section 230 has become the single most
important law
shaping online platforms in simple terms
it's the law that protects services if a
user posts something illegal
but as these services have become bigger
and more controversial
people are more seriously calling for
the law to change if you have any kind
of problem with facebook or youtube
somebody's probably proposed fixing it
by changing section 230
and as pressure in congress builds those
fixes could have huge consequences for
the rest of the internet
when 230 is created it is created by
people newly creating this nascent
internet
our laws shouldn't remain stagnant as
they were 25 years ago it doesn't mean
we get rid of them
it means we change them so let's talk
about how we got here
in the mid 90s a lot of the internet was
message boards some tiny and independent
others on bigger services like
compuserve prodigy and aol
and when a user posted something
libelous or otherwise illegal
a couple of court rulings effectively
punished companies for moderating
content
they basically said that if a site took
down some posts it could become legally
responsible for other posts
while just letting a service run wild
could keep companies out of trouble
lawmakers thought this was a bad idea so
when they passed the communications
decency act in 1996
they included section 230 to settle the
question
the first part says that interactive
computer services
apps websites newspaper comment sections
aol
and so on can't be legally treated as
the publisher of their users posts
the second part says you can't sue a
platform for good faith moderation
efforts
overall the point is simple when a site
or app accepts user-generated content
it typically doesn't accept liability
for that content
no matter how it moderates a lot of
conservative politicians have gotten
this wrong
claiming there are separately regulated
categories of platforms and publishers
and that moderation makes you a
publisher with more legal liability
in reality section 230 was literally
written so this wouldn't happen
so some of these same politicians have
tried to roll back or abolish section
230 to change this
trying to make it tougher for sites to
suspend users like former president
donald trump
as you know i have long been concerned
about twitter's
pattern of censoring and silencing
individual americans why do you block
anything
well we have policies that are focused
on making sure that more voices on the
platform are possible
we see a lot of abuse and harassment
which ends up silencing people and
helping them leave from the platform
now the first amendment also says
companies probably don't have to publish
speech they don't like
including trump posts but section 230
makes it easier to fight a potentially
expensive lawsuit
when democrats like current president
joe biden talk about abolishing section
230 though
they're usually referring to a more
complicated problem if somebody slanders
you in a youtube video
or criminally harasses you on facebook
section 230 says
you should sue or prosecute the original
offender not the platform that hosts
them
but on an internet with billions of
users troll mobs and automated systems
can spread this content
really fast and going after each user is
almost impossible
lots of democrats and some republicans
want sites to take a more active role in
policing illegal content
and they think that right now section
230 lets companies escape responsibility
i just think that social media has to be
more socially conscious
of what is important in terms of
our democracy i for one think we should
be considering taking away the exemption
that they cannot be sued for
knowingly engaged on promoting something
that's not true
trusting that they will be regulated
into actually caring about the problems
of hate speech is
in my opinion a very silly wicket if
you're going to do it by
via 2 30. the internet's issues are way
bigger than section 230.
to explore them the verge held a panel
discussion with the general counsels of
the wikimedia foundation and vimeo
as well as writer and researcher sadette
harry they laid out the complex problems
that any legal reform would have to deal
with
and the potential impact of getting it
wrong no amount of section 230 perform
is going to fix the fact that the first
amendment
also protects a lot of speech online
even if you took away section 230 today
you're still not going to be able to sue
platforms for
you know misinformation about the
election uh misinformation about
vaccines
you know things that are hateful to
minority groups
but if you look at the people who
actually do sue for things like
defamation it's generally the people in
power
it's not the people out of power and so
by removing section 230 protections
do you privilege those people over
people who can't afford a lawyer will
never sue you anyway
i think you probably do it just becomes
the billion dollar tech companies
throwing money around
to silence whoever's going to be a
problem and no matter what if it
goes to money and law the people will
lose
and that is the worst possible outcome
these issues go way beyond quote-unquote
big tech
there are smaller sites that basically
exist just to promote harassment
non-consensual pornography and other
criminal behavior
and right now section 230 protects them
along with
every other site on the internet but a
lot of companies
non-profits and ordinary people are just
trying to run a cider app in good faith
and changing section 230 could catch
them in the crossfire
are you going to create a situation
where you need you know so-called army
of moderators
to deal with the problem because if so i
think you risk entrenching the large
players
like facebook and others because they
already do have virtually limited
resources
and can deal with the issue so far
congress has introduced some potential
changes and they basically fall into two
categories
the first is making sites earn section
230 protections
the pact act for instance says that
sites need to publish a clear moderation
policy
they need to remove illegal content
within 24 hours of hearing about it
and they need to staff a phone helpline
with actual human beings
the pact act also includes a small site
exemption
so it could theoretically have a smaller
impact on the internet
the second category is limiting what
kind of content section 230 covers
that's the goal of the new safe tech act
which adds liability for
a bunch of different offending content
including harassment
and wrongful death but when congress has
limited protections before
it's often accidentally created more
problems i really
worry about the kind of abuse if there
was overly
broad restrictions on people's ability
to host
what is actually knowledge i would want
to make sure that
any intervention was narrowly and
specifically tailored without creating
some of the kind of unintended
consequences for real people
that have made real people less safe
section 230 doesn't cover copyright
infringement for instance
so sites have created takedown systems
and automated filters
to catch pirated content but trolls
abuse these systems to censor users
and the flagging systems make a lot of
mistakes and that is
the crux of this is that the same things
that protects us the same things that
enable harm against us are intertwined
and that is what we're teasing out and i
am not
comfortable with any discussion that
pretends we will solve the problems of
people or solve the problems of
democracy with a large
opening one-size-fits-all discussion
section 230 often gets
looked at as the only tool in the
toolbox if privacy is our concern
we should focus on privacy laws if it's
data security we should focus on data
security laws
i worry about locking in sort of the
technology of you know 2021
i frankly don't think we're where we've
got it right the internet has real
problems
and since section 230 helped create the
internet as we know it
you can blame it for some of them but
section 230 also helped create a lot of
what we love about the internet
so as lawmakers try to change it the
real question is whether good intentions
will translate into good results i
ordered some potatoes this is my fault
not the online company
this is what i received three potatoes
of this size
these kinds of things have happened to
me often i take the blame
we know that the virtues of technology
have helped us
very much get through this pandemic but
at the same time
there's so much we need to fix