America really has a litigation culture, not because people are particularly fond of lawsuits, but because problems which are generally solved by legislative enactments or actions by regulatory bodies in other countries, aren't in the US, and thus the only way to find out who is right is to go to court.

removing or changing section 230 would also allow lemmy instances to be sued or taken down as well, for the content posted by users. it would increase government surveillance and basically allow the american government to dictate content across the entire internet. no more freedom of speech, whistleblowers, organization of protests, etc.

this all sounds well and good "for the sake of the chillren" but its a trojan horse for government censorship.

the only people who would be able to afford the bill for what happens after this would be american social media companies. anything "independant" or emerging like the fediverse would get bot swarmed with "illegal content" and then immediately sued into oblivion and outright removed.

this ensures complete loyalty of the digital space to the whims of the american government.

it would also allow them to remove things like wikipedia, the way back machine, the internet archive, and sites holding or spreading things around like the epstein files or at least sites holding peoples opinions of them.

Is anyone at threat of prison time or at least fines measured in the 100's of billions, if not trillions?

My unpopular opinion is that social media is simply inherently incompatible with human nature. I don't think it's anyone's fault per se. It's like heroin in the sense that it doesn't matter how you distribute it - it's going to cause harm because hijacking our reward systems is the reason we use it in the first place. If you modify it so all that goes away, then what you're left with is water - and nobody wants that.

I don't know what the solution is, though. I don't think banning it is a solution, but I'm not sure how to square the harmfulness of it. It's not just kids it's bad for - it's everyone. And yeah, there are degrees to it - perhaps Lemmy is objectively better than an algorithm-based message board like Reddit, but something being better doesn't make it good. A non-toxic heroin that you can't OD on is also better than the alternative, but it's still going to be harmful. It's an arbitrary line we collectively just decide to draw somewhere - even though you could argue infinitely about nudging it one way or the other.

They are going to play the same old "freedom of choice" defense... aren't they.

It's not our fault we made it purposefully addictive, you could just not watch it. Hasn't this been the case with every tobacco-, soda-, fast food-, etc company. For example: the whole mainstream idea that weight gain is about caloric imbalance and not consuming what you eat. That is the mainstream because is helps the food companies sway public opinion for their cause. It's not our food that is horrible slop, disruptive to metabolism and engineered to make people eat more and more and still crave more, it's the people who could just not eat it and if they do eat it they could like run 10km to sweat off the effects of like one sandwich.

They always shift the responsibility to the individuals when they are pressed on their wrongdoings. "The freedom of choice" at large is the great lie that at large keeps society running and is the main defense against any complain why something is systematically shit and fundamentally inhuman, from food to labor markets.