Comment by gnopgnip
5 years ago
There is no requirement under section 230 to moderate content in good faith. Selective moderation does not affect their liability. This law was passed democratically, for exactly this purpose.
>"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." This federal law preempts any state laws to the contrary: "[n]o cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section."
It's literally written into the law in section 230 (c)(2)(A)...
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of — 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
...and that specific requirement has been specifically referenced in Trump's recent executive order.
It reads like the specific action taken must be in "good faith" and has nothing to do with selective enforcement. The "Fact check" label also shouldn't fall under "restrict" or "availability".
I struggle to see how a policy of selective enforcement can be deemed to be taken in "good faith." If you only enforce speed limits against a disadvantaged minority group, are those individual enforcement actions made "in good faith" (even if each person was actually speeding?)
My understanding is that (c)(2)(A) is only about liability for the act of moderation itself, e.g. suing Twitter because they banned you. If they did that in bad faith you could hypothetically maybe sue them for it, but there would need to be a cause of action, which there normally wouldn't be.
'gnopgnip may be referring to the much broader liability shield, for the content that you do not remove, which is provided by (c)(1) and has no good-faith requirement. That is Twitter's main "legal protection from defamation and libel" that you mention above.
Trump's executive order suggests that the (c)(1) liability shield could go away if you don't meet the (c)(2) good-faith requirements, which I gather is not considered a strong legal position.
The thing with selective enforcement is that then anyone with claims against Twitter can claim that their moderation attempts are all in bad faith, because they are selective - thereby opening them up to libel.
1 reply →