An internet law enacted in 1996 is the topic of a heated debate over the power of social media companies’ after President Trump signed an executive order in May that would allow some of their liability protections to be removed if they engage in “selective censorship” harmful to national discourse.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act states that “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.”
The law has played a vital part in the rise of today’s social media by allowing Internet service providers and platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and others to be safe from liability from anything posted on their sites by third parties.
President Trump handed down the executive order shortly after Twitter slapped fact-check warnings on some of his content.
According to the executive order, “Section 230 was not intended to allow a handful of companies to grow into titans controlling vital avenues for our national discourse under the guise of promoting open forums for debate, and then to provide those behemoths blanket immunity when they use their power to censor content and silence viewpoints that they dislike.”
There are many people out there who are defending Section 230 so the president’s attempts to change how social media platforms are regulated may be met with some resistance.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example, calls Section 230 “one of the most valuable tools for protecting freedom of expression and innovation on the Internet.”
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