Should Facebook, Google be liable for user posts? asks U.S. Attorney General
There are 3 options for moderation:<p>1. Platforms with no moderation (8Chan -- except probably even worse, because even 8Chan moderates some content)<p>2. Publishers that pre-vet all posted content (the NYT with no comment section)<p>3. Platforms that retroactively moderate content only after it&#x27;s been posted, in whatever way they see fit (Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, Youtube, Reddit, Hackernews, and every public forum, IRC channel, and bug tracker ever built)<p>Revoking section 230 just gets rid of option 3. It&#x27;s not magic, it just means that we have one less moderation strategy. And option 3 is my favorite.<p>Option 2 takes voices away from the powerless and would be a major step backwards for freedom of expression. It would entrench powerful, traditional media companies and allow them greater control over public narratives and public conversations. Option 1 effectively forces anyone who doesn&#x27;t want to live on 8Chan off of the Internet. Moderation is a requirement for any online community to remain stable and healthy.<p>Even taking the premise that Twitter is an existential threat to democracy (which I am at least mildly skeptical of), it&#x27;s still mind-boggling to me that people are debating how to regulate giant Internet companies instead of implementing the sensible fix, which is just to break those companies up and increase competition. All of the &quot;they control the media and shape public opinion&quot; arguments people are making about Facebook&#x2F;Twitter boil down to the fact that ~5 companies have become so large that getting kicked off of their services can be at least somewhat reasonably argued to have an effect on speech. None of this would be a problem if the companies weren&#x27;t big enough to control so much of the discourse.<p>So we could get rid of section 230 and implement a complicated solution that will have negative knock-on effects and unintended consequences for the entire Internet. Or, we could enforce and expand the antitrust laws that are already on the books and break up 5 companies, with almost no risk to the rest of the Internet.<p>What problem does revoking section 230 solve that antitrust law doesn&#x27;t?