s see fact checks on their own advertisers.
where does twitter draw the line, and how does that line affect the usage of the platform?
If twitter created some arbitrary rule like "We're going to fact-check all state/government personnel.", then the state/government personnel would just change platforms.
it's a real issue -- it's potentially more dangerous to push politicians to lie on platforms that fact-checkers can't respond and provide feedback towards, and if twitter starts playing hardball against politicians that's exactly what will happen.
A ton of small echo-chamber communities that splinter off as a result of perceived hostility or discrimination from twitter (but really any social media group) and the general public may be more hostile/dangerous than having these groups of people being vetted by the public at large constantly on twitter or other popular platforms.
If these echo chambers move elsewhere, Twitter might be a more sought-after media.
Meanwhile, I make the claim that the echo chambers will stagnate rapidly outside a big platform. The echo chambers need constant exposure to gain new ideological members. If left to a private-club-platform, they will not showcase themselves.
Note that there is a strong adherence to the YCombinator’s code of conduct on the current platform - but we come back to discuss ideas here, not to a not-vetted forum. By making the level of adherence to fact checks, discussions will improve.
So... don't do any fact-checking because the people you're fact-checking might go to a platform where there's no fact checking? I hope you recognize how absurd that idea is.
Yes, please, let's definitely see fact checking on all those things. I hope that's Twitter's longer-term plan. But I think starting with politicians, especially POTUS, is a pretty good place to start.
> Attaching a disclaimer to the speech of another though is not straightforward.
Yes it is, it just involves adding an html element below it
> Will they get into the business of fact checking everyone over certain number of followers
Their choice, because of the first amendment they can do it to anyone or noone at their leisure or based on whatever criteria they like and as arbitrarily as they like.
> Will they do it impartially world-wide
Their choice, because of the first amendment they can choose to be as impartial or as partial as they like as locally or globally as they like.
> How can they even be impartial world wide given the different contradictory points of view, valid from both sides
The simplest solution is to not be impartial, but that's a decision that is wholly up to them and whatever they decide is protected by the first amendment
See how simple it is? They do whatever they feel like and the government is obligated to not interfere. The end.
(Other governments might object to some of these decisions, the US government most certainly has no legal power to)
Thank you. The naive, incorrect view is that private entities restrict your constitutional rights by refusing to host UGC or by editorializing/annotating it.
An evolved, but still incorrect view is that a private entity is legally or constitutionally obligated to apply their policy about hosting speech consistently across all users.
Fairness is an impossible outcome but a worthwhile pursuit.
There are tons of edge cases with free speech, but we almost certainly want the free market to experiment with potential solutions. It would be great if there were attempts at a free speech Twitter, a free of hate Twitter, free of disinformation Twitter, etc. and let the chips fall where they may.
I don't want free martek experimentation here. Freedom and promotion of speech has massive effect on society and politics of the day. It's massively inappropriate to put market forces and wallstreet quarterly reports in charge of it.
Free speech in a public, shared space is a constitutional right. Free speech to write whatever you want on a private company's website is not. It's governed by their terms of service.
As long as their terms of service is applied equally and consistently it should be legal as far as I know. Maybe you could make the argument that their rules are discriminatory and aren't being (or can't be) enforced equally, but that's different from telling a company that they have to accept any type of content without restriction.
FB, YT, Reddit, Twitter, etc. have been removing posts and banning users for years. So, the act isn't new, but the fact that it's being applied to the President is new.
The problem with that argument is that speech is moving online, and there is no public shared space - all platforms are private.
So you've just privatised policing of free speech, and it's now subject to arbitrary rules and whims of management and wall-street.
Twitter can ban you if they don't like what you are saying, and they are not obligated to enforce rules equally or to even explain what you breached. The terms and conditions are very fuzzy on to what is actually offensive.
If I host my own website, my cloud provider can ban me.
If I self host at home on my own server, my internet service provider could cut me off - my ISP contract has a specific clause in their contract, stating that they could cut me off if they deem my content offensive, they are judge, jury and executioner and they owe me no explanation.
All of this creates great potential for foul play, where a hypothetical rich or powerful person or party could silence embarrassing news with a few phone-calls, and there is sod all you could do about it.
Isn't that exactly what happened with the internet?
And it seems the market have already chosen that a slightly moderated but not too heavily model seems to retain and attract the most users.
Twitter I don't think is putting in place these moderation mechanism for fun or through their own personal CEO's own moral and ethics. They do what they think will be best for business.
Wait, to be clear you mean the language "Congress shall make no law" which clearly doesn't apply to Twitter? I agree it's unambiguous the constitution doesn't allow the government to restrict Twitter's rights
> Attaching a disclaimer to the speech of another though is not straightforward.
From a free speech perspective, it's straightforward, private parties can choose to relay (or not) whatever viewpoints they want, and can choose to relay those viewpoints with or without commentary.
From a “what’s an ideal policy” perspective, maybe it's not, but “your policy is not ideal” isn't an exception to free speech justifying government intervention.
> How can they even be impartial
Private actors aren't required to be impartial. In fact, the whole premise of the marketplace of ideas is that private parties will be partial in choosing which ideas to present and how to present them.
> In fact, the whole premise of the marketplace of ideas is that private parties will be partial in choosing which ideas to present and how to present them.
The issue is that a few giant corporations have got a cartel going. It's really an antitrust problem which is only a speech problem because the market is the marketplace of ideas.
You can argue it's wrong or imoral or destructive to society or whatnot, by you can not argue that, within the context of US law, it is illegal. They are perfectly within the bound of the law to do what they do.
What would NOT be lawful would be Trump to close them down because they did what they did. That is full stop illegal if he did it. Not sure how legal it even is to threaten it this way.
At this point, Twitter might as well even close Trump's account. Still legal, still within their rights.
Sure they can. And then they can be treated as a publisher with ALL the legal liabilities. They can be sued in court as the 1996 Communications Decency Act. Section 230 will no longer be applied to them.
as long as they are not using limited public goods (e.g. part of the EM spectrum to broadcast), then from my perspective they can do anything they want assuming it doesn't break another law.
now if they want to use limited public goods, well then there's a role for the FCC or something like it...
Twitter is the place where the entire media and political classes hang out. They're all addicted to it. These people's opinions shape real-world politics and election outcomes.
Could that be a 'limited public good'? Due to the network effects, it seems like only one website at a time would hold this status.
Twitter deserves credit for creating their platform, absolutely. They created a platform where everyday people can interact with top media and politicians.
Now that it's here, and they're all on it.. "the coffee shop can throw you out" seems a little trite. I don't like Trump either, set him aside, what if we were on the wrong side of Twitter's politics?
I fear letting the government regulate twitter more than I fear twitter deciding my politics aren’t acceptable. I can leave Twitter, but creating a back door for the government to regulate political speech has consequences that stretch much further than Twitter itself.
I'm not talking about the government regulating speech, I'm talking about the government regulating against Twitter deciding your politics are unacceptable. Whatever they may be. More speech.
I'd be fine with retaining Twitter's right to add commentary, as they did to Trump, as long as it's clear who's saying what.
Giving the government the explicit ability to enumerate what speech is and is not worthy of protection from Twitter is not a very pro free speech idea. It does not take a large amount of imagination to see how the ability to decide what speech must be carried can be easily abused by the government.
Even without explicit abuse, this is effectively the government saying "you must transmit this information, no matter what", which is an unwelcome intrusion of governmental power, in my opinion.
I mean, they already enumerate that child porn isn't allowed, but kitten pictures are. We're just negotiating the boundaries. I'm advocating for the widest possible boundaries, because I think it creates the least possibility for the selective abuse that you're worried about.
What would be novel in twitter's case, is that rather than recognizing that the phone company is a natural physical monopoly and hence must not refuse service to the politically unpopular, twitter is more of a natural social monopoly because of network effects. It would be an expansion of the doctrine, but it's arguably justified to the extent that you can't just go 'start your own twitter'.
> I mean, they already enumerate that child porn isn't allowed, but kitten pictures are.
Child porn is unprotected speech that does not enjoy first amendment protections. What you are advocating for is giving the government control over forms of protected speech, which is a whole different ball of wax. Creating precedent that the government should regulate acknowledged protected speech is not a good idea at all.
> What would be novel in twitter's case, is that rather than recognizing that the phone company is a natural physical monopoly and hence must not refuse service to the politically unpopular, twitter is more of a natural social monopoly because of network effects
I'm suggesting that Twitter might be a monopoly in the field of "being the watering hole for the entire media/political class". The argument hinges on network effects, I'm not saying it's ironclad, but I think we can all agree that you can't just start your own Twitter and have the same unique position of political influence.
If that's the case, the common carrier concept is helpfully already fleshed out for us in the law.
> I'm not talking about protected speech, or the first amendment.
You're not intending to, but by giving the government the ability to regulate political speech you are.
And yes; telling Twitter what they can do with political speech is governmental regulation of protected speech. You're giving the government to decide what forms of protected speech get extra special protection, which is a form of regulation.
> I am suggesting that Twitter might be a monopoly, and subject to the common carrier doctrine, on "being the watering whole for the entire media/political class".
So, I can declare any company a monopoly if they have cornered a specific user base, no matter how vague? Is Slack now a monopoly because they're popular in tech offices? Can I regulate declare Reddit a monopoly for sports fans and regulate it as such?
What is the general principle that will decide whether or not a company should be regulated as a monopoly? And how in the world do you define the "media" class in order to regulate companies like Twitter?
Only 22% of Americans use Twitter daily. That is not a monopoly, period.
> but I think we can all agree that you can't just start your own Twitter and have the same unique position of political influence.
Sure, but that's no argument for an expansion of government power.
I know I already said good night, but you haven't engaged with that common carrier concept at all. Check it out.
We've been through all of this already with Ma Bell.
I didn't bother, because the concept of "common carrier" is an extremely poor fit for what you're looking for.
The basic problem you're going to run into is that common carrier status was designed to ensure equal public access to limited resources. In most cases this will either be a physically limited resource (railways, pipelines, power lines, long haul fiber) or access to resources that were actually created by the government (radio frequencies, highways, licensed taxicabs). Common carrier status is frequently also applied where eminent domain was used to create the infrastructure in the first place.
Basically, common carrier was designed to solve the problem of limited infrastructure, and their application to telecommunications has been spotty. I would remind you that ISPs are not common carriers under US law. Ma Bell might've gotten broken up, but the power of the FCC to do that was actually repealed in 1996.
The problem is that social media networks aren't a limited resource, at all. The damn things keep popping up, closing, and buying each other. I've had well over a dozen social media website accounts so far at least, and that's probably under counting.
So any attempt to declare Twitter specifically a common carrier is going to have to center around this idea that they have a monopoly on media and political figures. Of course this is an extremely vague concept; how do you decide who is a "media" or "political" figure? And what percentage of them must be on a site before that site should become a common carrier? What if they’re on multiple social sites at once? And how exactly do you define what is and is not censorable wherever media figures are present? And how in the world would you codify this into law in a way that wouldn't be overturned as unconstitutional?
Honestly, the contortions required to make Twitter a common carrier are so strained, they strike me as something started with the end goal in mind.
A society that can't agree on what a divisive society is. In all seriousness, when actors with influence on public thought are having public arguments about politics, social roles, virus response plans. Now you can argue society has always been divisive, but instead of an Athenian public square with have platforms with millions of people getting involved. Amplified divisiveness.
It's not a "requirement" but by policing/editing content (other than what is explicitly illegal) you open yourself to a whole new set of obligations/liabilities that no one really wants to deal with.
IANAL but an example could be:
Someone posts a pirate ebook on their facebook profile. They can hide behind the "yeah but it was the user" harbor.
vs.
Someone posts a pirate ebook on a facebook profile, facebook staff thinks it's cool and puts it on a special themed section called "Pirate picks from today". They will be in trouble.
they didn't police anything; the guy's tweet got posted without any sort of gatekeeping
they didn't edit anything; it was very clear what he posted and it was his exact words as written. there weren't even any dark ui patterns to make it look like the fact check was part of what he said.
1. You're generally wrong except in some special cases
2. Twitter already automatically adds posts to special themed sections called "What's happening", so even if you were right there is no added liability.
3. Adding fact checking is not adding things to special themed sections, so this is off topic.
The legal obligations that platforms be neutral in order to not be liable for content on their website is a complete and utter fabrication in the public’s mind, and has no basis in US law.
It's not a complete fabrication, though to be sure the present debate has been painstakingly engineered over several years by multiple political factions.
Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which immunized from tort liability "interactive computer service[s]", was passed in response to a 1995 NY state court case that found Prodigy liable for statements posted on a forum by one of its users. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod.... The test the judge employed in that case was the degree to which Prodigy exercised editorial control over user-posted content, and in that case the judge found Prodigy exercised such sufficient editorial control that the discretion it effectively exercised in failing to remove the statement made Prodigy liable.
If Section 230 was revoked then that test of editorial control would presumably become the law in many if not most U.S. states as, AFAIU, the test wasn't created out of whole cloth, but rooted in well-established precedent. Some states might go another way but I doubt it; categorical, bright line limitations on liability are an unusual feature of judge-made law (which emphasizes fairness in the context of the particular parties, with less weight given to hypotheticals about society-wide impacts) and are typically created by statute. Other jurisdictions seem to have ended up applying very similar rules as the NY court, and even supposed Section 230 analogs (e.g. EU Directive 2000/31/EC) seem more like the NY rule in practical effect than Section 230's strong, categorical protections. Manifest editorial control seems like a sensible test for deciding when a failure to remove constitutes negligence; sensible, at least, if you're going to depart from strong Section 230-like protections. But I would expect significant variance in the degree of control required to be exhibited absent a national rule. In any event, massive sites like Twitter and Facebook might be faced with some stark choices--go all-in on censorship, or take a completely hands-off approach a la Usenet.
You're correct that there is some basis for it in past precedent, which was corrected in Section 230. But given the law as it stands today, the idea is completely false (even if it's not completely made up).
There are certainly prudential concerns with platforms fact checking; is Twitter implying that other Trump tweets are factually correct?
But whether or not you like the feature, the idea that the president of the United States would threaten “shutting down” Twitter because he doesn’t like a feature is beyond the pale, full stop.
They don't have to because they would've banned and will continue to ban anyone else who's tweeted the type of stuff that Trump's tweeted. They've only gotten into this situation because they've refused to ban or suspend Trump's account.
In the game of whack-a-mole of false-information spewers I think it makes sense to tag those with the largest audiences who have the largest sway like Trump as this is the most efficient way to curb disinformation. Twitter is doing the public a solid by doing this and I laud them for it.
> 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" (47 U.S.C. § 230)
To sum up: If the platform becomes the "information content provider", defined as "any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information", then they loose the protection. The statute also excepts federal criminal liability and intellectual property claims.
Creation or development of information can exclusively be moderation, as has been shown in copyright cases. Cutting (deciding what to show and what not to show), re-arrange or changing the context can create new original work, which would make the creator an information content provider for that. At the same time, doing either of those does not automatically cause the moderator to become a creator of original work.
As lawyers like to say, it all depends on the details of the specific case. To take a extreme example outside of this twitter discussion, taking an video interview and cutting it to create a new narrative would make the editor responsible for that whole new version.
Feel free to link to the supreme court ruling that has a precedent which proves that creating new derivative works does not result in the author becoming an information content provider.
To take an fictional twitter example, blocking a user from a website is unlikely to create a derivative work. Removing a post in the middle of a twitter chain that makes up a story could change the narrative and content of that story, and if done intentionally would create a derivative work. The user could then sue twitter for copyright infringement, and if the new story is defamatory, under liability laws. We could for example imagine a rape story where the post that includeded the word "Stop" was removed, where the author would then have a legit legal claim against the moderation.
It all depend on context, intent, and the details of a specific case. The tools of moderation does not define what is legal and what is not.
It comes down to intent. If the intent of moderation is "taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected", section 230 provides immunity. "Otherwise objectionable" is very, very broad.
To that I 100% agree. if the intent of an moderation is only to restrict access to or availability of material for those reasons, then that is likely not a derivative work.
Be a bit more tolerant of other people's point of view.
Anyway, I think you are misinterpreting the intention of that sentence. It basically means that, in principle, the behavior of being a "provider or user of an interactive computer service" does not imply that it is "the publisher or speaker of any information provided [...]". But that does not exempt them from potentially being the actual publisher, and all the rights/obligations that go with it.
Trivial example: Someone publishing its work on the web (hence becoming a "user of an interactive computer service") does not imply that they lose copyright; even though they "shall [not] be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided [...]".
Again, IANAL, but I read a lot of copyright, safe harbor law, DCMAs, etc... and it goes like that.
> Anyway, I think you are misinterpreting the intention of that sentence.
They're not wrong. Every single time Section 230 comes up, there's somebody here arguing that Section 230 doesn't actually mean that companies can choose who they want to censor without becoming a publisher.
But it does. That was the explicit point of Section 230, and that's how Section 230 has played out in legal courts ever since it was established.
But of course, that entire debate about Section 230 is irrelevant here because Twitter hasn't censored anybody, and I haven't seen anyone give a clear reason why neutrality requirements on commentary wouldn't be outright unconstitutional, regardless of what Section 230 says.
"A defendant must satisfy each of the three prongs to gain the benefit of the immunity:
1. [...]
2. [...]
3. The information must be "provided by another information content provider," i.e., the defendant must not be the "information content provider" of the harmful information at issue."
The moment you create your own content (even if you are a content provider yourself) you lose the protection of Section 230 over that. Editing/policing content is, in most cases, akin to creating content. You cannot make a list of "staff picks" and then claim that the content comes from other sources. Putting that list together (even if you're just quoting somebody else) is equivalent to an action of creation, you are the creator of that list. You chose what to put in it and what to exclude. You ARE the original creator of this and Section 230 does not apply for you.
> The moment you create your own content (even if you are a content provider yourself) you lose the protection of Section 230.
No. Practically every social network and publisher creates their own content occasionally, yet there's plenty of precedent for companies like Google, Ebay, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook being protected under Section 230.
A better, more accurate way of phrasing your objection would be to say, "Section 230 does not protect you from lawsuits over the specific content you created." So if Twitter's company-written annotation was found to be libel, they could of course be sued over that.
But adding your own content to a forum/platform has no bearing on whether Section 230 applies more broadly to other content that you host. Take a deeper look at your example:
> You cannot make a list of "staff picks" and then claim that the content comes from other sources
This is exactly what Amazon, Apple, and Google Play do every day. And all of those platforms have been ruled to be protected by Section 230 in multiple lawsuits -- covering everything from trademark violations to defective products. The fact that Amazon has a "recommended brand" section does not mean that they are liable for everything that shows up on their store. And that's a principle that's held up in real courts over, and over, and over again.
> Editing/policing content
I don't want to keep beating the same horse, but that's not what Twitter did. They didn't edit Trump's tweet or restrict it, they added their own speech next to Trump's tweet. That has nothing to do with Section 230, it's just a generic, common case of 1st Ammendment protected counterspeech.
> Be a bit more tolerant of other people's point of view.
Why would I tolerate a blatant falsehood?
> that does not exempt them from being the actual publisher, and all the rights/obligations that go with it.
With respect, you're totally misinformed. Social media websites do not fall under any kind of "publisher" obligation, this is a totally made up meme that people spread online.
Now, if you want to argue that we should change the laws so that these websites would fall under some kind of publisher obligations, I would disagree, but that would at least allow room for "tolerance of other people's point of view". However, in terms of the actual law you and the parent are unequivocally incorrect.
I really don't know the answer to this so I'm not trying to trick you, really just trying to see how far Section 230 goes.
If a Twitter user posts child porn (which is an example of an illegal act in the US), and Twitter knows that it is on the platform and does not remove the content, do you know if Twitter would therefore become liable for the content?
(Again, this is more exploring Section 230, not about the specific controversy du jour.)
They would very likely be liable under SESTA/FOSTA, although I don't know how much precedent exists around that specific law right now. This is part of the reason why many adult sections on sites like Reddit/Craigslist were shut down after SESTA/FOSTA passed. The companies didn't want to risk extra liability in that area.
Section 230 also wouldn't have necessarily protected them before SESTA/FOSTA either, federal criminal liability was always exempted. It's just that SESTA/FOSTA made that a lot more explicit and generally widened that liability.
Section 230 isn't a blanket protection against literally anything (it also has a number of holes surrounding copyright). It's just a much broader protection than many people online think, and the areas where it doesn't protect platforms typically don't line up well with where Internet commenters think it shouldn't protect companies.
IANAL, don't go out and do something stupid and then claim that I said it was legally OK. But in general a good heuristic for talking about Section 230 online is that it's, "not unlimited, but probably broader than you're thinking." But if you're trying to launch your own service or something and you want legal advice about where exactly the line is drawn, you should talk to an actual lawyer.
> If a Twitter user posts child porn (which is an example of an illegal act in the US), and Twitter knows that it is on the platform and does not remove the content, do you know if Twitter would therefore become liable for the content?
Section 230 isn't absolute, there are several specific exceptions. One example is the FOSTA law from 2017 which explicitly overrides Section 230.
> The bill amends the Communications Act of 1934 to declare that section 230 does not limit: (1) a federal civil claim for conduct that constitutes sex trafficking, (2) a federal criminal charge for conduct that constitutes sex trafficking, or (3) a state criminal charge for conduct that promotes or facilitates prostitution in violation of this bill.
There are some other examples I'm not thinking of off the top of my head, but on a note directed more towards the general discussion, I'd point out that creating laws to limit the scope of Section 230 is illustrative of the kind of freedoms it affords site operators in the general case.
>Social media websites do not fall under any kind of "publisher" obligation
No one said they did. But also Section 230 does not imply that they're exempt of that, in the case they become such a thing. And remember that those rights/obligations are acquired the moment they are exercised.
Consider the following:
Twitter (the platform), on its official twitter account (on their own platform) decides to publish something which has legal repercussions. Are they exempt of them because of that statement on Section 230? No, not at all.
To use a different example, somebody today used the New York Times web site: Section 230 gives them immunity for anything posted by randos in the comments to their articles, where they operate as a platform.
Section 230 does NOT give the NYT immunity for anything in the articles themselves, where they operate as a publisher. However, absent S. 230 protection, those articles and their publisher still enjoy regular First Amendment protection, which is quite strong. In particular, there are nearly insurmountable obstacles for a public figure to win a defamation lawsuit in the US.
Yes, and section 230 explicitly states that moderation does not waive that immunity:
(2) Civil liability
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected [...]
> Twitter (the platform), on its official twitter account (on their own platform) decides to publish something which has legal repercussions. Are they exempt of them because of that statement on Section 230? No, not at all.
No, not at all, because Section 230 has nothing to say about the scenario you are describing.
> 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_
In your scenario Twitter is the provider of the information, so naturally they are liable for the legal repercussions of posting that information. Everyone already understands how this works intuitively, obviously when something illegal or otherwise legally significant is posted to the internet there isn't even a question of whether or not the posting platform is legally responsible for it as long as they are perceived to be taking reasonable steps to remove the offending content. If the site operators are posting the questionable content directly then obviously they are liable.
That's not what we're talking about though, we're discussing twitter having labled Trump's tweet as misinformation. I guess you're suggesting that twitter is the "publisher" of that warning and thus they are legally responsible for it, which is true, but there is nothing illegal about what they published so the hypothetical is moot.
> Section 230 will not exempt them from what they do.
I'm glad we came to an understanding but this is a strawman. You might as well be saying "Section 230 does not exempt twitter from the law". This is very obviously not something anyone is arguing.
Social media platforms should be considered publications. A company cannot say they have an open platform and call Themselves immune if they’re going to editorialize and punish views you disagree with. Section 230 needs to destroyed.
Destroyed is too strong; it would basically terminate all social media sites, news aggregators, comment sections, forums.. everything since precisely nobody is going to sign up for the legal liability. (Except, maybe, for megacorps like Facebook, with a net gain of nothing)
I would like to see it greatly narrowed.
Even if we ignore this particular instance as a special case where the act was justified, large companies having unfettered control over most political discourse in the country, and wielding that power in an arbitrary, unaccountable way is still a problem.
The leap you're making here is that by moderating things on their platform, they suddenly become the publisher of said information. This is neither in the text of the law, nor in how the courts have interpreted it.
Yes, if Twitter publishes something defamatory in their own name, they're liable. No, they are not the publisher of any content they choose to moderate.
