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A few quick notes about section 230
In The Wolf of Wall Street, Scorsesse tells the story of a firm named Straton Oakmont a predatory stock brokerage. Shortly before they fell apart, they successfully sued America Online for defamation, as a user of that service was blowing the whistle on them. What a ridiculous outcome. Congress thought so too so they created blanket immunity for Internet service providers for material flowing through their systems. After all, AOL said nothing, a user did.
There is a strong literature base both on Section 230 and content moderation in general, so I will keep this brief:
Section 230 is key to free speech online, ending it chills free expression.
First, there is no part of section 230 that bans feed management or attempts to manage a product. The closest you get to this are claims in cases like Roomates, that Section 230 does not provide blanket immunity against fair housing law. That is a good thing. Twitter doesn’t “lose” 230 protection because they don’t allow you to engage in illegal activity on their platform or because they exercise their right to edit their system. This was a convenient fiction for firms that didn’t want to take moderation seriously. Examples you hear of Section 230 failing are not about editing, they are about a secondary issue like fair housing violations or crimes. Not allowing the President to lie is not a…
