in 1995 senator james exon
brought a blue binder to the floor of
the senate it was full of
well the most hardcore perverse
types of pornography the images came
from the internet
exxon wanted his fellow senators to
realize what kids could see
come by my desk and take a look at this
disgusting
material with just the click of a button
it's certainly not hard to find and i
was just like dad
get a load of this in the mid 90s
americans debated how to handle
all kinds of objectionable content on
the web including hate speech and
defamation
out of that debate came a law that
helped create the modern internet
and now both republicans and democrats
want it changed
it's called section 230 section 230
should be revoked but what does that law
actually do
and what would happen to the internet if
we changed
[Applause]
the thing to remember about the 90s is
on your mark
get set we're riding on the internet
the internet was young and few people
really understood it
allison can you explain what internet is
it seemed cool
well it's very hip to be on the internet
right now
now that i've gotten on the internet i'd
rather be on my computer than doing just
about
anything it's really cool but we hadn't
agreed on what to do with all the
objectionable content
or if we should do anything james exon
the senator with the porn binder
wanted the government to clean up the
internet by effectively making indecent
material like porn
illegal online and so he proposed an
amendment to the telecommunications act
called the decency act
the communications decency act but two
members of congress
christopher cox and ron wyden thought
that companies would do a better job
cleaning the internet up themselves
there was just one big legal problem
there were court cases that perversely
made internet
providers liable if they tried to
exercise editorial discretion keep
smut off the internet and so on at the
time courts held that
internet providers like prodigy which
moderated some user content
were potentially liable for anything
their users posted
so the companies faced a choice clean up
their websites and risk
getting sued or go totally hands off and
face no legal consequences
coxswain widen didn't like that that is
backwards
we want to encourage people like prodigy
like compuserve like america online like
the new microsoft network to do
everything possible for us
the customer to help us control what
comes in and what our children see
so coxswain wyden wrote a provision
section 230
that let companies moderate content
without being on the legal hook for it
their hope is that internet companies
would in good faith
police objectionable content on the web
we came to
call it the sword and the shield
and the sword is the ability to take
down
horrible stuff on the internet the
shield
is the protection from frivolous
litigation
section 230 was added to senator exons
communications decency act
and the whole thing passed in 1996
but then exon's porn ban ran into one
big
wall the first amendment free speech
advocates are hailing a ruling the u.s
government cannot enforce
the communications decency act without
violating the constitutional right to
free speech
you you probably guessed that because uh
there's
spoiler alert there's porn on the
internet but the courts let section 230
stand and that little law created a
massive
industry so you think about facebook
twitter youtube even wikipedia none of
these
business models could exist in their
current forms
if the platforms had to
defend in court the veracity of every
single thing that people post
the story of section 230 is the story of
the internet
more and more people posting what they
want online and websites not getting
sued for it because of their legal
shield
the dark side of that story started
pretty early in 1995
when an anonymous user on aol
impersonated a man named kenneth zarin
and used his name and phone number to
sell t-shirts glorifying the oklahoma
city bombing
at the time it was a fairly novel
approach of really ruining someone's
life
after receiving a tsunami of threatening
phone calls
zarin begged aol to take down the
anonymous user's ads
they for a while would take him down but
then they stopped listening to him he
was annoying
they just moved on zarin sued aol in
1996
but the court said section 230 allowed
aol to leave
up the posts even after zarin reported
them
aol got to use section 230 shield in
other words
without ever having to touch its sword
it becomes effectively
the law of the land you could keep up
the content no matter how horrific how
defamatory it is
and you are not going to be liable for
it carrie goldberg is a lawyer who says
the broad
immunity section 230 shield gives
internet companies
has made some of them lazy and
irresponsible
section 230 is not a law that protects
free speech
section 230 is a law that protects an
industry
four years ago her client matthew
herrick was impersonated by a vengeful
ex-boyfriend
on the dating app grinder he would
create
profiles using matthew's picture and his
name
and then send unwitting people
to matthew's home and to his job to have
sex with matthew
matthew herrick says for months he
couldn't go to the restaurant where he
waited tables or his home
without men he didn't know approaching
him for sex or drugs matthew was
receiving sometimes
23 people in person
at his home and often matthew's ex
would say that matthew was into rape
fantasies
so he was setting matthew up to be
sexually assaulted
herrick said he filed 50 complaints with
grindr and the company never did
anything we were suing them ultimately
for
releasing a dangerous product onto the
marketplace but the court said that
just like in the zarin aol case grinder
didn't have to help herrick
it was in my opinion the most expansive
and extravagant interpretation of
section 230 to date
goldberg thinks that section 230 should
be changed or revoked
so people like herrick could sue for
internet companies negligence
everybody should have the right to be
able to sue somebody
or a company who has harmed you or is
continuing to harm you
and so i see this not as a speech issue
but an access to justice issue
you know why do these harms happen it's
the combination
of the perpetrator and the platform site
operators should only enjoy immunity
from liability
if they're engaged in reasonable content
moderation practices
right there has to be an exchange like
you get the legal shield
but you've got to do something today
section 230 has helped create an
internet industry worth more than a
trillion dollars
section 230 is how these companies have
gotten big it's how they've gotten
powerful until they've gotten rich
and agreeing on what it would mean for
these companies to use section 230 sword
and shield responsibly
has gotten harder it depends on what you
think the problem is
democrats want companies like facebook
to do more policing
of disinformation because it is not
merely
an internet company it is propagating
falsehoods they know to be false but
some republicans claim
there's a different problem censorship
of conservative views
and they want to change or scrap section
230 to make internet companies do
less policing the big tech oligarchs
have declared war
on the republican party and
conservatives i think it's time that we
consider the outright repeal
of section 230. tweaking section 230
might help individual victims of abuse
like matthew herrick
and it could make internet companies
more accountable for the way they
moderate content
but defenders of the law say that
changing it too much
could undermine people's freedom to post
what they want online
what i think we need are changes that
are very carefully tailored
and that address a particular harm and
that also consider
how do we address this harm without
just sort of causing total chaos to the
existing internet that we know
you