Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has been the subject of repeated calls by President Joe Biden. During a listening session on tech platform accountability, he called for it to be done.
The liability shield that protects social media platforms that distribute third-party content has been called for to be removed.
Congress passed Section 230 in 1996 in order to prevent children from being exposed to pornography on the internet. The laws of the era made it difficult for website operators to tackle the challenge, and any attempt to moderate online content made it worse. Section 230 was put into law by Congress to make it easier for tech companies and website owners to remove problematic content.
The internet would not be possible without Section 230. Any company that operates a social media platform would be in big trouble. Imagine a world in which the Wikimedia Foundation could be sued for making changes to the encyclopedia. The site wouldn't be around anymore. Section 230 makes it possible for you to leave comments on our website.
Section 230 has become a hot-button issue for both Republicans and Democrats over the past five years. The provision of law that protects companies that host enormous amounts of troubling content, from health and political misinformation to pages and groups instigating real world violence, has come to the attention of many lawmakers.
According to many experts, fiddling with the law could lead to the curtailment of speech online. Imagine if a company like YouTube had more reason to fear being sued and what that would mean for the amount of banned content. With the constant threat of financial loss dangling over their heads, one could only imagine how much more widespread account suspensions would become for companies likeTwitter and Facebook.
Many digital rights organizations pushing for better content moderation at the big social media firms have sought non-legislative solutions to problems of misinformation, racism, and violence. Most of these campaigns have yielded little results.
Biden has called for reform of Section 230 in the past, but his language on the campaign trail was much different. Biden told the New York Times that the law should be repealed immediately. The law is the foundation of the modern internet, Biden said. It's exactly correct. And it should be taken away.
After taking office, Biden adopted a more tenable position, exchanging the word "revoke" for "reform" with his former press secretary. Psaki told reporters that Biden supports privacy and antitrust reforms. There were criticisms of social media failures to crack down on misinformation related to vaccines and elections.
The White House has referred to Section 230 a number of times. The language used by those at 1600 Pennsylvania this week was to single out large tech platforms. Several bills in recent years have done that by segregating the world's largest corporations from smaller mom-and-pop websites and limiting enforcement to corporations with over a billion users worldwide.
It isn't Biden's responsibility to decide if Section 230 is amended. Congress would be responsible for that. Biden is fulfilling his role by keeping the topic fresh and urging legislators to act. There are a lot of laws that have been thrown around by both parties, but they have never been voted on. The internet might be grateful that many of these bills have been overly aggressive.
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