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> If my forum has a narrow scope (say, 4×4 offroading), and I delete a post that’s obviously by a human but is seriously off‐topic (say, U.S. politics), does that make me legally liable for every single post I don’t delete?

No.

From the court of appeals [1], "We reach this conclusion specifically because TikTok’s promotion of a Blackout Challenge video on Nylah’s FYP was not contingent upon any specific user input. Had Nylah viewed a Blackout Challenge video through TikTok’s search function, rather than through her FYP, then TikTok may be viewed more like a repository of third-party content than an affirmative promoter of such content."

So, given (an assumption) that users on your forum choose some kind of "4x4 Topic" they're intending to navigate a repository of third-party content. If you curate that repository it's still a collection of third-party content and not your own speech.

Now, if you were to have a landing page that showed "featured content" then that seems like you could get into trouble. Although one wonders what the difference is between navigating to a "4x4 Topic" or "Featured Content" since it's both a user-action.

[1]: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/mopaqabzypa/...




>then TikTok may be viewed more like a repository of third-party content than an affirmative promoter of such content."

"may"

Basically until the next court case when someone learns that search is an algorithm too, and asks why the first result wasn't a warning.

The real truth is, if this is allowed to stand, it will be selectively enforced at best. If it's low enough volume it'll just become a price of doing business, sometimes a judge has it out for you and you have to pay a fine, you just have to work it into the budget. Fine for big companies, game ender for small ones.


> Now, if you were to have a landing page that showed "featured content" then that seems like you could get into trouble. Although one wonders what the difference is between navigating to a "4x4 Topic" or "Featured Content" since it's both a user-action.

Consider HackerNews's functionality of flamewar suppression. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39231821

And this is the difference between https://news.ycombinator.com/news and https://news.ycombinator.com/newest (with showdead enabled).




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