Technology

Now It's The Democrats Turn To Destroy The Open Internet: Mark Warner's 230 Reform Bill Is A Dumpster Fire Of Cluelessness

3 years ago

Anonymous $K6XgmDN5_o

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210205/10384946193/now-democrats-turn-to-destroy-open-internet-mark-warners-230-reform-bill-is-dumpster-fire-cluelessness.shtml

For the past few months we've been seeing a ton of terrible/ridiculous/awful/unconstitutional bills coming from mostly Republicans to try to wipe out or undermine Section 230. Most of those were focused on trying to force websites to do less content moderation. Now that the Democrats are back in power, it appears we're going to be getting the opposite. Senator Mark Warner has introduced his new Section 230 reform bill, called the SAFE TECH Act ("Safeguarding Against Fraud, Exploitation, Threats, Extremism, and Consumer Harms Act" co-sponsored by Senators Mazie Hirono and Amy Klobuchar), and it is one of the worst Section 230 bills I've seen. It is difficult to explain just how bad this bill is concisely, because it has so many bad ideas crammed into one single bill. It's as if none of these three Senators or their staff spoke to anyone who actually understands how the internet works, or how content moderation/trust and safety works. It's stunning in the ignorance it displays.
About the only good thing I'll say about it, is that (unlike most bills) at least Warner released a redline version to show how it would actually (massively) change Section 230. He also put out an incredibly disingenuous FAQ that flat out lies about... nearly everything. We'll go through that in a bit.

Now It's The Democrats Turn To Destroy The Open Internet: Mark Warner's 230 Reform Bill Is A Dumpster Fire Of Cluelessness

Feb 5, 2021, 7:20pm UTC

$K6XgmDN5_o

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210205/10384946193/now-democrats-turn-to-destroy-open-internet-mark-warners-230-reform-bill-is-dumpster-fire-cluelessness.shtml > For the past few months we've been seeing a ton of terrible/ridiculous/awful/unconstitutional bills coming from mostly Republicans to try to wipe out or undermine Section 230. Most of those were focused on trying to force websites to do less content moderation. Now that the Democrats are back in power, it appears we're going to be getting the opposite. Senator Mark Warner has introduced his new Section 230 reform bill, called the SAFE TECH Act ("Safeguarding Against Fraud, Exploitation, Threats, Extremism, and Consumer Harms Act" co-sponsored by Senators Mazie Hirono and Amy Klobuchar), and it is one of the worst Section 230 bills I've seen. It is difficult to explain just how bad this bill is concisely, because it has so many bad ideas crammed into one single bill. It's as if none of these three Senators or their staff spoke to anyone who actually understands how the internet works, or how content moderation/trust and safety works. It's stunning in the ignorance it displays. > About the only good thing I'll say about it, is that (unlike most bills) at least Warner released a redline version to show how it would actually (massively) change Section 230. He also put out an incredibly disingenuous FAQ that flat out lies about... nearly everything. We'll go through that in a bit.