Table of Contents

Server Information

Digital Ghosts and Ghost Stories – Singletona082

This Month in Iris
Terminal Challenge 2023
Ham Radio - Semaphore

How Section 230 Ruined the Internet's Reputation - luchiz@ctrl-c.club

Ctrl-C Server Info

Gemini Server:

Molly Brown*

*CGI Scripts disabled for Security Reasons

https://pkg.go.dev/tildegit.org/solderpunk/molly-brown

HTML/Web Server:

nginx

https://www.nginx.com/

=======

Reminder:

What members are not allowed to do

(Because at some point someone ruined it for everyone else.)

* No Eggdrop bots.

* No services that duplicate Ctrl-C.club services (email, IRC, web, Gemini, etc.)

* No virtualized/subsystem OSes (docker, junest, vagrant, etc.)

* No Bitcoin/crypto mining

* No hosting/storage of illegal (in the US) or pirated material.

* No spamming of any kind

* No hacking or attempting to get into other people's accounts/servers.

* One gigabyte storage limit

Feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns you have.

* Email: admin@ctrl-c.club

* Email: eric@pencricket.com

* IRC: #ctrl-c on Tildechat

* IRC: DM "calamitous" on Tildechat

Digital Ghosts and Ghost Stories

Singletona082

404 – Resource Not Found.

The error message nobody wants to see when on the hunt for information. The link now a ghost, a description of the thing but not the thing itself.

Worse than these ghosts are the zombies of domains snapped up then made to show keyword stuffed spam. Thus turning them into digital corpses reanimated to haunt and infect the living.

‘Once it’s online, it’s there Forever.’

In the thirty years of my having any experience online? I have learned the sad fact that this is not true. GeoCities? Gone. All manner of forum, comic, community, and blog? Gone or turned into a malware slinging zombie.

I encountered both Ghosts and Zombies while trying to find out more about a keyboard I’d bought supposedly on sale with a generous coupon that was still active. As it turns out what I bought was a counterfeit from a group that had been partnered with the manufacturer but was cut loose when they were found stuffing substandard boards incompatible with customization software. This brings to mind the trope of an evil wearing a fairer skin, if not outright mimicking the face of a loved one to gain entry into your home.

Lastly, for the time being, I shall speak of Vampires. We have these too. Those that suck the joy and life and vitality out of others while hoping to infect them to make more of themselves. Without throwing too much shade at any one space, that sounds like social media to me.

So, as you scroll through the wired world, do keep a weary eye out for what is about you. This may be a digital age, but these old monsters are all too human and will stay by us for all of our days, waiting in the shadows.

This Month in Iris

From the Editor:

As with last month I am going to showcase material submitted last month over our server's bulletin board, Iris. This pretty much is because I am confident not everyone participates in Iris, or even for those that do it is helpful to have a month in review sort of thing.

Reminder: When logging in via SSH type [newstuff] and the server will give you a listing of what new things have been posted to server (max six items by default.)

====================

This first post warrants its own article, but Loghead asks a rather relevant question. The thread itself is quite insightful and interesting, but for now I am only including the initial post.

--------------------

[348] loghead@ctrl-c.club posted

I'll ask on Iris, as who knows where else I would ask

I am not "frequent" many places online these days. Hence the Q here.

How would you, I, anyone, go about expressing oneself in a meaningful way, that is not "art", but IS art, but not done in a traditional type of way?

Example, blogging, music, website design, a zine, a traditional or self-published book, video creation ("video content"), painting, drawing, illustrating, game-making, et al - all "traditional" forms of art creation/self-expression.

So, if one wanted to DO that (express oneself, or find a way to get the satisfaction from/gratification with what one would get from art expression), how would one do that?

It's a creative question, but perhaps a dim-minded one. I liked writing, but can't anymore (typos drive me crazy, I am w/o words for anything anymore in life), and painting/drawing has lost a bit of luster, as well.

Would be *deeper*? *Broader*? Expression/creation in form(ats) that are not just OBVIOUS "here, here is art I made"?

I don't know. Looking forward to seeing what people think. Or if I should just keep trashbin'ing the creative "impulse", as I know as a matter of fact that I would find more turbulence/struggle with it than the potential payoff of "I wrote a thing" or "I painted a thing", etc.

hope you're all well

~lh

--------------------

On a less existential note: nttp offers up something a bit of fun.

--------------------

[355] nttp@ctrl-c.club posted

Two awesome lists for tilde people

I just found a couple of awesome lists y'all might like to see, but kept forgetting to post them: one for games that run in a terminal emulator (so they could be good for Ctrl-C), the other of cool but obscure X11 tools (less useful here, but still educational):

- https://github.com/ligurio/awesome-ttygames

- https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/

Warning, the second link points to a page with lots and lots of images. Enjoy, and hope this helps!

--------------------

Codekobold asking the real questions here. 'Hacking'/Penetration is not something inherently evil and is often a net-benefit. After all you have to know what the threat is to defend against it. Beyond that, an understanding of flaws, faults, and the 'how' of networking is facinating. I'm glad this thread has gotten at least some amount of traction.

--------------------

[358] codekobold@ctrl-c.club posted

any pentesters/white hat hackers?

I am starting to look into CTF, pentesting, reverse engineering and similar things.

If you have any suggestions for good resources to get started that would be fantastic.

For now I'm using hackthebox.com to practice and random web searches to complement that.

--------------------

I'm going to admit that at first I didn't quite understand what was being asked, so I'm glad responses helped clear that up. Anyone feel like chiming in who hasn't already?

--------------------

[359]  gome@ctrl-c.club posted

Library for making machine-local servers

I've had this idea to make a pet game for the server for a while now, but I haven't gotten around to completing it.

However, in the process of working on my pet game, I wrote some C code that I thought might be useful as a reusable library.

You can use it to run a server that listens on a Unix domain socket, without needing any elevated permissions, allowing you to build servers that other Ctrl-C users can interact with.

Here's the repository for now, still in rough shape, but the DLLs it builds are ready to use AFAICT: https://tildegit.org/gome/localserv

Let me know if you are interested in using it or have any questions!!

P.S. The name is just a placeholder; I'm going to try to come up with a better one later.

--------------------

[362] loghead@ctrl-c.club posted

^C stack

Out of a bit of boredom, I started to look through different stacks,

different desk setups, PC confirgurations, etc., and I thought: "what

does everyone *here* use to access ^C or/and their day to day activities?"

My setup is simple - An Orange Pi 800 microcomputer that continually stays logged in to the pubnix and has the ^C IRC going 24/7 via Irssi. I use xfce terminal.

Everything else I do is done via my Tab M9 tablet.

So just curious what people use when accessing ^C. tmux? xfce terminal? MacBook? Linux tower? Cyberdeck?

Look forward to responses!

later!

~lh

-------------------

That's honestly a danged good question from Loghead, and the ensuing discussion shows how varied folk here are in how they access the server.

====================

Terminal Challenge 2023

[352] singletona082@ctrl-c.club posted

Term Challenge 2023 Thread

For those participating here is as good as any gathering point.

Though from what i have noticed in discussion:

* vim appears to be the most popular text editor

* Nobody has advocated floating window managers

* Several of you have made 'simple' games that live in the terminal

* Google nolonger seems to play nice with mutt as a mail client, but Alpine seems to work just fine if you're willing to jump through some hoops.

Warning: Plug

I have written a guide that updates one I found that's dated 2014

https://geminiproxy.p.projectsegfau.lt/gemini/gemini.ctrl-c.club/~singletona082/gemlog/2023/2023-08-31.gmi

gemini://gemini.ctrl-c.club/~singletona082/gemlog/2023/2023-08-31.gmi

* Amphora seems to be the most popular/suggested terminal gemini client

* The two most oft suggested terminal web browsers I've seen are w3m and Lynx

* MC, Ranger, and using straight terminal commands are the most seen file

 managment solutions i have seen.

= = = = = = = = = =

I'm considering asking anyone who's participating to make a dot file in their home directory on server. Something like: .term2023 and list any goals you might have for the next two weeks. Or any program suggestions. I'll have to ask gome how they handled the dot file thing as the idea only just now occored to me. Yet it feels so danged handy.

Y'know that sounds like a great idea.

Make a .term2023 file and list suggestions and or goals. Let's see what happens!

--------------------

Rather than rehash everything from the threads Here are the six people that made dot files for the challenge. Thank you gome for the script; because even though it is a simple script I am not a coder.

--------------------

Asara

Everyday Stuff

- bash shell

- windows manager is either i3 on x11, or swaywm on wayland

- terminal emulator is kitty because it works well on both x11 and sway on my nongpu hardware

- font: dejavu sans mono, dejavu nerd for the emojis

- tmux for pane/window management

- irssi for IRC

- gomuks for Matrix

- mpv for music with sshfs to access my remote library

- w3m for light browsing

- rss is set up on a miniflux server to push everything to matrix

Writing

- nvim + lazyvim for coding/writing

 - I like the catppuccin-mocha theme

 - I use goyo.vim + pencil + limelight for distraction free writing

 - I use vim-gnupg

 - `pinentry-program /usr/bin/pinentry-curses` is set in my gnupg config to allow decryption in a tty

- nvim-orgmode for life management (agenda, notes, etc)

- wicd-curses for wifi management

- bash slides for slideshows: https://github.com/skontar/bash-slides

Technical stuff

- k9s for managing my Kubernetes cluster

- lntop for managing my bitcoin lightning node

- zbar-tools for creating qrcodes

Games (I'd love some recommendations)

- nethack though I've never gotten very far

Dotfiles: https://github.com/asara/dotfiles

nvim config: https://git.minhas.io/Asara/nvim

Plan for the jam: not sure... I'd love some suggestions!

--------------------

chiptune

Terminal Challenge 2023 goals:

- (more of a soft goal) use i3, and keep using it. Live life the WM way.

- set up LSP in neovim (understand it, to know what I am doing. Or just switch back to CoC.nvim lol)

- explore terminal games like nethack

exceptions:

- email

- some web browsing, books (going through a book rn, can't do much in the terminal, and browser mostly for email)

--------------------

pgadey

I'm in!

2023-09-02

I'm going to try to dramatically limit my computer time for the next few weeks. I'm leaving my phone / computer in the basement, to see if I can get by without them. So far, two days in, things are going well.

I've also setup my computer so that tty1 is comfortable to use for most terminal things.  The plan is to do life without X for a little while. In the next couple days, I'll set a SINGLE goal for what I want to do during the terminal challenge. It'll probably be writing an academic article.

This is taking the "terminal challenge" in a bit of a different direction. It's more of a digital detox or digital minimalism sort of thing, but that is fine.

2023-09-03

As part of the terminal challenge, I've started to use tty1 as my standard terminal instead of using a terminal emulator like `xterm` or `xfce4-terminal`.  It is incredibly low latency compared to using a terminal emulator inside X, and feels much more distraction-free.  To make things comfortable, I've needed to make a couple adaptations.

# Change the terminal font.

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

I use TerminusBold at 14x28 font size.

# Switch capslock and escape.

To switch capslock and escape at the tty level,

I use loadkeys which changes how to kernel interprets the keymap.

My ~/.Loadkeys file looks like this:

                # switch Caps_Lock and Escape *without* starting X

                keycode 1 = Caps_Lock

                keycode 58 = Escape

2023-09-04

Okay -- I had to break with terminal challenge protocol a bit and do some

work in X. We needed to make some birthday card invitations for Mira before

tomorrow morning. This required a bit of graphics design work. And, oh boy,

am I rusty at Gimp / Pinta. Eventually, I just laid them out in LibreOffice.

This was not a fun excursion in to graphics land.               

--------------------

scotchsour

Going hardcare by using headless VoidLinux in a VM

yaft  -- awesome framebuffer "xterm"

brush pens & paper -- cuz no Rebelle :-(

My cheat list:

Lagrange -- need my feeds

Calibre  -- want my books

console list:

wordgrinder  -- narrative text

nano  -- same

chuck  -- making music

https://itsfoss.com/best-command-line-games-linux/

Lynx revelation:

The online ASCII table is an image

--------------------

singletona082

What I'm using:

* Amphora

* W3M with Lynx as backup

 $ w3m

* IRSSI

* Midnight Command

* Micro

 I have aspell and filemanager plugins installed. Probably will also install a word-count plugin as fiction and long form tend to be

 my wheelhouses.

* Aquarium

 Because who doesn't appreciate a fishtank?

What I'm searching For:

* MP3/Internet Radio

* Wifi and Bluetooth managment

What I need to just 'Do'

* Sit down and learn tmux.

* Write up a spec text mode bulliten board/messaging system. This is not a knock against iris. This is mainly a thought excersize. Take what I've learned and try dreaming up a thing.

* Get back to writing.

 Black Knight won't write itself.

 Ditto my post human robot centric story 'Excaliber'

--------------------

xenastra

I'm just curious about how this Terminal Challenge thing is going to work. It seems like a fun thing to do. I really like being on this Tilde thing. It really does bring back memories of the Old Net.

====================

Again, thank you to everyone who participated regardless on if they made a dot file outlining things, and thank you Gome for the script to search for specific files.

For those wanting that script: ~gome/scripts/locate-dotfile

This was not 'live fully in the terminal challenge.' This was just a fun thing to try getting people to look at the terminal and learning to be a little less afraid of it. By that metric I believe everyone who participated succeeded.

Ham Radio

Semaphore

Heya ^C!

Like most radio amateurs, I’ve had some thoughts on how, in the event of disaster, we can get a good amount of information around our community and the countryside - Some kind of event like the bushfires experienced down the Eastern side of Australia in the ‘Black Summer’ of 2019/20, or as experienced in Greece earlier this year.

I first became interested in amateur radio around the time of the Arab Spring & Hurricane Sandy. Several north-African dictators ordered the internet disconnected. Hurricane Sandy proved that seawater and subterranean phone exchanges were a bad mix. Both of these events, happening at around the same time, had activists and organisers cut off from not only each other, but also news from the outside world.

I remember finding the response by those organisers to be astounding. Routers were being flashed with custom OpenWRT to become ad-hoc mesh networks, and some of these were connected to packet radio. Crucially, and where my amateur radio fascination started, north-African organisers used these radios to connect with other organisers in Italy & Spain, providing links for email exchange. 1200 baud isn’t a lot, but it’s more than nothing. Organisers in New York were able to simply extend the mesh to neighbourhoods which were still internet connected.

Then along came the ‘Black Summer’, and my mind started to move back to 2012. How can we manage real time communication in hostile environments, and provide updates about our community? What tools are available to me to do this, considering my limited budget? This is when I decided to become a licenced amateur.

Some of the lessons I took from the 2019/20 season were:

* Telephone exchanges burn just as well as any other building in a bushfire

* Fibre-optic can (and will) melt

* VHF & UHF don’t like physical barriers – like smoke

* VHF & UHF repeaters are connected together by the internet

* We’ve built our entire communication systems around centralised spoke & node exchanges, with VHF & UHF backups

* In one region of Victoria during 2019/20 all this infrastructure burned, leaving tens of thousands with no outside communication for some days

VK has many and interesting limitations on what an amateur is able to do with their radio, and one of these limitations is ‘no encryption’. Operating a link for regular email isn’t allowable, as TLS in VK isn’t allowable, making it effectively useless for my thoughts.

The thing I was thinking would most be suited to this work – Gemini – isn’t allowable, due to its use of encryption. That leaves us with either HTTP or Gopher. Either are fine, I guess. Here’s a vid by VK3FOX, looking at TCP/IP over packet radio [1].

JS8Call is an interesting project, which concerns itself with low-power keyboard-to-keyboard text messaging, which includes relaying. It’s used easily on 40m & 80m, making it more robust with smoke & other obstacles, and better for longer range work. This is a presentation by VK3GRK on how it works[2].

This is another vid by VK3FOX, showing BBS on packet radio[3]. I think there’s a lot of potential for this technology in times of crisis. I’m thinking that everything except Zork would be good in times of crisis.

And last, but by no means least, there’s CW & voice. I use software to ‘help’ me decode CW (I’m crap at it), and software can be used to make it a kind of keyboard-to-keyboard system, albeit without forward error correction. Sometimes the most simple technology is the most appropriate.

I think my next experiments will be software-aided CW over 80m, and setting up a BBS for use with packet radio – Which may be the most quintessential definition of the ‘Smol Net’. What also helps is I’m finding this super fun :)

How Section 230 Ruined the Internet's Reputation

luchiz@ctrl-c.club

-----

Editor's Note:

This article grossly exceeds what I consider target length for zine submissions. However due to this being the spooky season, and this being effectivly a modern digital horror story? I am giving it a pass in spite of this and politics.

-----

Think for a moment: if someone posts something illegal on a website, be it a video that promotes terrorism or a blog post that teaches someone how to make drugs and illegal substances, should the maintainer of that website be liable to such content?

Section 230 is a law stating that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." In simple words, the administrator is NOT liable for his actions. Of course, if the drug dealer were to give drugs to someone else, both would be imprisoned, and if an author of a newspaper wrote slanderous comments about someone, both the author and the newspaper organization could be sued. But why not on the Internet? Why can't I sue the person for posting content that promotes terrorist organizations like ISIS and al-Qaeda to my children if Facebook won't listen to my complaints?

Section 230, being part of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), passed in 1996, was originally designed to "protect the screening of pornographic content", and was enacted as a response to a pair of lawsuits against the bulletin board systems run by Compu-Serve and Prodigy in the early 1990s, that resulted in different interpretations of whether the service providers should be treated as publishers or distributors of content created by their users. Its authors, Representatives Christopher Cox and Ron Wyden, believed interactive computer services should be treated as such as a means to protect the growing Internet at the time.

Upon the law's enactment on February 8th, the 'net had erupted in protest. For the next 48 hours, more than 1,500 websites, including Yahoo! and Netscape, switched to a black background as a warning that the CDA would censor free speech. John Perry Barlow, a member of 'netroots', a decentralized Internet freedom movement, and a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wrote in a definat e-mail widely circulated by these activists and later republished by Wired, lambasting the law.

"Governemnts of the Industrial Mind, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind," Barlow wrote. "On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone." He grandly titled his hot take "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace".

Then, opponents filed lawsuits. On June 26, 1997, the US Supreme Court removed most of the CDA, but left Section 230. "In some ways, Section 230 was a kind of sheep in wolf's clothing", says Mike Godwin, a lawyer who had helped lead the fight for the EFF. "It was basically something that was really good for the internet that was couched as something that would create more policing."

An early example of Section 230's effects that had disastrous real-world effects was when Kenneth Zeran, a Seattle real estate agent and victim of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, started receiving threatening phone calls. He quickly learned that an anonymous user on AOL was posting his name and phone number alongside ads for fake souvenirs making fun of the tragedy. Zeran tried getting AOL to remove his name and phone number, but was slow to respond. He later sued for negligence. Lawyers for AOL responded by filing a motion to dismiss, invoking Section 230's safe harbor. In March 1997, Judge T.S. Ellis III of the Federal Court of Virginia ruled in favor of AOL. Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld that ruling, advancing a strikingly broad interpretation of Section 230. They found that if an Internet company were to be notified that its site was distributing something illegal from a third party - be it defamation or death threats - it would remain immune to civil or criminal liability, even if it continued to knowingly propagate the illicit material.

Critics of this law cite this ruling as ushering in a golden age of online harassment. In the years that followed, individuals who felt stung by the negligence of various Web communities repeatedly filed suit for damages. Again and again, their cases were tossed out. "By the end of 2003, Section 230 appeared to be the kryptonite to any plantiffs who were considering a lawsuit against a website or internet service provider", writes Jeff Kosseff, author of The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet. A law that had originally been envisioned as a way to keep clean - or clean enough - instead made it safe for hatemongers, tormentors, and purveyors of misinformation.

Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law, compares the behavior of Internet companies under Section 230 to that of gunmakers under the Protection of Lawful Commerce of Arms Act, a 2005 law that provides extensive liability protection to firearm manufacturers and dealers. She argues that the freedom to self-regulate allows companies to ignore public demands to make their products safer - and "we can now see what the industry has chosen to do with that freedom", she says. "They have not only let a lot of bad stuff happen on their platforms, but they've actually decided to profit off of people's bad behavior."

More recently, as of writing this article, Wyden, the co-author of Section 230, has said that conservatives are misinterpreting the law's intent. Rather than encouraging neutrality, the bill was designed to empower tech companies to proactively remove questionable material from their platforms.

Overtime, Big Tech giants used Section 230 in effort to keep themselves in charge for their endless money supply and to keep their cyber hate machine running clean. Being not liable for user posts is like not being liable for holding agendas for techniques on recuiting terrorists or even screening child porn. In fact, this is what actually happened in Gonzalez v. Google LLC: the Supreme Court tossed out a lawsuit that said social media companies bore responsibility under an anti-terrorism law for a 2017 shooting in an Istanbul nightclub. The case involved Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old who was one of the 130 people killed in attacks by ISIS in Paris in November 2015. Her family said Alphabet Inc.'s Google, through its algorithm-driven YouTube recommendations aided the assailants in violation of the Antiterrorism Act.

The mantra chanted by Big Tech is that weakening or downright repealing Section 230 would have had disastrous effects, forcing social media platforms, search engines and online marketplaces to radically reconfigure their businesses to protect themselves, as it would be a downright impossible task to do so, and they can only cease operations because of their corporate and online platform structure.

Former President Donald J. Trump also wanted to repeal Section 230 by filing an Executive Order. In it he wrote:

"In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand pick the speech that Americans may access and convey on the internet.  This practice is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic.  When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power.  They cease functioning as passive bulletin boards, and ought to be viewed and treated as content creators."

He also wrote that "online platforms are engaging in selective censorship that is harming our national discourse."

He had written this Executive Order because Twitter had given a warning on his Tweets for 'misleading' information. This is like calling out a random person for disliking pizza, and it is up to the user reading the post if it is 'misinformation' or not.

The early 90s to the late 2000s were a time when the Internet was unfettered: you were allowed say anything you want, without being watched over by big corporations selling you for ads. You did not write a YouTube comment or Reddit post, instead you went on tiny spaces called 'forums' which were regulated by volunteer to paid moderators - many of them were easy-going and removed posts if they didn't seem to abide by the rules - and used the forum just like a non-moderator would do. There was little to no concern about Section 230, and many forums were even hosted outside the US, so different laws would then apply.

Most countries do not even have an exact equivalent of Section 230, and the closest it could get would still have an exception added where they are only held accountable for content that they are aware or have 'actual knowledge' of; this applies in Australia, Japan, and the Philippines.

But after 2010, many of these forums were dying out in favor of social media. Even MySpace, which was run by the innocent Tom Anderson, who had run it out of passion and creativity, was replaced by the soulless lizard Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook Empire in an attempt to destroy the works of creative Internet nerds of the 90s and 2000s in favor of an unprivate and controlled dystopia that had sucked out the willpower of an entire generation. Facebook's influence had led other sites to catch up to his techniques. YouTube changed its layout in 2012 from that of one that actually provided the video content to you without worries into one that adhered to Facebook's principles of addiction and depression. Twitter changed its layout and functionality from a status feed to a microblog that only limited you to 140 or 280 characters per Tweet. These platforms had an incredible power over the Internet as well as the real world - something that would have been laughable in the 2000s - Hana Kimura had committed suicide thanks to online slander protected by Section 230. The Japanese bulletin board site 2channel, known for its criminal background, had the accused Shinji Aoba post on the site threatening to inflict an arson attack on Kyoto Animation's main studio building. Despite 2channel being Japanese-made and for a Japanese audience, the site is hosted in San Francisco, CA and is protected by the aforemetioned law.

Section 230 is the main reason why trolling and cyberbulling online is so rampant. While it had existed since Al Gore had opened the Internet to the rest of America (a period known as "Eternal September"), it had mostly been subject to removal by the USENET server or message board maintaier as it would have been subject to liability.

Repealing Section 230 would change the Internet drastically. Whereas online civility would increase, the ability to run a huge business would also be hindered as they would have to pay more attention to what content they are holding on their services.

This act enjoys support from both Democrats and Republicans: Joe Biden says that Big Tech companies need "to take responsibility for the content they spread" and "we must fundamentally reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects tech companies from legal responsibility for content posted on their sites." Donald Trump filed an executive order eliminating Section 230 from the U.S. Code as mentioned earlier.

Yes, Section 230 ruined the Internet's reputation as a viable medium of sharing information to everyone in the world. Try scrolling through a YouTube comment section or a Reddit thread and you'll find a lot of slanderous comments posted by people even if their real name was shown. The best thing we can do is wait for the lawmakers to wake up.

In fact, someone did so. Lindsey Graham, a R-SC Senator, stated that "you can't sue these people [Big Tech], you can go to the provider and say 'my child is being bullied, my child losing their mind'", and "they go back three times, the company blows them off, the child kills themselves, and they can't sue because of Section 230."

In this world, money is power, and Big Tech companies have used billions of dollars to defend themselves from others, like how Microsoft did against Netscape and the US government in 2000-2001. Google, Twitter and Reddit have used the same techniques employed by Microsoft, with Section 230 as their shield, against the Supreme Court.

Outro

Well folks, there you have it. Bring on the Spooky Season! For those that live in Canada, Happy Thanksgiving!

=====

END OF LINE