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The Internet allows people everywhere to connect, share ideas, and advocate for change without needing immense resources or technical expertise. Our unprecedented ability to communicate online—on blogs, social media platforms, and educational and cultural platforms like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive—is not an accident. Congress recognized that for user speech to thrive on the Internet, it had to protect the services that power users’ speech.
Democratic senator Dick Durbin of Illinois has allied with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham South Carolina to re-introduce a bill that would repeal Section 230, which was originally a provision of the 1996 Communication Decency Act of 1996.
Historically both Republican and Democrat lawmakers have attempted to change or repeal Section 230. With a little consideration of the potential harm. The across the aisle alliance is based on a deep misunderstanding of what the purpose of Section 230 was and, on balance, its consequences.
Section 230 says that you are responsible for your speech on line not the speech of others. It says that on line operators, from the biggest platforms to the smallest niche websites, have the right to curate the speech that appears on their site.
Important court rulings on Section 230 have held that users and services cannot be sued for forwarding email, hosting on line reviews, or sharing photos or videos that others find objectionable. It also helps to quickly resolve lawsuit cases that have no legal basis. In other words, the free and open Internet as we know it could not exist without Section 230.
What is not understood by some lawmakers is that weakening Section 230 would make it easier for users to spread harmful content to sue platforms potentially leading to more frivolous lawsuits and it would demotivate platforms volunteerism when it comes to moderating content.
Furthermore, it would impact free speech. The increased risk of lawsuits could stifle innovation and reduce the diversity of voices on line, as platforms might limit users' speech under the threat of lawsuits.
Small companies would suffer disproportionately because of legal expenses as they try to defend against frivolous lawsuits over content moderation decisions.
In other words, the repeal of Section 230 would mean censorship for all Internet users because its repeal would affect anyone who passes on information via messages or email, for example, to someone else.
In today's authoritarian climate it would allow the Trump administration to either stifle or promote certain speech.
As it has in the past, a repeal of or changes to Section 230 was based on demands for more transparency and accountability. However, its repeal or change also would finally enact a history of attempts to weaponize child safety legislation in order to suppress content often arbitrarily deemed ”harmful" by the government. As one example In the current administration, a repeal of Section 230 would allow Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to designate certain on line content as” health misinformation” and to mandate its removal.