As many folks here now recognize, the story about Backpage was grossly misleading. While the narrative pushed by politicians and the media was that the company was engaged in sex trafficking, the DOJ had actually commended the company for being a strong partner in the fight against sex trafficking. Indeed, the eventual takedown of Backpage days before FOSTA went into effect (which we were told was necessary to shut down Backpage) has been shown to make life more difficult for law enforcement trying to stop sex trafficking.
But I thought politicians told us the truth? /s
That seems insane to me. It’s like trying to hold Microsoft liable for providing the operating systems and Outlook. Or Adobe because some of the ads no doubt use Photoshop.
5th circuit gonna 5th circuit
Mike Masnick is usually right about most things, but in this case section 230 is just the wrong defense to use. That really is meant for hosting providers, not software providers. Doesn’t mean they will be held liable, or should be, but it has nothing to do with section 230 as I understand it.
I mean, Salesforce is SaaS. They have to log in to Salesforce accounts on Salesforce servers to do the CRM angle, so if the crimes allegedly happened in the SF Cloud, then they would be the provider in that case.
Still nutty to go after them. They don’t monitor what each and every client uses SF for.