Wired June 2021 pp32-47 “Sacred Commandment” “False Idol” “Here’s The True Story of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act” by Gilad Edelman
Table from itif.org Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
Read the Wired article for all detail
Excerpted Quotes
“Section 230 [ part c) 1 reads] “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” [part c) 2 reads] “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.”
“This law keeps internet companies from being held responsible for people post and share.”
“Some people want to get rid of it but don’t understand how it works.”
“Others say that altering it would bring the whole internet crashing down.”
“It’s too late to scrape Section 230 completely. The question is how to change the law to address its worse side effects without placing internet companies under impossible legal burdens.”
Summary provided by 2244
Section 230 is now 25 years old but most of us have no idea about its pivotal role in assisting the rise of internet blogs and social media (SM). We are collectively perplexed by the ease with which lies and absolute falsehoods take hold today largely via SM. For sure we’ve experienced many news flashes where “a lie gets halfway around the world while the truth is still tying its shoes.” This should be distinguished by good old garden variety bias observed notably in the regulated media with the likes of The New York Times Vs. The Wall Street Journal and Fox News Vs. MSNBC. Traditional media is indeed held accountable for what they publish and so walk the line between bias and falsehoods. It is noted by the author, Gilad Edelman, that “America is a liar’s paradise. The First Amendment gives wide berth to hucksters, charlatans, and gaslighters under the wise premise that the government generally shouldn’t get to decide what’s true and what isn’t. But the legal systems does impose certain limits on speech…lawsuits [can result] in significant cost associated with inventing, popularizing, and perhaps profiting off of…a Big Lie.”
Politically, Democrats believe that Section 230 (230) “lets companies get away with doing too little moderation” while Republicans believe that 230 allows too much moderation. Having said that it’s possible that there’s enough “bipartisan overlap for reform legislation.” Especially noted, but certainly not proved, Senators Cruz and Hawley believe that 230 “gives social media platforms legal cover to discriminate against conservatives.” In the 25 years since its inception in 1996, 230 has been tested and shaped by “how it has been interpreted and sometimes misinterpreted-by judges.” In legal terms, unlike The First Amendment, 230 falls under Tort Law which is “how the legal system holds people responsible when they wrong someone else” and specifically defamation which is another telling "a lie that hurt your reputation” by various means including publishing that lie. An interesting and clarifying case, for the common man, is Lunney v Prodigy Services Co. “A father sued Prodigy after someone opened up fake accounts impersonating his teenage son” and by emailing nefarious content. “The court ruled that Prodigy was analogous to a telecom company. Just as you can’t sue AT&T when someone impersonates you over the phone, the teenager’s parents couldn’t hold Prodigy liable.” Understandable but this doesn’t “take into account…bad Samaritan websites that intentionally, rather than passively host illegal or defamatory content; platforms that refuse to take down libel, threats, or revenge porn, even after being notified.” The SM giants like Twitter and Facebook have increasingly taken steps toward acting on findings identified by moderators or user complaints. They take actions against that post material violating content restrictions. They enforce actions by taking down the prohibited content and suspending the account involved.
So, the focus has shifted from efforts to “scrap Section 230” to designing reasonable steps to solve the SM/230 conundrum. Such talk has come understandably with opposition ranging from the general inertia to change to calls that change would favor large firms at the expense of small firms and even “bring the whole internet crashing down” “The most sweeping piece of legislation…[so far]…called the Safe Tech Act…would remove protections from specific categories of civil claims, including wrongful death…cyberstalking and harassment, and civil rights law violations.” Still a problem would remain, “if [a] defamer is anonymous and can’t be tracked down: The victim can’t hold anyone responsible.” Zuckerberg (Facebook) and “organizations like the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Muslin Advocates, Color of Change, and the National Hispanic Media Coalition” favor reform of 230. A feature of Tort Law “is that when someone is responsible for a bad thing, they should have to pay or at least make it stop.” Companies could, with reform, or voluntarily act to prevent defamation etc.