The law allows Twitter to regulate, flag, and remove content posted by anyone, even the president.
What is Section 230?
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
But Wyden and Cox wanted to see to it any regulation wouldnt stifle the internets growth and innovation.
And it gives the platforms a sword by allowing them broad leeway to take down anything they deem offensive.
These critics have identified two main problems with Section 230.
Facebook and other large internet companies can monitor every word users share and instantly delete anything they dont like.
No communications medium in human history has ever worked this way.
President Trumps tiff with Twitter centers on his belief that the platformdiscriminates against conservative voices, particularly his own.
Twitter responded to the executive orderwith a tweetcalling it a reactionary and politicized approach to landmark law.
Facebook has taken a different approach.
In 1996, when the law was passed, the internet was largely chat rooms run by small startups.
A lot of the decisions companies make every day are not very clear or accountable.
The case settled out of court, and Facebook agreed to change its system.
The Wisconsin Supreme court ruled that, because of Section 230s protections,Armslist was not liable.
Similar issues come up with sites like Grindr, where features like geolocation can facilitate harassment offline.
Herrick alleged that he repeatedly petitioned Grindr to remove the account but the company did nothing.
But when Herrick sued, the case was thrown out based on Section 230 protections.
There are no civil rights without cyber civil rights, they wrote in a Harvard Law Review blog post.
Is there a solution?
(Craigslist founder Craig Newmark is a funder of The Markup.)
And many sex workers say the law has done the opposite of what it was intended to do.
The law would compel companies to comply with certain best practices or risk losing their Section 230 protections.
But critics say the law violates users privacy and free speech.
Other approaches have focused on content moderation, rather than on preventing specific crimes.
But critics say the law is overly vague.
But if we focus on the internets good contributions to society, were less apt to change the law.
This article wasoriginally published on The Markupby Sara Harrison, and was republished under theCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativeslicense.
