A few abstract thoughts for today's #Section230 hearing:

(1) Primates with big brains can now use networked electronic devices to meet and learn. Also, they can form digital tribes and throw virtual primate poo at each other. This is new. It has never happened before.

(2) It turns out that social media is transformative. Like, the printing press leading to Martin Luther, the Reformation, the Defenestrations of Prague, the Puritans, and Cromwell level stuff.

(3) Social media is fueling what @mgurri calls the Revolt of the Public. Industrial-age institutions (e.g., the NY Times) have less control over information. Subject to increased scrutiny, more leaks, and new forms of critique, elites are struggling to maintain their legitimacy.

(4) Disillusioned though they are with the old hierarchies, postmodern people have nothing to replace them with. So they engage in a politics of negation. The result is anomie, bitterness, and political instability.

(5) Can you blame the platforms for this? You might as well blame Gutenberg for the Thirty Years' War. Although the platforms can do discrete dumb things, this new interconnected age is an emergent phenomenon. Twitter, it's been said, was more *discovered* than built. Just so.

(6) And like the printing press, social media is not an evil. It can be, on balance, a great force for good. We're primates with big brains. We WANT to communicate.

(7) Given how rapid, radical, and unpredictable a driver of change social media has turned out to be, it should come as no surprise that it's hard to make it run smoothly.

The platforms' efforts to moderate content, in particular, have been hit and miss.

(8) But as @mmasnick notes, it is *impossible* to do content moderation at scale well. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191111/23032743367/masnicks-impossibility-theorem-content-moderation-scale-is-impossible-to-do-well.shtml

(9) In trying to piss off as few people as possible, the platforms generally end up pissing off almost everyone. Still, they're groping for a tolerable balance. Accordingly, their content moderation has evolved over time. And that's ok! Evolution can be salutary here.

(10) If the platforms are fumbling around, Congress is downright thumbless. Some legislators think that the platforms allow hate speech to flourish, others that they engage in censorship. These complaints pull in opposite directions. "Solutions" for them will be incompatible.

(11) We'll get a sense, from the hearing, of how many lawmakers are even that concerned about crafting deep solutions for content moderation -- solutions that will make sense both today and tomorrow.

(12) It looks like the guy on the left -- whose office distributed this poster -- does not plan to take the process seriously.

(13) When it comes to content moderation, the platforms need flexibility in the face of an uncertain future. #Section230 gives them that flexibility.

(14) Although it's certainly conceivable that some modest reforms worthy of consideration will come up at the hearing, the key need is flexibility -- what already exists. The government should not try to use rigid rules to central plan content moderation now and in the future.

(15) One more thing. When you hear attacks on "immunity" (or even words like "fairness") today, think "lots of lawsuits against the platforms." That's what the more ambitious reform ideas boil down to.

Most lawsuits are, in the end, just primates with big brains flinging poo.