Fixing the internet

POSTED BY: THG
UPDATED: Thursday, December 11, 2025 20:16
VIEWED: 1732
PAGE 2 of 5

All I'm telling you is that I'm sure the NeoCons and the Bush Administration would have loved to have what you're hoping is going to happen, happen.

And if your Democrats are successful passing any of it, those NeoCons that are all voting for Kamala Harris will be more than happy to use that when they're back in power. And so will Raytheon.

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Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by THG:
Section 230’s protections are not absolute.

It does not protect companies that violate federal criminal law. It does not protect companies that create illegal or harmful content. Nor does Section 230 protect companies from intellectual property claims.

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I may be splitting hairs, but platforms don't CREATE content. They only host it. AFA intellectual property claims ... this is a platform. You would hold Haken responsible for the copyrighted material that gets posted here?



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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Americans support America

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Hillary wants to criminalize free speech.

Quote:

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Hillary Clinton Calls for Prosecutions, Lawsuits Against Americans Who Spread ‘Disinformation’

The Justice Department has alleged that a number of conservative influencers were unwitting tools of a Russian propaganda campaign.

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The Kings (and Queens) of England had well-developed reactions to opposition: If you threatened to create any sort of opposition movement, you were hung. It didn't matter if you were a lowly peasant; the Crown had spies and informers eveywhere.

That's where our nursery rhymes came from: they are actually coded protests. "Jack Sprat could eat no fat, His wife could eat no lean" was actually protest against rapacious taxes.

Every time a New World colonist grumbled against the East India Company, or taxes, or the King of England, they could have been arrested for sedition.

In creating a Republic, the Founding Fathers (some of them, anyway) thought long snd hard about how NOT to recreate the same tyranny that existed in England, and their first remedy was FREEDOM OF SPEECH- the right to openly criticize the government.

It doesn't matter if what someone says is right, or wrong, or if their opinion rhymes with somebody else's somewhere else. In fact some of the FF's best ideas opinions came from the French enlightenment. (I'm sure the King of England considered it treason. )

Anybody who doesn't understand how fundamental freedom of speech is to liberty really doesn't understand what America is all about. Anyone who promotes government censorship doesn't deserve citizenship. If they really like censorship that much, maybe they should move to N Korea.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Americans support America

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from a prediction thread

Quote:

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Originally posted by second:
Trump says (but who knows if he means it) that he will veto the defense bill unless 230 is terminated:

Donald J. Trump AT realDonaldTrump
Very sadly for our Nation, it looks like Senator
AT
JimInhofe
will not be putting the Section 230 termination clause into the Defense Bill. So bad for our National Security and Election Integrity. Last chance to ever get it done. I will VETO!
10:37 PM · Dec 3, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1334718387583377408

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JAYNZE, a more objective commet

Quote:

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But there is opposition to the law from across the political spectrum: both Trump and President-Elect Joe Biden have called for the repeal of Section 230. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has called the law a “gift” to the tech industry that could be taken away. Wyden, now a senator, has said that tech companies have not done enough to get rid of “slime” online.

To many Democrats, the law allows tech companies to avoid doing more to combat hate speech and disinformation online. To Trump and some other Republicans, it shields them from consequences for censoring conservative voices.

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So.
Dems call for censorship.
Trump is against selective censorship by corporations.


The ironic thing, freedom of speech allows people (like you) to lie about public figures (like Trump).
Freedom of speech allows Hillary to advocate against freedom of speech.
And some boneheaded law clerk decided back in 1880 that corporations have the same "rights" as people.


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Americans support America

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:

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Originally posted by THG:
Section 230’s protections are not absolute.

It does not protect companies that violate federal criminal law. It does not protect companies that create illegal or harmful content. Nor does Section 230 protect companies from intellectual property claims.

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I may be splitting hairs, but platforms don't CREATE content. They only host it. AFA intellectual property claims ... this is a platform. You would hold Haken responsible for the copyrighted material that gets posted here?

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Bingo. There you go.

Imagine Haken, who has kept this site up years beyond its actual usefulness to anybody besides half a dozen people gets thrown in prison for 20 years and has to pay $500k in fines for all of the pirated movies, TV shows, books and comic books that Second has posted here.

That's not going to happen, because he's protected by 230.

My only concern is that if anybody did have a problem with it and if Haken ever got a letter from a lawfirm about all of the pirate links that Second posted everywhere, Haken is just going to shut the site down. He's not going to take the time to pour through every post that was ever made here to remove pirate links. Chances are, there are many other pirate links from the early days posted by a lot of people.

Just because he's protected, doesn't mean that somebody couldn't take him to court. Court is expensive and court eats up a lot of your life. Unless that was a hill that Haken was willing to die on, my guess is that this site just goes black for the last time overnight.



Also, with your definition of what a platform is above, this is how a company can change from a platform to a publisher by choosing which content it will allow people to post and which content it won't based off of political ideology. At that point it has an active hand in the process of what information is put on display. Then it loses its 230 shield.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And some boneheaded law clerk decided back in 1880 that corporations have the same "rights" as people.

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That is one of the worst decisions our country has ever made.

One that I almost never hear anybody mention at all.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
from a prediction thread

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
Trump says (but who knows if he means it) that he will veto the defense bill unless 230 is terminated:

Donald J. Trump AT realDonaldTrump
Very sadly for our Nation, it looks like Senator
AT
JimInhofe
will not be putting the Section 230 termination clause into the Defense Bill. So bad for our National Security and Election Integrity. Last chance to ever get it done. I will VETO!
10:37 PM · Dec 3, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1334718387583377408

---

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I had a whole thread about this one. It wasn't the only thing I disagree with Trump on over the years, but it was by far the thing I disagreed with the most.

See how Ted and the people he supports would be a whole lot happier about their control over the flow of information had Trump signed that for them? I do hope Trump has educated himself a bit about the issue or puts some younger, tech-savvy people in his cabinet that can advise him on these things.

I don't trust ANYBODY over the age of 50 to be making any laws regarding the internet. These people have no clue what they're even legislating.

Personally, I think that Section 230 was a happy accident that went in our favor only because the old people in congress that passed it didn't realize how much it protected free speech and what problems that might cause their never-ending quest for absolute power down the road.



--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by THG:
Section 230’s protections are not absolute.

It does not protect companies that violate federal criminal law. It does not protect companies that create illegal or harmful content. Nor does Section 230 protect companies from intellectual property claims.

---

I may be splitting hairs, but platforms don't CREATE content. They only host it. AFA intellectual property claims ... this is a platform. You would hold Haken responsible for the copyrighted material that gets posted here?

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I don't know but, Fox news had to pay dominion $787.5M million-dollar fine for spreading lies and propaganda.

Alex Jones same thing for Sandy Hook. It was determined what he was saying was harmful to others. Again, I don't know.

T

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Quote:

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Originally posted by THG:
I don't know but, Fox news had to pay an 800 million dollar fine due in large part to Tucker Carlson spreading lies and propaganda. They are about to be fined another billion for lying about the voting machines.

Alex Jones same thing for Sandy Hook. It was determined what he was saying was harmful to others. Again, I don't know.

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Right. You don't know.

Fox News and Info Wars would both be considered publishers.

It's really not that hard a concept to understand, but I do realize that mental blocks can get in the way. I'm trying to understand why you don't appear to be grasping the nuances of this issue.


If we were to make it so difficult for any social media platform to keep going without completely whitewashing everything so only the people in the government and media can decide on any given day what can and cannot be said, then free speech is dead.


Think of this site specifically. There wasn't even expensive AI back when this site was created. Any policing done anywhere online was done manually by other human beings. If the rules were set up back in 2002 in a way that you are proposing would "fix" the internet now, there would never have been any political discussions on this platform whatsoever. No RWED.

And Haken would have either needed to find a lot of volunteers or paid people to scour the new posts daily to remove any links to pirated content.

My guess is that this site as well as tens of thousands of other niche websites that were made for various fanbases and interests would never have been created in the first place because of the potential that you could lose everything because of what somebody else said on your website.



And to play Devil's Advocate, I'm also worried about AI and deepfakes and TRUE misinformation. By all means... that actually IS one of the things that our Government is charged with combating. So do it. Go after people from foreign nations that are putting out bad info and hold them accountable.

But do not EVER allow them to tell you what you can and cannot say as an individual. The moment you give them that power they're going to start telling you that a lot of the ideas that you have aren't allowed either.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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