As Bipartisan Calls To Amend Section 230 Mount, Experts Emphasize Unintended Consequences

Experts are skeptical of calls from both Republicans and Democrats to modify Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

Section 230 delineates internet content hosts and providers, like social media sites and search engines, from internet content producers, like their users. It ensures that the hosts are not held legally responsible for the posts of their users, and allows the hosts to “voluntarily take [actions] in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider… considers to be … objectionable.”

A pair of early 1990s legal proceedings inspired Section 230, United States Naval Academy cybersecurity law professor Jeff Kosseff told The Verge. In one case, the search engine CompuServe was found by a civil court to not be liable for defamatory statements written by a third party, since CompuServe did not moderate the content it hosted. However, in a similar case, another search engine, Prodigy, was found liable for a third party’s defamatory statements, since it moderated content.