internet california social-media
Suit for excessive moderarion
<p>Assume I run a site similar to stack exchange, namely no meaningful terms of service. In that case there is no restriction on behavior, any moderator can delete anything, up to and including running a automated script that bypasses checks and deletes the entire content on the entire site. There is nothing in the terms of service saying this can't be done.</p>
<p>The terms &quot;give unlimited power&quot;, they don't take any away, hence the moderators can delete everything on the site.</p>
<p>Obviously this would be prosecuted under federal hacking law except it can't, because there's no policy. Again using stack exchange as a example there are no &quot;site policies&quot;, there are only scattered questions by individual users, with conflicting answers, and one of them has a green check mark and &quot;becomes&quot; &quot;the site policy&quot;. Is anything like this workable? If a mod destroyed the site is he totally free to do so as the &quot;site policy&quot; is nonexistent?</p>
<p>Note this actually has happened with real websites and is dealt with much, much harsher than on stack exchange. Facebook or its functionaries have been sued for deleting posts. The mayor of Irvine sued for deleting posts because of discriminatory and irrational behavior, not even by moderators, just even the users deleting content can be sued. If a site like stack exchange was scaled up in any way whatsoever wouldn't it be liable for completely irrational, forgive the term, <em>idiotic</em> behavior by moderators mass deleting arbitrary posts, especially in a litigious state like California?</p>

<p>No.</p>
<p>The site would not be liable for irrational and idiotic behavior, because irrationality and idiocy remain quite legal.</p>

<p>First of all, &quot;site policies&quot; need not be contained in a single document such as a &quot;TOS&quot; or &quot;Policies&quot; document. Whatever a sire operator chooses to announce as site policy is policy, in whatever way the operator(s) choose to announce it, including in multiple separate posts. Such a site could have a separate agreement with moderators, not displayed to the general public, describing the lim,ts of moderator authority.</p>
<p>Secondly, and more importantly, the site is not required to host or retain on display any particular text, unless it has entered into a contract to do so. Under anti-discrimination law, a site probably cannot delete posts based on the poster's membership in a protected class or possession of a protected characteristic. So deletion of all posts from a particular nationality, say, might well be unlawful (if site operations are covered by the anti-discrimination law of the jurisdiction). But aside from that, the site operator can do as s/he pleases. The site operator could go through posts, roll dice for each one, and delete all those where the roll was 7. This would be foolish, and might well cause people not to use the site, but posters would not have a legal basis for action against the site. (I am assuming thsat the site is private. Rules might be different for a governmental site.)</p>
<p>Now if posters have paid for the right to post, then they can enforce whatever contract they may have, or sue for breach of contract. But otherwise the site may be run as its operator(s) wish, subject to any applicable laws. And no law that I know of requires an operator to retain whatever a user chooses to post.</p>
