🏛️ Section 230's algorithmic shield gets rolled back - platform liability overhang
With SCOTUS taking Gonzalez v. Google and the Fifth Circuit upholding Texas' common-carrier law, the besties expect the legal protection around algorithmic recommendation to break. Chamath predicts this Court will not find it in its heart to protect big tech and thinks the case could go 9-0 against the platforms, left and right arriving at the same place for opposite reasons, and wants 230 rewritten to mandate algorithmic choice. Sacks wants common-carrier obligations imposed at some layer of the stack - certainly at the infrastructure layer (AWS, Cloudflare, PayPal, banks, ISPs) - arguing the platforms operate as a speech cartel driven by political rather than market forces. Friedberg takes the other side: these are private, genuinely contested markets (TikTok, Spotify) and government intervention degrades the product. Tradeable as a merit-independent liability and compliance overhang on the algorithmic-feed platforms.
other ideas on the same ticker, same direction: ChatGPT takes Google search share and the market starts pricing the decay 21 (GOOGL) · Tort floodgates open on social media 20 (GOOGL) · Tort floodgates open on social media 20 (META) · Blue cities ban or license-cap robotaxis 20 (GOOGL) · Meta's AI assistant takes ten points of search share from Google 6 (GOOGL) · Narrow Section 230 carve-out unleashes a tort wave on social platforms 3 (META) · Narrow Section 230 carve-out unleashes a tort wave on social platforms 3 (SNAP)
⚖ Why this result
fully deterministic — computed from daily closes on the scoring date; nothing below is editable or hand-set
- Window: 2022-10-07 → 2023-10-07 — first mention + 12-month horizon, then the window locks.
- The call: ▼ SHORT GOOGL (primary play). GOOGL rose 39.4% over the window → return (sign flipped for a SHORT) = -39.4% (the call lost money).
- Benchmark: holding SPY over the same window returned +20.3%
→ vs SPY = -39.4 − (+20.3) = -59.7%
— what this call made or lost against just owning the index. This is the number the result uses.
Direction-only read: -19.2% — did GOOGL move the predicted way relative to the market. The two only differ on a SHORT: this call was right about direction relative to the index but still cost money versus holding it.
- Rule fired:
· RIGHT — return ≥ +10% AND beat SPY by 5+· HALF — return ≥ +5% OR beat SPY at all▶ WRONG — everything else
- Credit: supporters of a WRONG earn 0 each, opposers the opposite — this feeds the scoreboard. supported: Chamath, Friedberg, Jason, Sacks | proxy-sensitive: SNAP→PARTIAL (+19.0%)
Conviction timeline
bands: green ≥ 65 · watch ≥ 45 · ember ≥ 15
Plays vs SPY · % since first mention (2022-10-07)
Plays
| expression | symbol | kind | relevance | rationale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ▼ SHORT | GOOGL | stock | PRIMARY | YouTube is the named defendant in the Section 230 case SCOTUS agreed to hear |
| ▼ SHORT | META | stock | adjacent | the other algorithmic-feed platform directly exposed to both the 230 rollback and the Texas common-carrier law |
| ▼ SHORT | SNAP | stock | adjacent | smaller algorithmic-feed platform with the least capacity to absorb a compliance and liability regime |
Mention log newest first
“I'm worried that the conservatives on the Supreme Court are going to make the same mistake as conservative media has been making, which is to dramatically rein in or limit Section 230 protection, and it's going to blow up in our collective faces.”
“It does look like Congress is going to look into this. The two heads of the committees that are tasked with this have said that they're going to look into it next year.”
“And people may feel ashamed and they may feel upset about the fact that they were deranked or they were kind of, quote, shadow banned. But ultimately, that's the product they chose to make. And people have the choice and the option of going elsewhere.”
“And as soon as you do government intervention on these things and tell them what they can and can't take down, I really do think that over time you will limit the user experience to what is possible if you allow the free market to find the best path.”
“I've made the case before that I do think that common carrier requirements should apply on some level of the stack to protect the rights of ordinary Americans to have their speech in the face of these giant monopolies, which could otherwise de-platform them for arbitrary reasons.”
Who built this conviction
each voice's total push on the score, in conviction points across every mention — supports and opposes · share = % of all mention-driven movement
⏳ decay drained -78.2 over the idea's life — that's time passing, attributed to no one
Score events
| episode | kind | Δ | after | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E99 2022-10-07 | init | +42.0 | 42.0 | E99 born by Chamath (explicit_prediction x3) |
| E99 2022-10-07 | reinforce | +15.7 | 57.7 | E99 Sacks support x3 (new voice) |
| E99 2022-10-07 | oppose | -14.4 | 43.3 | E99 Friedberg opposes x3 |
| E100 2022-10-14 | decay | -1.7 | 41.5 | E100 silent |
| E101 2022-10-22 | decay | -1.7 | 39.9 | E101 silent |
| E102 2022-10-29 | decay | -1.6 | 38.3 | E102 silent |
| E103 2022-11-05 | decay | -1.5 | 36.7 | E103 silent |
| E105 2022-11-19 | decay | -1.5 | 35.3 | E105 silent |
| E106 2022-12-03 | decay | -1.4 | 33.9 | E106 silent |
| E107 2022-12-10 | oppose | -12.0 | 21.9 | E107 Friedberg opposes x2 |
| E107 2022-12-10 | reinforce | +11.7 | 33.6 | E107 Chamath support x2 |
| E107 2022-12-10 | reinforce | +14.9 | 48.5 | E107 Jason support x2 (new voice) |
| E108 2022-12-16 | reinforce | +6.2 | 54.7 | E108 Jason support x1 |
| E109 2022-12-24 | reinforce | +5.1 | 59.8 | E109 Michael Shellenberger support x2 (new voice) [w=0.50] |
| E109 2022-12-24 | reinforce | +6.0 | 65.8 | E109 Sacks support x2 |
| E110 2023-01-06 | decay | -2.6 | 63.2 | E110 silent |
| E111 2023-01-13 | decay | -2.5 | 60.7 | E111 silent |
| E112 2023-01-20 | decay | -2.4 | 58.2 | E112 silent |
| E113 2023-01-27 | decay | -2.3 | 55.9 | E113 silent |
| E114 2023-02-04 | decay | -2.2 | 53.7 | E114 silent |
| E115 2023-02-11 | decay | -2.1 | 51.5 | E115 silent |
| E116 2023-02-17 | reinforce | +7.3 | 58.8 | E116 Friedberg support x2 (flipped from oppose) |
| E116 2023-02-17 | reinforce | +7.4 | 66.2 | E116 Sacks support x3 |
| E116 2023-02-17 | reinforce | +6.1 | 72.3 | E116 Jason support x3 |
| E116 2023-02-17 | reinforce | +5.0 | 77.3 | E116 Chamath support x3 |
| E118 2023-03-03 | decay | -3.1 | 74.2 | E118 silent |
| E119 2023-03-11 | decay | -3.0 | 71.2 | E119 silent |
| E120 2023-03-17 | decay | -2.8 | 68.4 | E120 silent |
| E121 2023-03-24 | decay | -2.7 | 65.6 | E121 silent |
| E122 2023-03-31 | decay | -2.6 | 63.0 | E122 silent |
| E123 2023-04-07 | decay | -2.5 | 60.5 | E123 silent |
| E124 2023-04-14 | decay | -2.4 | 58.1 | E124 silent |
| E125 2023-04-21 | decay | -2.3 | 55.8 | E125 silent |
| E126 2023-04-28 | decay | -2.2 | 53.5 | E126 silent |
| E128 2023-05-12 | decay | -2.1 | 51.4 | E128 silent |
| E129 2023-05-19 | decay | -2.1 | 49.3 | E129 silent |
| E130 2023-05-26 | decay | -2.0 | 47.4 | E130 silent |
| E131 2023-06-02 | decay | -1.9 | 45.5 | E131 silent |
| E132 2023-06-10 | decay | -1.8 | 43.6 | E132 silent |
| E133 2023-06-16 | decay | -1.7 | 41.9 | E133 silent |
| E134 2023-06-24 | decay | -1.7 | 40.2 | E134 silent |
| E135 2023-07-01 | decay | -1.6 | 38.6 | E135 silent |
| E136 2023-07-09 | decay | -1.5 | 37.1 | E136 silent |
| E137 2023-07-14 | reinforce | +9.4 | 46.5 | E137 Sacks support x2 |
| E139 2023-07-27 | decay | -1.9 | 44.6 | E139 silent |
| E140 2023-08-04 | decay | -1.8 | 42.9 | E140 silent |
| E141 2023-08-11 | decay | -1.7 | 41.1 | E141 silent |
| E142 2023-08-18 | decay | -1.6 | 39.5 | E142 silent |
| E143 2023-08-25 | decay | -1.6 | 37.9 | E143 silent |
| E144 2023-09-01 | decay | -1.5 | 36.4 | E144 silent |
| E146 2023-09-22 | decay | -1.5 | 34.9 | E146 silent |
| E147 2023-09-29 | decay | -1.4 | 33.5 | E147 silent |
| E148 2023-10-07 | decay | -1.3 | 32.2 | E148 silent |