Section 230: What is the law that’s causing so much big tech buzz? – The Dallas Morning News

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz wants to throw it out. Some Democrats agree, but for different reasons. Either way, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has generated a lot of buzz on Capitol Hill when it comes to its role in protecting internet platforms from liability in content moderation.

Virtually any platform that hosts content by users also moderates that content, whether its comments posted by readers on articles, blogs, photos, videos or other items shared on social media. Its not the first time there have been calls to change the law that gives platforms leeway on how much they can moderate that content.

Lawmakers across the political spectrum have criticized the law but for different reasons. Cruz argued to repeal the law in a 2018 debate with Beto ORourke because he believes it allows social media platforms to quash conservative voices. Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has called it a real gift to Big Tech, and she has called for social media companies to take more responsibility for content shared on their platforms.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden has called for the law to be revoked, specifically saying Facebook is not merely an internet company. It is propagating falsehoods they know to be false.

Section 230 took the spotlight again last week when Twitter limited sharing on a New York Post story that suggested Biden used his position to benefit his son Hunters business dealings in Ukraine. Conservatives, who have long argued their speech has been impeded on social media, used the opportunity as a battle cry to summon Big Tech CEOs before Congress and challenge Section 230.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to subpoena Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify about their handling of the New York Post story.

This poses the single greatest threat to free speech in America today, Cruz said in a press call with the Media Research Center Monday. It poses the single greatest threat to democracy in America, and it also poses the single greatest threat to a free press.

But what is Section 230? And what does it allow and not allow?

Dubbed the 26 words that created the internet, by Jeff Kosseff, a cybersecurity law professor at the United States Naval Academy, Section 230 was signed into law in 1996, in the nascence of the internet.

While the internet looked very different from the way it does now, platforms still existed and hosted content by third-party sources. And some of that content was libelous.

As libel cases kept coming to courts, lawmakers had to decide who to hold responsible for that content, said Victoria Ekstrand, associate professor of journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Should platforms be held to the same liability standards of publishers, like a newspaper? Or should they be considered an entity that doesnt have that secondary liability, like a bookstore?

At the time, lawmakers knew very little of what the future internet would look like, but they knew it was capable of doing things that were never possible before. Eric Goldman, professor of law at Santa Clara University School of Law, said thats why Section 230 was born.

In order to preserve the opportunity for the internet to reach its potential, Section 230 said: Were going to give the internet more favorable treatment than other media so that it can do the things its capable of, Goldman said.

In that spirit, Section 230s Good Samaritan clause says that internet platforms are not publishers, so they are broadly not responsible for what users post (with the exception of federal criminal liability, privacy violations and intellectual property-based claims), and they cannot be held liable for actions taken in good faith to restrict access to content they believe could be harmful to others.

While at first, it may seem the clause gives no incentive for businesses to moderate their platforms, its actually the opposite. Companies want to police their platforms because if they dont, the platforms become cesspools of spam and harassment, Goldman said.

But they dont want to risk legal trouble every time they moderate content.

Section 230 was passed to create a robust atmosphere for speech online, and for the growth of the internet, Ekstrand said. But the other part was to encourage what we think of now as content moderation, so the platform can go in there and content moderate, but theyre protected from that secondary liability.

If the only way to moderate content without liability is to do it perfectly, then there is very little incentive to do so. Goldman calls it the moderators dilemma.

Section 230 allows internet platforms to moderate content or not without that fear, but lawmakers on the right and the left argue that Big Tech now has too much power over public discourse.

Republican lawmakers, including Cruz, argue that the law allows Big Tech companies to use their power to silence conservative voices.

But whether platforms should host content they do not want to is not a Section 230 question, said Daxton Stewart, professor of journalism at Texas Christian University. It is a First Amendment question.

Thats really what web moderation is about in all these companies, Stewart said. They get to pick and choose who is welcome on their site and whos not. And because theyre not the government, theyre a private company, they get to do that. And thats the First Amendment. That has nothing to do with Section 230.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats argue that tech companies need to take more responsibility for content on their platforms, specifically misinformation. But that can be a slippery slope, said Goldman. If platforms are held liable for certain kinds of content, they might just restrict that content, so they dont have to worry about it at all.

The main question of Section 230 debate, Stewart said, is who should be in charge of making companies responsible for their moderation practices the government or their users?

The problem is, neither of those are great answers because the government gets involved, you get First Amendment concerns, Stewart said. And you do have to worry that the governments going to start picking winners and losers about what a good platform is, but with companies like Facebook, which are basically monopolies, walkouts from individual consumers are unlikely to make much of a difference.

Either way, in a market partly shaped by Section 230, it is likely that changes to the law could change the internet environment we are used to, which some experts view as a net loss.

We, as internet users, are the most likely to lose, Goldman said.

Whoever wins that battle is almost certainly going to create an internet that is less of what we think we enjoy today ... Think about so many things that have gone right with the internet, how many ways it makes our lives better on an hour-by-hour basis. And if those start folding, rolling up and exiting the market, then whats left for us?

More here:

Section 230: What is the law that's causing so much big tech buzz? - The Dallas Morning News