The purpose of the Communications Decency Act is to allow providers to moderate community content, and section 230 provides liability from both undermoderating and overmoderating, so that providers don't forgo mederating altogether, for liability reasons.
If section 230 only protected from undermoderating and not from overmoderating, then providers would be incentivized to keep every comment up, from scam links to hate speech, because they'd only get in trouble for removing comments and not for allowing them.
If HN: it isn't a public service that has to allow free speech. One of the reasons it has persisted and maintained a certain level of quality is because of it's community rules, and their enforcement.
The purpose of the Communications Decency Act is to allow providers to moderate community content, and section 230 provides liability from both undermoderating and overmoderating, so that providers don't forgo mederating altogether, for liability reasons.
If section 230 only protected from undermoderating and not from overmoderating, then providers would be incentivized to keep every comment up, from scam links to hate speech, because they'd only get in trouble for removing comments and not for allowing them.
Are you talking HN or TechCrunch?
If HN: it isn't a public service that has to allow free speech. One of the reasons it has persisted and maintained a certain level of quality is because of it's community rules, and their enforcement.
Isn't most of the moderation from downvotes rather than mods?
I don't even have a downvote button. Is it "flag"?
I think you need to be at a certain level of karma to 'earn' the right to downvote.
Flag is for inappropriate content / behaviour.
Karma threshold for the downvote button used to be 500, IIRC. Only 449 upvotes to go!
You get a downvote button, separate from "flag", once you reach a certain karma level (I forget the number, though)