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@aral : not sure I understand fully what the impact of this law could have on Twitter.

I see it more as "let me post what I want".

Philosophically, on the other hand, this could be the hand that Mastodon had been waiting for ;-)

@ploum The latter but for instances of one and for small tech (because otherwise anyone hosting an instance with other people on it would be liable – which, again, is how it should be).

@dsfgs @aral There are better definitions at the EFF -- https://www.eff.org/search/site/230 -- but the tl;dr is that it is a US law that basically says that the company that host content are not liable for what that content says.

In other words, if I post libel on Twitter, you can bring legal action against me, but you can't bring that legal action against Twitter.

@kcoram @dsfgs Yeah, exactly. They *should* be liable.

But then where will we have free speech?

Not in the walled gardens of commercial silos. (Where we don’t have it anyway.) Instead, in individually-owned and controlled spaces.

@aral @dsfgs It's a tough one. The likes of Twitter and Facebook might be able to hire enough moderators to get libel (etc) taken down. but small "social media" platforms (like Mastodon) wouldn't really be able to keep up. In theory, 230 helps protect those little guys. In practice, it unfortunately allows the big guys to get away with too much.

I totally agree that individually owned and controlled spaces is the ultimate answer. The road to get there for non-techies isn't clear to me ... yet.

@kcoram
1) #Tor and #i2p need to be seen as the #newInternet (we always thought it was weird that we had to run to a #centralAuthority to get a #domainName),

2) #monopolies like #Youtube (see #Google), #Microsoft and #Clouclare need to be broken up, and

3) we need to understand the importance of #decentralisation, as a form of #censorship resistance and #immunity

The #legacyInternet need to be left to die in peace.
@aral