Fair points, but one comment:

There are ways to monitor the health, age, and usage of a battery. Sort of like the odometer and other service monitors in a car. If swapping catches on, I would expect to see such battery monitors become ubiquitous, and attached right to the battery.

Okay, sorry. I didn't realize you're that close to the issue. And that it affects you in that way.

So, it sounds like you're saying the Feds want the provider's contact info, and the Feds collect the fee from them. The user is not involved, as I mistakenly thought. (It's the provider, not the user, who wants Safe Harbor here.)

That still doesn't sound like a restraint on free speech. Governments need contact info from people and organizations in order to function. And occasionally they charge fees for certain services. If the fees aren't excessive, I don't see a problem with them.

Now, if the government tries to influence what content can be removed and what cannot, then I do see a problem.

Or are you saying the MAGAnauts wanted to sue Twitter for kicking them off? Is that what 230 keeps them from doing? I thought it was protection from content that is posted, not protection from policing on their platform.

As I understand it, Twitter/X can do that even without 230.

I don't understand how that follows. A requirement that someone needs to be registered on a site for communication purposes does not sound like a suppression of free speech by the government. Nor does a fee, which if I understand correctly, is not "required" by the provider to charge, and is not collected by the government.

230 is about lawsuits, not fines.

This. I seldom mod-up ACs, but I'd mod-up this one if I had the points.

Frankly, I'm torn on this. The First Amendment of the US constitution protects you and me from the government. It does not protect you and me from each other.

In a narrow context, once could argue that 230 suppresses an individual's right to sue a provider for content on their platform, even if the provider doesn't create that content. And that might be an important right to protect. After all, many platforms allow users to be anonymous, or at least pseudonymous. In that situation, who can you sue if not the provider?

On the other hand, we all want to be able to express ourselves freely online. But there are rules for most online forums, and you can get expelled if you break them. And this is where some would muddy the water on this issue, claiming free speech is suppressed when you get expelled. No, the provider also has First Amendment rights, so they can expel whoever they wish. (Again, the First Amendment doesn't protect us from each other.) And that's true with or without 230.

And finally, others have suggested that governments could sue social-media companies for (user) content if 230 is repealed, thus shaping public narrative about their policies. Well, I don't see how that behavior squares with the First Amendment. Trump has sued major media companies. That sounds questionable, and some companies have settled with the government rather that go to trial, but I think we need to have a trial on this issue to confirm that the First Amendment protects media from government lawsuits.

TL/DR: I can understand social-media companies wanting the protection of 230, but they already have the right to remove content that could get them sued, so maybe we don't need 230. I don't think we should be counting on social media for unbiased reporting of news events anyway. Yeah, I understand that non-government entities with big pockets could put litigious pressure on social-media companies, but they'd have to have standing to even get started with a lawsuit.

No, the topic is diplomatic immunity. You and your AC cohorts are trying to change it to permission, which is irrelevant.

A country can refuse entry-permission to a diplomat, with possible consequences. But once they're allowed to enter, they have diplomatic immunity. Including immunity from inspection.

The OP Hey_Jude_Jesus mentioned inspection at the beginning and I replied with the point that Trump, as a head of state, is diplomatically immune from that kind of inspection -- at least while he's in office. And here we are now, with you and your friends continually trying (and failing) to change the subject to permission.

I introduced the subject of diplomatic immunity near the beginning of this thread. Others who responded brought up the red herring of permission to enter a country.

So no, I'm not changing the subject. Others are, and I keep bringing it back.

I never said it worked like that. Again, the subject is diplomatic immunity -- not permission to enter a country.

And with this, I'm done responding to AC trolls in this thread.

It's reciprocal. Country A grants diplomatic immunity to diplomats from country B, because country A has diplomats in country B who need immunity. You start denying immunity and there are consequences for the side doing the denying.

When a diplomat commits a crime, generally one of two things can happen: (1) the host country asks the diplomat's country to waive immunity so that the diplomat can be charged in the host country; or (2) the diplomat is declared persona non grata and must leave the host country, presumably to face trial for the crime in his/her native country. If the diplomat gets off without a trial, then that further enflames the diplomatic relationship between the two countries, and may have consequences.

Once again, I'm not MAGA. Far from it.

And I'm not wrong. My interlocutor talked about the ability to enter a country. I didn't: my point was that diplomats have immunity when they enter, irrespective of how they obtained permission to enter.

"Explicitly?" Where?

Simply living in a democratic society, whether you vote or you don't, is implicit consent to be governed by whoever wins an election. But this consent is not the same as a vote for whoever won.

I wonder whether you are hallucinating that all of the non-votes are actually "votes" for whoever won. Good luck with that fever dream.

I'm not MAGA. (Far from it.) And Trump is nobody's king. He just has diplomatic immunity while he's in office.

I did not assert that a foreign diplomat can "just come" to the UN without permission. I said they have diplomatic immunity when they come to the UN.

Putin has an arrest warrant for war crimes from the ICC over his head. War crimes are grave international crimes, and could be "just cause" for a country to arrest him. The foreign minister of Brazil has warned Putin he would be arrested if he went there.

Nothing you said contradicts what I said.