I don’t think this would pass, the megacorps stand wayyy too much to lose here and would fight tooth and nail to prevent anything like this. Same goes for a lot of the US government. This would kill any website with user generated content because no company would risk the lawsuits and basically boils down to two options for them - get collapsed due to the cost of legal fees resulting from millions of lawsuits, or get collapsed because the major sources of income streams of your business no longer exist.
Facebook/meta - gone, youtube - gone, reddit - gone, lemmy - gone, twitter/x - gone, bluesky - gone, every chat application - gone, every email provider with a web application - gone, every search engine - gone because they wouldn’t be caught dead potentially displaying anything made by a user, etc.
This would instantly kill the thousands of data mining/brokering businesses that exist because they collect and sell this data.
Sections of government that collect the same data to spy on what people are up to would also not be happy about this. Making it so that people can’t openly discuss anything actually damages their ability to control narrative because no one would be able to speak openly anymore, including bot accounts.
Ad companies would die because users would no longer have any reason to visit half the websites where the ads are and therefore advertising on them would be useless.
IT infrastructure would collapse because there would no longer be any place to discuss fixes or workarounds to problems and every open source project would cease development - which a tonne of proprietary technology uses in their stack. Every business that uses a LAMP stack would almost immediately be fucked.
Billing systems would collapse, large numbers of people wouldn’t be receiving paychecks anymore, supply chains would crumble, etc.
Tonnes of companies would get hacked because there wouldn’t be a reasonable way for people to distribute information/stay in the know on new vulnerabilities for the masses of IT/security workers.
No one could leave reviews of any kind on any service or product which has a litany of resulting problems itself.
This would also result in an ungodly amount of lawsuits filed for any and all reasons which would basically collapse the court system under its weight.
Even if this went through, I’m sure it would immediately collapse the economy like has never been seen before and they would scramble to revert it.
You think but remember the medium age of our representatives are in their fucking late 80s. Lot of them don’t know even how the internet works. They don’t give damn.
For sure, I have no illusions about that. I still think if this went through and fucked the world economy they would pretty quickly find they would have to repeal the repealment though. It would create way too many problems to try to weasel out of.
Haha, I had the same thought - it would be better if it didn’t have the potential to completely collapse society though. I could certainly stand to lose more than a few of the things I listed though.
If the news were that it was being amended to make carve outs for businesses who pay an amount of money, then I would be more inclined to agree.
But the news is that it would be repealed entirely.
This means you could not bribe the government once to protect you from all lawsuits - you would have to bribe each and every judge involved in each and every lawsuit, and/or each and every juror.
1 Billion people sue your company. I don’t think any megacorp would be happy about suddenly having to pay out 1 billion bribes and to do so as a regular ongoing expense.
The least expensive option for the corporations is to not have this repealed. As a result, that is what they would prefer to put that money into instead. Way cheaper to bribe this into not passing than it is to have to do it continuously or multiple times and/or losing those income streams.
Sure, but my point is that it does not mean they want to. They will take the cheapest option possible - if there isn’t one, they usually try to invent a new cheaper option for themselves. In the realm of bribery, if you are going to bribe people anyway, why wouldn’t you pay a couple bribes to avoid paying indefinite bribes?
It’s complicated. Only a few companies can afford to pay out bribes to avoid lawsuits, which means they’d effectively be destroying all of their competition in exchange. Bluesky and Lemmy can’t afford to pay their way out of lawsuits, after all. This would be a handy win for total monopolization of the internet under only a few companies, even if it might also be expensive.
On top of that they were starting down the barrel of FTC for monopoly practices, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some kind of backroom deal with the government here. Maybe if the tech companies allow Section 230 to be repealed and for age-verification laws to pass, the government doesn’t force their companies to be broken up in antitrust actions.
I don’t think this would pass, the megacorps stand wayyy too much to lose here and would fight tooth and nail to prevent anything like this. Same goes for a lot of the US government. This would kill any website with user generated content because no company would risk the lawsuits and basically boils down to two options for them - get collapsed due to the cost of legal fees resulting from millions of lawsuits, or get collapsed because the major sources of income streams of your business no longer exist.
Facebook/meta - gone, youtube - gone, reddit - gone, lemmy - gone, twitter/x - gone, bluesky - gone, every chat application - gone, every email provider with a web application - gone, every search engine - gone because they wouldn’t be caught dead potentially displaying anything made by a user, etc.
This would instantly kill the thousands of data mining/brokering businesses that exist because they collect and sell this data.
Sections of government that collect the same data to spy on what people are up to would also not be happy about this. Making it so that people can’t openly discuss anything actually damages their ability to control narrative because no one would be able to speak openly anymore, including bot accounts.
Ad companies would die because users would no longer have any reason to visit half the websites where the ads are and therefore advertising on them would be useless.
IT infrastructure would collapse because there would no longer be any place to discuss fixes or workarounds to problems and every open source project would cease development - which a tonne of proprietary technology uses in their stack. Every business that uses a LAMP stack would almost immediately be fucked.
Billing systems would collapse, large numbers of people wouldn’t be receiving paychecks anymore, supply chains would crumble, etc.
Tonnes of companies would get hacked because there wouldn’t be a reasonable way for people to distribute information/stay in the know on new vulnerabilities for the masses of IT/security workers.
No one could leave reviews of any kind on any service or product which has a litany of resulting problems itself.
This would also result in an ungodly amount of lawsuits filed for any and all reasons which would basically collapse the court system under its weight.
Even if this went through, I’m sure it would immediately collapse the economy like has never been seen before and they would scramble to revert it.
You think but remember the medium age of our representatives are in their fucking late 80s. Lot of them don’t know even how the internet works. They don’t give damn.
For sure, I have no illusions about that. I still think if this went through and fucked the world economy they would pretty quickly find they would have to repeal the repealment though. It would create way too many problems to try to weasel out of.
the way you put it is making it sound like a great thing, actually.
Haha, I had the same thought - it would be better if it didn’t have the potential to completely collapse society though. I could certainly stand to lose more than a few of the things I listed though.
What do you mean? It basically switches to a more corrupt system where your website is safe in exchange for a bribe, and timely censorship requests.
Every mega corp will be fine.
If the news were that it was being amended to make carve outs for businesses who pay an amount of money, then I would be more inclined to agree.
But the news is that it would be repealed entirely.
This means you could not bribe the government once to protect you from all lawsuits - you would have to bribe each and every judge involved in each and every lawsuit, and/or each and every juror.
1 Billion people sue your company. I don’t think any megacorp would be happy about suddenly having to pay out 1 billion bribes and to do so as a regular ongoing expense.
The least expensive option for the corporations is to not have this repealed. As a result, that is what they would prefer to put that money into instead. Way cheaper to bribe this into not passing than it is to have to do it continuously or multiple times and/or losing those income streams.
Functionally every law has a carve out for businesses who pay an amount of money.
Sure, but my point is that it does not mean they want to. They will take the cheapest option possible - if there isn’t one, they usually try to invent a new cheaper option for themselves. In the realm of bribery, if you are going to bribe people anyway, why wouldn’t you pay a couple bribes to avoid paying indefinite bribes?
It’s complicated. Only a few companies can afford to pay out bribes to avoid lawsuits, which means they’d effectively be destroying all of their competition in exchange. Bluesky and Lemmy can’t afford to pay their way out of lawsuits, after all. This would be a handy win for total monopolization of the internet under only a few companies, even if it might also be expensive.
On top of that they were starting down the barrel of FTC for monopoly practices, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some kind of backroom deal with the government here. Maybe if the tech companies allow Section 230 to be repealed and for age-verification laws to pass, the government doesn’t force their companies to be broken up in antitrust actions.
I have no idea what is going to happen.