While social media companies are immune to liability for what users post, if you file a libel lawsuit the companies have to follow court orders (unless the company's lawyers convince the court otherwise) to disclose the identity of a user who allegedly posted libel.
> You now have to hire a lawyer...
> What do you think the cost of consequences should be? How much should I pay a lawyer to sue someone that posts libel?
Unless you study law, you would have needed a lawyer to sue for defamation/libel before the age of the internet anyway. Whatever the costs are, the consequences should fall on the person who posted the libel, not on the company offering the posting service.
And that anyone should be able to publish libel as long as it costs someone else to sue them?
It sounds to me like you're saying that if libel law has become less effective because of the internet, people should make laws to restrict the internet, or perhaps restrict the ability of people to use the internet to spread information as widely as they can today. In general, I would much rather have laws that punish specific human behavior rather than laws that restrict a medium of human interaction. The same way I don't think a bar notorious for being a hub of defaming gossipers should be liable for hosting defaming gossipers, I don't think social media companies should be liable for hosting defaming gossipers, not least because just about every social media company and bar by practical necessity and by owners' preferences hosts people other than just defaming gossipers. I don't think Section 230 should be repealed or lessened, because Section 230 makes up for the ways in which First Amendment alone fails to protect speech. As a practical matter, I think that the monetary costs that Section 230 saves for people who would otherwise be "protected" by the First Amendment (because the First Amendment provides legal defenses without shaving off court costs) outweigh the monetary costs of being defamed/libeled in today's information age.
> And that anyone should be able to publish libel as long as it costs someone else to sue them?
Is this a good description of the problem?: that in the internet age people can more easily get away with publishing libel even though libel remains as illegal as it was before the internet age, and that in the internet age libel spreads far more easily than it used to even though libel remains as illegal as it was before the internet age. I don't have an answer as to how to reverse the greater effectiveness/spread of libel, but if the solution involves significantly restricting generally legal internet behavior (whether indirectly or directly), I probably don't want the solution.
Should you be able to sue a social media company for providing a medium for a person's libel just because suing the libeler directly would cost you more money? In a country with a First Amendment which bars government restrictions on "freedom of speech", should you be able to pass a law restricting a social media company's ability to unilaterally ban/allow/moderate user-generated posts just because suing the libeler would cost you more money?
If you don't want companies to be sued for libel, then they should also be forced to remove their editorial controls. No more algorithms, no more content moderation, no more banning, etc.
You can't have it both ways.
The only thing Section 230 did was protect large corporations by removing their liability for hosted content, thereby enforcing generic corporatist speech. It did NOT protect speech on the internet.
Do you really think removing Section 230 would lead to more speech overall on the internet? Without Section 230 protections, the companies that would choose not to moderate at all would externalize content moderation into self-censorship (why would I continue posting on Hacker News if Hacker News became like 4chan? also, such companies wouldn't be able to remove libel!) and the companies that would choose to moderate would ban everything that could be interpreted by anyone as legally controversial (have you never witnessed commenters on Hacker News making might-be-defamation-might-not about famous figures, including but not limited to politicians?). (No matter how hard you try to make an objectively clear rule to determine what is unprotected speech, you will never eliminate the existence of speech that is unclearly unprotected or protected.)
Also, skim "Why Section 230 Is Better Than the First Amendment" by Eric Goldman [1].
> Companies hosting libel should be sued, because the same companies also have editorial control over their content.
> If you don't want companies to be sued for libel, then they should also be forced to remove their editorial controls. No more algorithms, no more content moderation, no more banning, etc.
Hacker News has algorithms, content moderation, and banning. How are comments ordered? How are pages on the front page ordered? Why are most dead posts and comments unsearchable even when you have showdead on? (Well, because HN's Algolia search doesn't know what showdead is.) What happens to someone who repeatedly breaks HN guidelines? Should Hacker News be sued because every week (every day?) a user on Hacker News who isn't banned yet is posting defamation about someone?
> The only thing Section 230 did was protect large corporations
No, it did not. Exhibit A: Hacker News, and any social media website smaller than it. Exhibit B: Barrett v. Rosenthal [2].
> If you don't want companies to be sued for libel, then they should also be forced to remove their editorial controls.[...]
> You can't have it both ways.
It's "both ways" in the same sense that by default a family can both let a convicted adult family member continue to live with the family and not be liable for that family member's crimes. Each family member is liable for their own crimes. A family can both kick an adult family member out of the house and not be liable for that family member's crimes. A social media company is liable for its own unprotected speech. A social media user is liable for their own unprotected speech.
[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3351323
