Section 230 Turns 30; Both Parties Want It Gone–For Contradictory Reasons
techdirt.comSection 230 is the reason why media was able to be consolidated into a few large corporations while eliminating higher-quality news organizations.
Section 230 allows anyone to be a journalist without facing consequences for false or incorrect information. This means a post on Facebook or YouTube or their own website has equal weight as a traditional news report that relies on higher standards, like verification through multiple sources.
So a company like Facebook can host any false or unverified article posted by some random weirdo, since Facebook can't be sued for hosting that info, and the controversy draws eyeballs and draws attention away from more traditional news content. So now the attention shifts to low-quality social media and away from traditional media.
Note that traditional media still had their own problems propagated through their ownership. We never really had high-quality independent media in the US, although the current indie-media landscape might have opportunities for growth the way they wouldn't have if traditional media still existed.
> Section 230 allows anyone to be a journalist without facing consequences for false or incorrect information. This means a post on Facebook or YouTube
Who doesn't face consequences for whose information? Nothing about Section 230 prevents you from being liable for your own words. Section 230 makes Facebook and YouTube immune from liability for what you post (barring exceptions specified in Section 230). Do note that the First Amendment also protects Facebook and YouTube from liability for what you post, but Section 230 immunity lets most such cases get dismissed before the discovery phase of a lawsuit.
> This means a post on Facebook or YouTube or their own website has equal weight as a traditional news report that relies on higher standards, like verification through multiple sources.
Equal weight how? If you mean that readers give similar truthfulness probabilities to posts on Facebook/YouTube/X/Twitter, I don't think that's the case.
> Section 230 is the reason why media was able to be consolidated into a few large corporations while eliminating higher-quality news organizations.
Could you explain in further detail how Section 230 is particularly responsible for media consolidation? Also, by "media", are you placing primarily social media companies in the same category as primarily news companies?
> Who doesn't face consequences for whose information?
People don't consequences because the cost for punishment is too high. You now have to hire a lawyer to sue some random person on the internet that deliberately lied about you.
What do you think the cost of consequences should be? How much should I pay a lawyer to sue someone that posts libel?
> You now have to hire a lawyer to sue some random person on the internet that deliberately lied about you.
While social media companies are immune to liability for what users post, if you file a libel lawsuit the companies have to follow court orders (unless the company's lawyers convince the court otherwise) to disclose the identity of a user who allegedly posted libel.
> You now have to hire a lawyer...
> What do you think the cost of consequences should be? How much should I pay a lawyer to sue someone that posts libel?
Unless you study law, you would have needed a lawyer to sue for defamation/libel before the age of the internet anyway. Whatever the costs are, the consequences should fall on the person who posted the libel, not on the company offering the posting service.
So you're saying the internet, which is a machine designed to disseminate information, has no effect on libel compared to before-the-internet?
And that anyone should be able to publish libel as long as it costs someone else to sue them?
> So you're saying the internet, which is a machine designed to disseminate information, has no effect on libel compared to before-the-internet?
It sounds to me like you're saying that if libel law has become less effective because of the internet, people should make laws to restrict the internet, or perhaps restrict the ability of people to use the internet to spread information as widely as they can today. In general, I would much rather have laws that punish specific human behavior rather than laws that restrict a medium of human interaction. The same way I don't think a bar notorious for being a hub of defaming gossipers should be liable for hosting defaming gossipers, I don't think social media companies should be liable for hosting defaming gossipers, not least because just about every social media company and bar by practical necessity and by owners' preferences hosts people other than just defaming gossipers. I don't think Section 230 should be repealed or lessened, because Section 230 makes up for the ways in which First Amendment alone fails to protect speech. As a practical matter, I think that the monetary costs that Section 230 saves for people who would otherwise be "protected" by the First Amendment (because the First Amendment provides legal defenses without shaving off court costs) outweigh the monetary costs of being defamed/libeled in today's information age.
> And that anyone should be able to publish libel as long as it costs someone else to sue them?
Is this a good description of the problem?: that in the internet age people can more easily get away with publishing libel even though libel remains as illegal as it was before the internet age, and that in the internet age libel spreads far more easily than it used to even though libel remains as illegal as it was before the internet age. I don't have an answer as to how to reverse the greater effectiveness/spread of libel, but if the solution involves significantly restricting generally legal internet behavior (whether indirectly or directly), I probably don't want the solution.
Should you be able to sue a social media company for providing a medium for a person's libel just because suing the libeler directly would cost you more money? In a country with a First Amendment which bars government restrictions on "freedom of speech", should you be able to pass a law restricting a social media company's ability to unilaterally ban/allow/moderate user-generated posts just because suing the libeler would cost you more money?
Companies hosting libel should be sued, because the same companies also have editorial control over their content.
If you don't want companies to be sued for libel, then they should also be forced to remove their editorial controls. No more algorithms, no more content moderation, no more banning, etc.
You can't have it both ways.
The only thing Section 230 did was protect large corporations by removing their liability for hosted content, thereby enforcing generic corporatist speech. It did NOT protect speech on the internet.
> The only thing Section 230 did was protect large corporations by removing their liability for hosted content, thereby enforcing generic corporatist speech. It did NOT protect speech on the internet.
Do you really think removing Section 230 would lead to more speech overall on the internet? Without Section 230 protections, the companies that would choose not to moderate at all would externalize content moderation into self-censorship (why would I continue posting on Hacker News if Hacker News became like 4chan? also, such companies wouldn't be able to remove libel!) and the companies that would choose to moderate would ban everything that could be interpreted by anyone as legally controversial (have you never witnessed commenters on Hacker News making might-be-defamation-might-not about famous figures, including but not limited to politicians?). (No matter how hard you try to make an objectively clear rule to determine what is unprotected speech, you will never eliminate the existence of speech that is unclearly unprotected or protected.)
Also, skim "Why Section 230 Is Better Than the First Amendment" by Eric Goldman [1].
> Companies hosting libel should be sued, because the same companies also have editorial control over their content.
> If you don't want companies to be sued for libel, then they should also be forced to remove their editorial controls. No more algorithms, no more content moderation, no more banning, etc.
Hacker News has algorithms, content moderation, and banning. How are comments ordered? How are pages on the front page ordered? Why are most dead posts and comments unsearchable even when you have showdead on? (Well, because HN's Algolia search doesn't know what showdead is.) What happens to someone who repeatedly breaks HN guidelines? Should Hacker News be sued because every week (every day?) a user on Hacker News who isn't banned yet is posting defamation about someone?
> The only thing Section 230 did was protect large corporations
No, it did not. Exhibit A: Hacker News, and any social media website smaller than it. Exhibit B: Barrett v. Rosenthal [2].
> If you don't want companies to be sued for libel, then they should also be forced to remove their editorial controls.[...]
> You can't have it both ways.
It's "both ways" in the same sense that by default a family can both let a convicted adult family member continue to live with the family and not be liable for that family member's crimes. Each family member is liable for their own crimes. A family can both kick an adult family member out of the house and not be liable for that family member's crimes. A social media company is liable for its own unprotected speech. A social media user is liable for their own unprotected speech.
[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3351323
Correct. Withdrawing Section 230 would lead to more free speech, not less. We will have lots of smaller sites hosting content with their own individual editorial controls instead of monopolistic corporations that enforce their own viewpoint.
The only thing section 230 did was protect large corporations. It did NOT promote free speech, as the Guy Christensen episode yesterday showed.
> We will have lots of smaller sites hosting content with their own individual editorial controls
This can already happen right now. Nothing about Section 230 hinders or prevents people who would make the hypothetical "lots of smaller sites hosting content with their own individual editorial controls" from making them while Section 230 continues to exist as is.
> Withdrawing Section 230 would lead to more free speech, not less.
You have not tried to refute most of the claims I made in my previous replies. Of the claims you do attempt to refute (e.g. whether removing Section 230 will result in less speech), I feel that you are missing steps in the chain of consequences.
> It did NOT promote free speech, as the Guy Christensen episode yesterday showed.
As I stated elsewhere, YouTube has both a First Amendment right and a Section 230 immunity to ban Guy Christensen (to the extent that a government actor/agency does not coerce YouTube into doing so).
Section 230 is the only reason you can post here.
Without Section 230, if every place that hosts words is liable. No one is going to host user content.
I don't think anything you are saying is remotely correct. It's all a very specific weird narrow theory, picking very specific people you want to hurt & affect. But what you are asking for has such a broader zone of suffering & pain than Facebook.
Truly one of the greatest magnets for weird ass conspiracy theory horseshit. Fucking so awful, because it's that one tiny polar holding up the entire internet.
LOL WUT? I run my own server in your basement. That's what I do.
And, no, it doesn't mean no one is going to host user content. It means every user content will have an editor over them, like the "Letters to the Editor" that newspapers had.
If you want unedited and unliable speech, you can always run your own servers.
>If you want unedited and unliable speech, you can always run your own servers.
Without Section 230, you personally are just as liable for the content on your basement server as big corporations are on their platforms, but those big platforms have the budget for a legal team and a staff of moderators and editors, and you probably don't.
And do you know WHY you wouldn't get sued under section 230 when publishing content on a major corporate website?
Because lawsuits aren't free.
> And do you know WHY you wouldn't get sued under section 230 when publishing content on a major corporate website?
> Because lawsuits aren't free.
Before Section 230, suing someone who posted defamation about you (which you can still do, because Section 230 has never restricted you from doing so) was not free either.
OK?
Lawsuits aren't free but the US is a very litigious society and people do get sued over the content they post online.
Zero people would have read your shit though. So no, you would not be here. There would be no here. No comment threads, no discussion.
I can't begin to state what an absolute moronic plan this sounds like. Trying to make the whole world spin up their own servers in their basement... Because even a VPS is protected & can run only because of 230. Too stupid even to be a joke.
And then how do we have threads & comments? Sure you can post your words, but sites like this patently couldnt exist.
It's just the most brain rotted dumbest shit. The anti 230 people dont attempt even the smallest faintest attempt at making sense. Durbin has been confronted by a number of people, and it's always this fantasy world delusion, hiding behind the castle walls of the mind pretending like he's right, utterly unable to hear a single sound from outside. It's a Pam Bondi performance, a commitment to disregard any reality that doesn't meet what you want.
I have yet to meet a single anti-230 person who can even begin to be reasonable & measured in how they talk about this. There are just endless massive holes you could send a whole aircraft carrier battle group through. None of it is serious. It's probably half Russian agitprop, disinformation, begging America to stop having a freedom to share our words.
See also the recent techdirt which once again just shows how incredibly wrong anti-230 people so often are. It was designed to protect site's right to have editorializing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46998247 https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/12/joseph-gordon-levitt-goe...
Found a corporatist. But I guess this plan sounds about as stupid as everyone having a phone in their pocket.
Oh well, some people prefer their bad habits instead.
The only thing Section 230 does is protect Google and Meta. It does not protect smaller sites, or independent media. It does not protect speech.
I've linked actual informative useful sources, that bring references.
If you have a case to make, by all means! Make it! I am happy to actually hear some anti-section 230 talk that makes any sense. But this is just cheap digs of no merit, adding no specific or clarity to the conversation.
It's also, from everything anyone of any note has said, totally miserably absurdly wrong.
You did not link to any actual, informative sources. You linked to typical debunked garbage.
Section 230 is old. You aren't providing any new information I haven't seen over the last 30 years. And, like we predicted, it has destroyed independent media in favor of large corporations, enforcing their corporatist speech.
None of your predictions are true. All of our predictions have come true.
The only thing Section 230 does is enforce corporatist speech by removing liability for large corporations hosting content. It did not stop those same corporations from maintaining editorial controls over speech, thus allowing them to control your speech. Is Facebook/YouTube an internet service like a public utility? Or is it speech content itself with their own editorial controls?
You can't have it both ways.
YouTube just banned Guy Christensen from their platform. Now what?
> YouTube just banned Guy Christensen from their platform. Now what?
YouTube has both a First Amendment right and a Section 230 immunity to ban Guy Christensen (to the extent that a government actor/agency does not coerce YouTube into doing so). Now Guy Christensen finds another platform or self-publishes his own speech.
Otherwise, your comment is similar to the one you wrote at [1], and I address it at [2].