Read on Twitter
thread from someone whose opinion I trust pretty far on the topic; she co-founded a small social media site run with deep philosophical investment in serving 1A!protected UGC speech that has been frequently challenged and wiped from the internet at the level of service providers https://twitter.com/rahaeli/status/1348307254781628418
Pretty much, if she’s not freaking out about AWS’ choices, in this? Then AWS’ conduct isn’t at issue. You might take exception w/ the legal environment they are operating within—in which case, take it up with Congress. And make sure you understand § 230 and 1A law, before you do.
IANAL but no repealing § 230 is not going to remove service providers’ right to moderate content—or refuse service to users—they don’t like. That’s not actually what it codifies. What it codifies is that *you* (ISP or individual) cannot be sued for something someone *else* wrote.
This seems so obvious it should not even need to be said, much less legislated, but A) the law has a lot of that and B) the internet is weird and does not function the way any other communication medium before it, making it less obvious and more necessary to say than you’d think.
Anyway, as I understand it, in the US service providers’ right to moderate lies elsewhere in the law, under 1A—you can’t be legally compelled to any given speech (or to platform it) any more than you are to be legally punished for exercising your speech rights.
§ 230 heads off a lot of lawsuits that would get dismissed farther in the legal process on those grounds from ever being filed. But it doesn’t grant the right to moderate.
It—or something equivalent in terms of explicitly making it law that you can’t be sued for something someone else said—is necessary for the internet as you know it to exist at all.
On a technical level, the internet involves *so much* re-broadcasting of content authored by other people/companies, at so many points. When you upload user-generated content, for example, An Tweet, it:
1) is sent from your computer to your internet provider to get to Twitter
2) is then stored on Twitter's servers
3) to be sent by Twitter to the internet provider of anyone accessing this blue hellsite
2) is then stored on Twitter's servers
3) to be sent by Twitter to the internet provider of anyone accessing this blue hellsite
Yes, clever people who know networks, that is simplified. Point is, simplified and that's still three entities distinct from yourself repeating data you authored to serve it. Twitter actually can be subbed out for *literally any other site*. Own your own server? The ISPs remain!
Not providing people and companies legal grounds to quickly dismiss lawsuits over content they did not *author*, merely transmitted, would absolutely gut and destroy the internet. Defending against a constant barrage of lawsuits would be untenable for anyone without billions.
And the point of all this even was: before you go changing the legal environment AWS operates in, make sure you understand it. Because if you don't want to break the internet—and I believe many who genuinely don't *want* to might, for lack of understanding—you need to be careful.
