It has been in the past few years that I've seriously questioned my one-unshakable faith in every word in the New York Times. That is because I have seen the paper increasingly cover the law that is the subject of my research: Section 230.
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Yet this misconception has persisted for years, and has shaped some websites' hands-off moderation practices. If they start to "edit" user content, they fear, they will lose Section 230 protections. Again, this is absolutely false.
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Last week, I wrote about one of the landmark cases that demonstrated why this is false, Batzel v. Smith.https://twitter.com/jkosseff/status/1267834981621075974?s=20 …
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Today, because this is a NYT-inspired thread, I'll describe the first time the NY Court of Appeals (highest NY state court) interpreted 230, in a 2011 case, Shiamili v. Real Estate Group.
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A real estate industry blog published a lengthy pseudonymous user comment that made a number of allegedly defamatory statements about the CEO of an apartment rental and sales company.
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The website editor moved the comment to a standalone post, adding "the following story came to us as a . . . comment, and we promoted it to a post," gave it a heading, and included a comment that "for the record, we are so. not. afraid."
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The website also added picture of the subject of the comments on an image of Jesus Christ, with a snarky comment related to the user submission.
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The NY Court of Appeals concluded that 230 immunizes the website. "Notably, the statute does not differentiate between 'neutral' and selective publishers."
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"The defendants did not become 'content providers' by virtue of moving one of the comments to its own post. Reposting content created and initially posted by a third party is well within a publisher's traditional editorial functions"
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"Defendants appear to have been 'content providers' with respect to the heading, subheading, and illustration that accompanied the reposting. That content, however, is not defamatory as a matter of law."
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In short, a platform will not lose Section 230 protections because it blocks, removes, or edits user content, as long as those editorial changes themselves do not make the user content defamatory.
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But merely editing or blocking certain harmful or defamatory content will not render a platform liable for the content that it fails to block or edit.
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End of rant today. I remain a fervent believer in the Fourth Estate, and I love the NYT and newspapers in general for so many reasons and the important role that they play in our democracy. I just hope that they will step up the accuracy of their 230 coverage.
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I also should add that despite all of these errors, I do not believe that there is a conspiracy among traditional publishing companies to misrepresent Section 230. It does not seem nearly so coordinated.
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End of conversation
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