Free speech does not seem to be enjoying much love from the population either.

In the whole West, people who call themselves liberals demand further and further restrictions on speech in the name of niceness (no hate!) and accuracy (no misinformation!)

It is a road to hell paved with good intentions as usual, but we will have to relive the anti-utopia again to understand why free speech is valuable.

> we will have to relive the anti-utopia again to understand why free speech is valuable.

Aren't we already in a privacy anti-utopia, with pervasive, nearly universal surveillance by the large tech companies and the info going to the US government and perhaps its "five eyes" allies?

  > liberals demand further and further restrictions on speech in the name of niceness (no hate!) and accuracy (no misinformation!)

is this referring to privately owned services?

if you cant control your own forums, wont your service quickly get overwhelmed by trolls and scammers?

Not everywhere is the USA and erosion of speech rights in some other countries has already reached the level of "causing emotional distress is a crime".

  > some other countries has already reached the level of "causing emotional distress is a crime".

really? whats the cause of that?

That is not what free speech means. Why should the publisher be liable for the posts of their commenters? If that were the case worldwide, we would essentially see the end of communication on the internet.

Because they're participating in the dissemination of those posts? If you send a defamatory "letter to the editor" to a traditional newspaper and they publish it, they'll be on the hook as well.

You cannot liken internet comment sections to individually selected letters to the editor. We have seen judicial precedent that social media functions more as a public forum than editorialized publications. It is an impossible burden for websites to individually review every single comment - it would be unimaginably damaging to freedom of speech and the dissemination of information worldwide.

> It is an impossible burden for websites to individually review every single comment

Yes. So they don't have comment sections or they have expensively moderated comment sections. Both are preferable to unmoderated comment sections. I thought this had been the norm in many countries for years now?

Note that newspaper sites are very different from any random "forum". They typically enjoy very special legal protections and in return have legal responsibilities with a responsible publisher.

This meant that they review "letters to the editor" and take responsibility for them before publishing. And of course they can't do that with the comment section under an article online. And the simple solution is: for these specific types of publishers, just skip having comments or moderate the comments like the paper content is moderated.

> This meant that they review "letters to the editor" and take responsibility for them before publishing.

The reader's letters editor reads the letter, and decides whether to publish it. The paper takes responsibility.

The comments editor reads the comment, and decides whether to publish it. The website takes responsibility.

I really can't see the difference.

The "comments editor" is normally called a "moderator" in the web, but yes, there really is no difference.

Now, if by "comments editor" you mean the person that wrote the comment and hit "comment" on the site, that is perfectly equivalent to the person sending the letter to the editor, but has 0% equivalence to the person deciding whether the letter will be published.

When you comment on a site, the mechanism goes your computer -> server -> other users. There is no obligation for the server to make it available to other users just because it accepted your request. And indeed, the vast vast vast majority of sites on the internet that accept user content (far more than 99.9%) engage in moderation - some before the fact (moderator must approve content before it is published to other users), some after the fact (moderator sometimes deletes content that was previously published).

> The "comments editor" is normally called a "moderator"

I know! I wanted to emphasize the equivalence between a print letters editor and a comments moderator.

Obviously it's hard to unpublish a letter to the editor in a print organ (you could leave it out of the second edition, I guess). So print editors are forced to pre-moderate.

Also worth noting: print letters editors don't just moderate; they edit.

I once had a "letter to the editor" published. They cut an important chunk of my prose, and added a misleading headline. That was 30 years ago, and I've never written to an editor since.

When I used to moderate the comments section on a political site, I would edit, but very cautiously. Mainly, I would remove addresses and phone numbers of people being criticized in a comment, and removed completely most kinds of bigotry and prejudice, and most exhortations to criminal acts. This was an "open posting" site - very strongly anti-censorship - but we still got attacked regularly for moderating at all.

Note the nuances of this decision.

Facebook wasn't found liable - they were seen as public forum.

But the newspaper by deciding to include comments on the article was found liable.

So if I defame someone in this comment, you believe Y Combinator should be held liable?

If it's drawn to their attention and they don't remove it, that seems reasonable.

But doesn't that effectively deprive the commenter of their legal rights? Instead of suing the commenter for defamation and them then having the opportunity to defend themselves in court, you can just threaten to sue Y Combinator who will then remove the comment without any due process. Unlike the person who posted the comment, Y Combinator has no particular reason to care whether a particular comment stays up; certainly not enough to go to court over it at any rate.

That's precisely my point. By making Y Combinator the target of the lawsuits, you would deprive the actual accused person of the ability to defend themselves when Y Combinator inevitably capitulates. I can mount a legal defense against a defamation lawsuit; I can't mount a legal defense against Y Combinator deleting my comments because they don't feel like going to court on my behalf.

What are you speaking of? who is defending themselves against who?

Let's say I post a comment on Hacker News critical of some big megacorp. Megacorp threatens to sue YCombinator if they don't take down my comments. Hacker News deletes my comment because they don't want to get into a legal fight with Megacorp over a random comment. I can't sue Hacker News because they have a right to delete my comments for any reason, and I can't sue Megacorp because they didn't delete my comment, they just asked Hacker News to delete it. I'm SOL.

Contrast that to the following: I post a comment on Hacker News critical of some big megacorp. Megacorp can't credibly threaten to sue YCombinator over that because they are legally protected from being sued over the actions of their users. Megacorp sues me instead. I now have the ability to defend myself in court against Megacorp should I choose to.

No private entity enjoys absolute, or even qualified, immunity of any kind from lawsuits in the U.S. as afar as I know.

So how could your second case occur?

> If Y Combinator engages in moderation of comments beyond any requirements mandated by law (eg: remove some comments because the moderators don't like them), then Y Combinator is a publisher editorializing its content and can be held liable for comments.

Just because many people wish Section 230 says that, it doesn't. The the contrary it gives fairly broad protection to moderation efforts and does not say that moderation amounts to becoming a publisher. (hence various people calling for changes to this, restricting platforms ability to moderate)

And the author of the comment can be sued for defamation.

This is what DMCA section 230 settled in the US.