There's a bizarre doublethink at work here, where people claim at the same time that social media companies should not be held responsible for speech on their platforms, hence section 230, but also that that speech is "their speech", hence forcing them to host speech is compelled speech. If it's their speech, they should be held responsible for it. If it's not, it's not compelled speech to force them to host it.
The entire rationale for section 230 was to allow online services to exercise editorial control over user-generated content — to not be a neutral host of all legal content — while also not holding them civilly liable as a publisher with certain narrow exceptions (but also leaving them criminally liable for anything that would carry criminal liability.)
So what you are suggesting is so e kind of doublethink blending support for 230 with something conflicting with 230 is, instead, exactly just support of 230.
But the choice to sell books (e.g., distributors) has, like the situation of online UGC service providers, always carried lesser liability than publication, but the choice to carry or not carry particular books is still a First Amendment activity. The idea that it's not your own free expression if it doesn't have exactly the set of legal liabilities traditionally associated with the publisher role is bizarre and indefensible.
> The entire rationale for section 230 was to allow online services to exercise editorial control over user-generated content — to not be a neutral host of all legal content — while also not holding them civilly liable as a publisher with certain narrow exceptions (but also leaving them criminally liable for anything that would carry criminal liability.)
I don't disagree with that and I don't see how it refutes my comment.
> But the choice to sell books (e.g., distributors) has, like the situation of online UGC service providers, always carried lesser liability than publication, but the choice to carry or not carry particular books is still a First Amendment activity.
Unlike online UGC service providers, bookstores can be forced to remove defamatory books[1] in the US. There's a reason there's a law specifically for UGC service providers, and you cannot defend this while at the same time demanding that they get treated like book stores when it comes to compelled speech.
> Unlike online UGC service providers, bookstores can be forced to remove defamatory books in the US. There's a reason there's a law specifically for UGC service providers, and you cannot defend this while at the same time demanding that they get treated like book stores when it comes to compelled speech.
Sure I can, since the plain text of the law in question only removes publisher (which are not notice-based), not the notice-based obligations and liability of a distributor. As the article you cite here argues, the extension of 230 beyond what it says on its face to also remove those distributor-style liabilities is a strained interpretation that some courts have adopted that lacks support in the text of the law and is explicitly at odds with it's legislative history and rationale.
So it's quite easy to support the law that exists for UGC service providers and demand they get treated like bookstores and other distributors as regards notice-based removal of defamatory content because that's exactly what application of the law as written does.
The debate over 230 is not, mainly, about this one area where some courts have applied it out of line with it's plain text.
Them not being legally responsible for other users content does not mean their speech isn't compelled when they want to remove content but cannot. You're telling a company they have to pay for someones speech on their own platform.
