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Not really, it would make it legally intractable for new firms (including Bluesky with its Discover feed) to compete with Musk & Zuckerberg & Tiktok, including on features like "less fascism". It would also make it a lot harder to deliberately surface less popular or less frequent posters.

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I don't think Bluesky's selling feature nor driving content feed is via Discover, vs being the alternative to twitter. Either way, I think any sort of Discover/For You algorithm should have to be open-sourced or face liability claims.

Open-sourcing a feed-ranking algorithm communicates very little about how it actually works in practice or what its consequences are for the platform or users. If an algorithm is simple enough open-source does usefully reveal its behavior, then it also makes it much easier to game or manipulate.

There are problems with accountability and social impact of feed rank algorithms, I don't disagree with that at all. But most liability proposals will create a strictly worse state of social media and severely hamper innovation (including innovation on safety and social responsibility).

The purpose of 230 was to free websites from responsibility for harmful 3rd party postings. It is what allows the algorithms to remain unchallenged and unexamined. If websites are responsible for postings, that is worse for X and Facebook and better for responsibly moderated Bluesky

That is… very wrong. 230 is to promote innovation, including in moderation, by not holding sites liable every time they got moderation wrong. Pre-230, the liability shield was not to moderate (can't be liable because they didn't look). Every "responsibly moderated" site *will* make errors.

So, what you get is the algorithm. I’m saying; if you invoke the algorithm, you should be liable. If you’re enabling a network of friends, you’re a common carrier, and not liable. This is what 230 bypasses.

Meta and Google have the lawyers and resources to continue hosting user-generated content, likely in a severely restricted manner, if liability shields are removed. Startups, including firms like Bluesky, do not, and it's a huge financial risk for investors. Bye-bye innovation.