Repealing Section 230 - What Does That Really Mean?

Repealing Section 230 has been a hot call this year, even hotter now that it's been tied to additional Covid relief in the Senate. And it's certainly been a hot topic for President Trump all year, even tied into his veto of the defense budget. But there's a serious amount of confusion about what 230 is and how it came about. So, let's start at the beginning.

Section 230 was part of the Communication Decency Act of 1996. Yes, a good 10 years before social media even really existed. It doesn't just protect social media companies from lawsuits coming from what is said on their platforms, it protects all platforms. The language is pretty simple:

"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"

As the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) explains here, Section 230 gives broad protection from what is said on the internet to the carriers of that information:

In other words, online intermediaries that host or republish speech are protected against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do. The protected intermediaries include not only regular Internet Service Providers (ISPs), but also a range of "interactive computer service providers," including basically any online service that publishes third-party content.

As I said in this Twitter thread, its protections go far beyond just letting Twitter/Facebook share fake news. Without Section 230:

• Conspiracy websites like Qanon, Infowars and even Michael Flynn's new "patriot" website could not be hosted.
• Hate groups would never have been allowed on the air/internet.
• Companies like OANN and Newsmax would never be allowed to start.
• Companies could be held even more liable for things it's employees said in email/Slack, etc., and would need to monitor your communications on those channels in a deeper way.
• Email providers might need to approve every email before it's sent.
• And Trump, who complains about 230 almost daily, would not have any platform to constantly lie about things like that he actually won the election.

Technically, 230 even protects you when you pass along that off-color email or make a racist comment about a coworker through an online channel. Think about what would happen to all the communication tools we use today, email, Slack, etc., if they were liable for EVERYTHING said on them.

These are just some of the examples of the way we're all protected by Section 230. The truth is, if 230 is repealed, it wouldn't actually solve the problem that people think it addresses at all. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc., might have the financial and legal resources to figure out a way to deal with a repeal, but there's not likely an ability for smaller companies or start-ups to be able to put in place the guardrails they'd need to operate.

The big issue with repealing 230 is that it only attacks one side of the equation, supply. It doesn't deal with the other side of the issue at all - demand.

Lots of folks want to believe in in fake news, misinformation and even hate. It doesn't matter how often we tag information as not being accurate or how much evidence there is against their position, they want to believe. Remember, there are people today who believe the world is flat and have to work very hard to keep that believe in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

At Sydney's school, they actually had classes in how to not only find information, but use critical thinking skills to determine the value of that information. That's not to say that we can't disagree of have different point of views, but there has to be a better understanding of the shared truths that we will hold as a society. We're no where near that right now and until that happens, everything is is IMHO pretty useless.

Repealing Section 230 is an easy and wrong answer to a much more complicated problem. Once again, without solving the underlying reasons, we won't really solve the problems we have as a society at all.