https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

That's why. Somewhere in some tiny corner of some website with three visitors a month will be something that pisses off someone with lawyers.

Oh, and if Stratton Oakmont rings a bell, it's because Wolf of Wall Street was about them. So the irony is extra delicious because its possible the guy posting on Prodigy was telling the truth.

If S.230 goes away, will slashdot delete this post before a lawyer for whatever's left of Stratton Oakmont finds it and sues them over it?

It's worth remembering that this entire "Repeal 230" business was started as an impulsive tantrum by a petulant man-baby.

That's no way to refer to Joe Biden! https://www.theverge.com/2020/...

The reality is, S.230 is unpopular across the board because it takes away power from those who would use the courts to silence criticism.

whether screening my Facebook and Twitter is in fact limited to the good-faith efforts to address the types of content they are allowed to filter

Thing is, S.230 allows that effectively without limitation:

any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.

So, say a site run by an antifa-supporting organization does not remove posts by antifa while removing posts from people they consider to be fascists. What exactly would the commerce department claim is being done in bad faith? That antifa supporters don't actually consider antifa posts to be un-objectionable? That they don't actually consider posts by fascists to be objectionable? Is a court going to make a call on how much violence antifa protesters think is "too much"?

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.; or (B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in [sub-]paragraph ([A]) .

(Emphasis mine.)

"people just moderating their discussion boards" is specifically what S.230 allows. Prior to that, you had https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

I'm saying it would be trivial to add that clause.

No different than going to the store to buy a pack of sliced Pasteurized Processed Dairy Product.

Replace ISPs with Trains. Does it still work?

What, the original Common Carriers? Did you think through whatever argument you were trying to make before you started typing or did you just pick some random thing?

Net Neutrality became needed because Congress and the FCC legislated monopolies after the patriot act went into effect. It was easier to spy on the whole country via 10 access points than via thousands. So your choices went to shit.

Except that they didn't "legislate" monopolies, they repealed the regulation that was previously forcing phone companies to wholesale connections to competitors. By removing that regulation in 2005, the FCC allowed the phone companies to shut down every competitor that did not have the billions (Google Fiber spent one billion dollars in Kansas City alone) of dollars required to install their own networks. Did they do it for the NSA? Did they do it because they're Republicans and deregulation is always good? Did they do it to play fair since cable companies didn't have to resell their networks? Did they do it because AT&T promised to hire them all as consultants? I don't have an answer to that, but the government did not create this problem anymore than the government is responsible for you hitting yourself in the face with a hammer since they didn't pass a law to stop you.

it would be illegal for you to offer a kid-safe internet service

Actually, it would be trivial to eliminate this problem. Simply put, you sell "Kids On Line" and make no claims about it being "the internet" and everyone is happy. Be sure to mail out plenty of floppies and cds with 12 free hours of service, it's a proven winner!

If nothing else, the key takeaway from Brave New World is that the Alphas and Bravos need to be thankful that the Deltas and Epsilons do all the hard work, and the Deltas and Epsilons need to be thankful that the Alphas and Bravos are there to do the hard thinking and responsibility. Without that, they'll kill each other at the earliest opportunity regardless of economic system.

I think it's a tough call to claim that the term "open source" was *originally* invented in the 90's.

The problem is that everything and Sun's dog were "open" since the 80's. OpenLook, OpenWindows, OPENSTEP, Open Software Foundation, X/Open Group and so on. I am fairly certain that this is part of why RMS went all-in on "free software" instead of "open source", because the world already had plenty of "open" programs that were "source available". Trying to figure out when exactly the term "open" transitioned from "Foundation members and/or Sufficiently Paying Customers can review code but make no modifications or use of it" to "anyone can modify, use and share this code" needs to be solved by digging through the Deeper Archives From Before the Dawn of Internet, but unfortunately this predates the Wayback Machine and Google made their usenet archive unusable.

with public works projects like rebuilding Europe as fiscal stimulus.

Robots would do that cheaper, just saying.

will let us work 10% less

Sure.

and retain the same pay and productivity

AHAHAHA dream on, sucker.

Japan already has a film about that.

We already know how it will go: the companies will whine to the government about how they can't find any employees with the skills they demand (such as "willing to work for $5/hr"), and demand that the government do something about it or they won't be cutting any more checks next campaign season.

Something will be done, whether it's government-paid retraining or (more likely) more immigrants.