If one wishes to understand some of the history, Elements of Networking Style by Michael Padlipsky is a good starting point.

If someone obtained a BA in 1988, he is not an old-timer to digital communications, networking, or the associated law unless there is a huge gap in his education history. I am not an old-timer, and I go back to (actually before) Leonard Kleinrock’s MIT thesis proposal.

I am tired of fighting with Disqus and the spam filter. I put my comment into a Quora post. It details a good part of my strategy for eradicating the social medium platform plague, which is doing so much damage to the US political system.

I’ve been hanging around the Harvard and Yale law schools for a long time. I know all the living SCOTUS justices from these two schools. I have a fairly good understanding of their thinking.

I am also good at cleaning up messes. Section 230 caselaw is a big mess. It should indicate that something is drastically wrong with Section 230 caselaw and with many a social medium platform when something like ⅔s of US states either have tried or are poised to try to regulate every social medium platform.

Section 230 boosters seem far more enthusiastic about Noah v. AOL Time Warner Inc., 261 F. Supp. 2d 532 (E.D. Va. 2003) than the Court of Appeals was.

Here is the entire ruling from the Appeals Court.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/aead5af31290a3a361e705c9ab8f05a6ccaa98a6b1bdad897b5ecad978f326cc.png
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/473339b3b6aaa642c11620023e0fe6913dbc2b2e4feef07d9ad644886f408d3d.png

I don’t think much of Judge TS Ellis III, who was the district court judge in the Noah case. Anyone,
1. who saw the performance of this judge in the trial of Paul Manafort or
2. who has reviewed his treatment of non-white defendants in comparison with treatment of white defendants,
must infer that this judge is a racist, who would do anything to limit applicability of Title II of the CRA of 1964.

Yet I cannot really fault Judge Ellis’ dismissal of Noah v. AOL. Plaintiff Saad Noah represented himself and had only user-level understanding of Internet technology.

In my reply to Twitter’s Appellee’s Brief, I pointed out the following.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c806d161bef46456c81c94cda3e21fbd40302ae1c4579d79c6e7089dc7829f84.png
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d6f864f32e20e2e965c40d72a57c46d74ed68e9338b7da4fc051445a06fd56d7.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1cd9f3367adb3b7db216a3f4d1358ed0c59696e6b868aa93c07dc528ad54517f.png

Judge Ellis omitted critical text from 42 U.S. Code § 2000a.

Here is the prologue to clause (b).

(b) Establishments affecting interstate commerce or supported in their activities by State action as places of public accommodation; lodgings; facilities principally engaged in selling food for consumption on the premises; gasoline stations; places of exhibition or entertainment; other covered establishments…

Here is clause (d).

(d) Support by State action
Discrimination or segregation by an establishment is supported by State action within the meaning of this subchapter if such discrimination or segregation (1) is carried on under color of any law, statute, ordinance, or regulation; or (2) is carried on under color of any custom or usage required or enforced by officials of the State or political subdivision thereof; or (3) is required by action of the State or political subdivision thereof.

The Internet is a vast establishment, facility, or place of public accommodation for resource sharing. The US government created and continues to fund the Internet. The US government supports the Internet and every social medium platform within the Internet by state action. The AOL social medium platform is almost wholly within the Internet. (Legacy dial-up AOL service continues to exist.)

Under the precedent of Burton v. Wilmington Pkg. Auth, 365 U.S. 715, 81 S. Ct. 856 (1961), state action doctrine seems to apply even if it seems more common for a plaintiff, who has filed a complaint against a social medium platform, to use a more far-fetched argument for the applicability of state action doctrine.

If state action doctrine applies, AOL seems
1. to have discriminated against Plaintiff Saad Noah under color of law (Section 230) and
2. to have violated this Plaintiff’s 1st Amendment rights.

It is unfortunate that the Plaintiff did not know how to make a correct and cogent legal argument. The problem of outrageous discrimination by a social medium platform could have been eliminated 19 years ago.

Because of Saad Noah’s failure, every social medium platform of 2022 unjustifiably asserts that Section 230 provides license to violate anti-discrimination law with respect to public accommodation, civil rights, and state common carriage law.

In addition, a social medium platform uses Section 230 to assert a license for active curation of content even though active curation is nowhere enabled by Section 230. Such active curation seems to a cause for Palestinians and anti-Zionist Jews like me to bring a complaint for group libel against every social medium platform because every social medium platform aggregates and intensifies negative content about us (e.g., a vacuous accusation of antisemitism) while it removes us or our content so that we cannot respond to group libel. See Beauharnais v. Illinois, 343 U.S. 250 (1952).

When I research state libel law, I have found NY to be typical.

[U]nder New York law, ‘all who take part in the procurement, composition and publication of a libel are responsible in law and equally so.’

{Treppel, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18511, 2005 WL 2086339, at *3 (quoting Brown v. Mack, 185 Misc. 368, 56 N.Y.S.2d 910, 916 (N.Y. Sup. Ct., Kings Cnty. 1945)); see also Conte v. Newsday, Inc., 703 F. Supp. 2d 126, 147 n.19 (E.D.N.Y. 2010) (same)}

Active curation certainly seems like the composition of a multitude of separate assertions into an aggregate libel.

If section 230 removes our ability to file a complaint for composition of aggregate libel, section 230 would seem to be unconstitutional.