The 230th Division is in its 30th year and faces its biggest tests yet

Thirty years ago today, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a bill credited with creating the foundation for the modern Internet, became law and set in motion a chain of events that would make it a lightning rod for the technology world.

The platform has survived everything from the dot-com bubble to a Supreme Court challenge that struck down the text surrounding it in the CDA. But while that represents a major milestone, Section 230 faces what could be among its biggest threats yet, as prominent lawmakers plan to strike it down and a mountain of legal challenges gives courts the opportunity to narrow its scope.

Article 230 once It’s called “The twenty-six words that created the Internet” He reads: “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.” In other words, online platforms that host user-generated content cannot be held responsible for what those users choose to say on their platforms. The Good Samaritan clause allows these platforms to moderate content in good faith, protecting them from civil liability for blocking access to obscene, violent or harassing content. The law does not protect platforms from claims under criminal law.

In the years since President Bill Clinton signed the broader Communications Act of 1996, Section 230 has become practically a caricature. Depending on who you ask, it may be either in The most harmful root Maintained by social media platforms Very thing Keep online afloat. What started as a wildly popular act to prevent the nascent tech industry from being crushed under the weight of frivolous lawsuits over hosting user-generated content has become one of the most hated laws among many members of Congress — some of whom voted for it in the first place.

“As House Minority Leader in 1996, I voted for it because social media platforms told us that without these protections, America would never have an online economy,” former Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Missouri) said at a news conference last week in which Representative Joseph Gordon-Levitt participated alongside parents who lost children after harms they say were facilitated by online platforms, from sextortion to fentanyl poisoning. 1996, social media platforms are telling us that without these protections, America will never have an Internet economy. They also said the platforms were just a dumb pipe that only carried content produced by others.” They gathered to defend a bill introduced by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to Sunset section 230 Within two years, it will hopefully force lawmakers and tech companies to finally break with the status quo and put them under pressure to come up with workable reforms.

Gebhart says that at the time of his vote, lawmakers had no idea what algorithms were and how they could capture people’s attention for hours on end and “brainwash” them. Armed with new knowledge about technology, he says it’s time to “correct the action I and many others did 30 years ago.”

Gebhardt’s sentiments on Section 230 may be widely shared, but they also face strong opposition. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a co-author of the law whose name was attached to the amendment that would become known as Section 230, doesn’t see the law as wrong. In fact, he says Edge In a phone interview, now would be “the worst possible time to repeal Section 230.”

“Trump and his fellow MAGA billionaires will be in the driver’s seat to rewrite our laws on online expression,” Wyden warns, saying it would be like “handing (Trump) a grenade launcher aimed directly at people who want to have a voice.” While many opponents of Section 230 believe platforms like Instagram and YouTube are the giant players they believe have benefited for too long from the law’s protections, Wyden says platforms like Bluesky and Wikipedia, and groups that use social To monitor the actions of ICEHe will also suffer without her. Thirty years later, he says, “The law stands for exactly the same thing, which is: Are you going to stand up for people who don’t have power, who don’t have influence, who are looking for a way to be heard? Because the people at the top, the people who have a lot of money, are always going to have ways to get their message out and get their content out. And the First Amendment and what we’re talking about is a lifeline for people of modest means.”

Wyden recalls preparing the text that would become Section 230 with former Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA) over lunch “in a cubby where members of Congress could eat a sandwich and complain about the world.” The bill would help solve the problem direction Which arose from two recent legal cases: Courts have found that online platforms can be held liable for what users post on them if they make any effort to remove or restrict posts they find objectionable, but as long as they do nothing at all, they can escape accountability.

Today, advocates for Section 230 say it is necessary to incentivize tech platforms to do basic moderation on a large scale, preventing them from becoming an instant cesspool, and preventing them from being incentivized to remove posts that the government might object to. This has become especially prominent at a time when many technology executives have done so Rubbing shoulders with President Donald Trump, Lawsuits settled With him For millions of dollarsand Update their moderation standards Once he resumes office. “What would the Internet look like without 230?” asks Amy Buss, vice president of government affairs at NetChoice, a group whose members work in the technology industry, including Meta, Google, Pinterest and Reddit. “It will force platforms and websites to remove third-party content. This is content created by ordinary Americans.”

But opponents of Section 230 say companies with deep pockets now unfairly benefit from protections previously reserved for the startup industry. In court, Section 230 is often a “don’t pass the Go” card in lawsuits against tech platforms. Only a few plaintiffs have been able to overcome this hurdle. But this year, Several cases will be tried It could reshape the outer limits of Section 230’s broad protections. The cases, which include one brought by New Mexico’s attorney general against Meta for allegedly facilitating child predators, and others brought by individual plaintiffs and school districts who say they have been harmed by allegedly addictive social media designs, will give jurors the opportunity to determine what constitutes a decision a platform can be found negligent in making, and what First Amendment-protected speech or third-party content is covered under Section 230.

These cases could create an opportunity for the Supreme Court to finally rule on the appropriate application of Section 230 in the modern era. At the press conference in support of repealing Section 230, Danny Painter, chief legal officer at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), said, Edge The way the courts have interpreted the law over the years is a big part of the problem. “Even with the language of 230 as it is now, I don’t think they should be given immunity in some of the cases they’re in,” Painter says of tech companies. “I think part of it is that judges and lawyers don’t necessarily understand how these technology companies operate.” This created a dynamic that allowed the case law around Section 230 to take on “a life of its own,” according to Pinter. “I think we need to delete 230, and rewrite it to restart the clock.”

Wyden says he is open to some targeted reforms to the law, including regarding technology companies’ product design choices, the issue at the heart of the cases to be tried this year. And agrees to the result Case against Snape Which found that Section 230 couldn’t prevent the company from facing a lawsuit for allegedly encouraging reckless driving with its Snapchat speed filters. “We’re not against talking about targeted changes, but my principles were: You can’t target the freedom of expression that the Constitution protects, and you can’t discourage moderation,” Wyden says. “And the bills I’ve seen violate one or both of those principles.”

when Edge When Durbin was asked during the press conference whether he saw validity in concerns that repealing Section 230 would make it more likely that tech companies would remove content that the administration might find objectionable, Durbin replied: “The only business in America that is not harmed by their own mistakes is Big Tech.” Although he said he was “all for the Constitution and freedom of expression… there are limits.”

Section 230 was last updated in 2018, with Passage of the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA)which created a new exception that removed liability protections for conduct that “encourages or facilitates prostitution” or from facing civil or criminal charges for sex trafficking. Help change arrive Closing the classifieds site Backpage.comwhich was largely viewed as a victory by supporters. but The sex workers said Not having a system that allowed them to screen potential customers more easily made them less safe. Three years after it was signed into law, a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that Carving was used very rarely To bring cases to court.

Many grieving parents stumbled upon the Section 230 press conference as they sought some form of justice for their child’s death. Christine Pride’s son, Carson, died by suicide at the age of 16 after being cyberbullied on an app called Yolo, which is integrated into Snapchat and allows users to send anonymous messages. The bride described the “second darkest day” of her life, after the day her son died, as the day a lawyer told her that because of Section 230, she had no legal recourse against social media platforms. Even if it was the Court of Appeal Finally let the bride move on With her lawsuit against Yolo for product misrepresentation and the case dragging on, it wasn’t the way she imagined it would be. “I wanted discovery, a jury, a trial, and a chance to confront Yolo’s creator, Gregoire Henrion, and look him in the eye and let him know how his priorities of making a quick buck with kids’ online safety in mind were ruining our family,” she says. “But that will never happen. Because after years of Section 230 appeals, Yolo is now a shell with no funding, unable to hire lawyers to defend the case.”

There is one emerging area of ​​technology that the authors of Section 230 and its harshest critics agree should not be outdone: artificial intelligence. “The law clearly states that it does not protect anyone who creates or develops content, even partially — and generative AI applications like ChatGPT, by definition, create content,” Cox and Wyden said. books In a 2023 editorial luck. In the age of artificial intelligence, lawmakers are echoing discussions similar to those of 30 years ago about how to balance boosting the nascent industry while ensuring it does not spread. Ahead of the anniversary of Section 230, a coalition of groups advocating for online safety measures for children and artificial intelligence Senate leaders urged “Not creating new Shield for big tech companies by developing legislation that would broadly preempt state AI laws Repeated efforts Doing so could “recreate the same dynamics that followed the passage of Section 230.”