CHANGE IS COMING TO SECTION 230 Pressure mounts as news publishers, politicians and even Supreme Court justices ponder the platforms’ future
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n the simplest of Other folks want to terms, Section 230 — be able to sue the platforms or, more formally, for the content they do Section 230 of the allow on their apps and Communications Act of sites — content deemed 1934, enacted as part of the or proven harmful, like Communications Decency misinformation about Act in 1996 — distinguishes } By Gretchen A. Peck the global COVID-19 platforms from publishers. pandemic and vaccines, or Publishers can be held liable for content disinformation campaigns intended to they produce and disseminate, but the undermine U.S. elections. large tech platforms have successfully You can imagine the lawsuits argued that they should be exempt from that would rack up if Section 230 such legal risk, because they’re merely protections were repealed. It would pipelines for information and shouldn’t force the platforms to moderate possibly be held liable for the content its content, to become fact-checkers — users create and share. publishers, in earnest — and to censor Colloquially referred to as the “the their users more often rather than less. law that made the internet possible,” A full repeal would seem antithetical Section 230 unquestionably allowed the to what some members of Congress platforms to grow, flourish and reach say they’re advocating for. A year the epic proportions they enjoy today. ago, Congressional Republicans on Meta, for example, made $39.37 billion the House Energy and Commerce in 2021 alone, according to Statista. Committee said they had a plan for Section 230 has more recently been retooling Section 230. They wanted the scrutinized, especially by members of platforms to make a more concerted Congress and a certain former deeffort at detecting and censoring platformed President. criminal activities, like selling drugs It seems, no matter political or exploiting children, but they also affiliation, everyone wants to sue sought to prevent the platforms from the platforms, or at least have the censoring “political speech” — itself a option to sue them. Some critics broad and subjective definition. want the platforms to be held By July 2021, House Republican liable for subjective censorship and Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Jim deplatforming. They contend the rules Jordan had a draft bill in hand that that Twitter, Facebook and others would require the tech companies adopt are subjective, politically biased, to disclose to the Federal Trade and amount to censorship in the digital Commission quarterly about rules on “public square.” content and how they’re being enforced.
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Former President Donald J. Trump was a vociferous proponent of doing away with Section 230, but that was before he got into the social media business himself, with the launch of his TRUTH Social platform — with an interface that happens to look a lot like Twitter. In an op-ed published by The Week in February 2022, authors Nicole Saad Bembridge and Trevor Burrus wrote about the rockand-a-hard-place position in which TRUTH Social found itself almost immediately. Users are promised a “family friendly” experience, requiring moderation, removal of “hate speech, spam, pornography and bullying,” and even — gulp — the banishing of users who don’t abide by the rules, just like the platforms he criticized for deplatforming him. Though the former President is now occupied with flirtation with a future run and his new business venture, for which he put former Congressman Devin Nunes in charge, lawmakers left in D.C. carry on the quest to cancel Section 230. To get a sense of how laser-focused D.C. lawmakers are, consider these statistics, courtesy of Quinta Jurecic, a Brookings Institution fellow in governance studies, who penned a feature for Lawfareblog.com on March 15, 2022: “In the 116th Congress, lawmakers formally introduced more than 25 bills to amend or repeal the statute. The 117th Congress has already seen almost 30 such proposals. editorandpublisher.com
