Section 230 Faces Repeal. Support The Coverage That’s Been Getting It Right All Along.
from the please-support-techdirt dept
Yesterday, Rep. Harriet Hageman released her bill to repeal Section 230. She’s calling it “reform,” but make no mistake—it’s a repeal, and I’ll explain why below. The law turns 30 in February, and there’s a very real chance this could be its last anniversary.
Which is why we’re running BestNetTech’s fundraising campaign right now, offering our very first commemorative coin for donations of at least $100 made before January 5th. That coin celebrates those 30 years of Section 230. But more importantly, your support funds the kind of coverage that can actually cut through the bullshit at a moment when it matters most.
Because here’s the thing: for nearly three decades, we’ve been one of the only sources to report fully and accurately on both how Section 230 works and why it’s so important. And right now, with a bipartisan coalition gunning to kill it based on myths and misinformation, that expertise is desperately needed.
Just in the last week or so on Bluesky I’ve posted two separate threads debunking some blatantly false narratives around Section 230 (one claiming that Section 230 means you’re not a publisher and another claiming that Section 230 is a “get out of jail free” card).
Section 230 remains one of the most misunderstood laws in America, even among the people in Congress trying to destroy it. Some of that confusion is deliberate—political expediency wrapped in talking points. But much of it has calcified into “common knowledge” that’s actively wrong. The “platform or publisher” distinction that doesn’t exist in the law. The idea that 230 protects illegal content. The claim that moderation choices forfeit your protections. All myths. All dangerous. All getting repeated by people who should know better.
So below, I’m highlighting some of our essential Section 230 coverage—not as a greatest hits compilation, but as a roadmap to understanding what’s actually at stake. If you believe in the open internet, you need Section 230. And if you need Section 230, you need someone who actually understands it fighting back against the tsunami of bullshit. That’s what you’re funding when you support BestNetTech.
Let’s start with the big one. Our most popular post ever on Section 230:
Five years later, this is still the single most useful thing you can hand someone who’s confidently wrong about Section 230. It systematically demolishes every major myth—the platform/publisher nonsense, the “neutrality” requirement that doesn’t exist, the “good faith” clause people misread, all of it—in a format designed to be shared. And people do share it, constantly, because the same wrong arguments keep recycling. Consider this your foundation.
Why Section 230 ‘Reform’ Effectively Means Section 230 Repeal
This is the piece that exposes the semantic game. Politicians love to say they’re not repealing 230, just “reforming” it. But as Cathy Gellis explains, nearly every reform proposal accomplishes the same thing: it forces websites into expensive, extended litigation to reach an outcome the law currently reaches in weeks. That’s not reform—it’s sabotage by procedure. The real benefit of 230 isn’t the outcome (most of these cases would eventually win on First Amendment grounds anyway), it’s that you get there for $100k instead of $5 million. Strip that away and you’ve effectively repealed the law for everyone except the richest companies. Which, spoiler alert, is exactly the point of most “reform” proposals.
Those Who Don’t Understand Section 230 Are Doomed To Repeal It
A near universal trait of those who show up with some crazy idea to “reform” Section 230 is that they don’t understand how the law works, despite the many explainers out there (and an entire book by Jeff Kosseff). And that’s why, as with Cathy’s article above, the advocates for reform lean in on the claim that they’re just “reforming” it when they’re actually leading to an effective repeal.
Everything You Know About Section 230 Is Wrong (But Why?)
Law professor James Boyle asks the more interesting question: why do smart people keep getting this so catastrophically wrong? His answer—cognitive biases, analogies to other areas of law that don’t actually apply, and the sheer difficulty of thinking clearly about speech policy—explains why the same bad ideas keep resurfacing despite being debunked repeatedly. Understanding the psychology of the confusion is almost as important as correcting it.
Your Problem Is Not With Section 230, But The 1st Amendment
So many complaints about Section 230 are actually complaints about the First Amendment in disguise. People angry that a website won’t remove certain speech often blame 230, but the reality is that the First Amendment likely protects that speech anyway. Prof. Jess Miers explains why killing 230 won’t magically enable the censorship people want—it’ll just make the process more expensive and unpredictable. Some people hear that and think “great, we can rely on the First Amendment alone then!” Which brings us to:
Why Section 230 Is Better Than The First Amendment
This is the piece that clicks it all into place. Prof. Eric Goldman’s paper explains that 230 isn’t an alternative to First Amendment protection—it’s a procedural shortcut to the same outcome. Without 230, most of these lawsuits would still eventually fail on First Amendment grounds. The difference is it would cost $3-5 million in legal fees to get there instead of $100k. That $100k vs $5 million gap is the difference between an ecosystem where small companies can exist and one where only giants survive. Anyone telling you we can just rely on the First Amendment either doesn’t understand this or is deliberately trying to consolidate the internet into a handful of megacorps.
NY Times Gets 230 Wrong Again; Misrepresenting History, Law, And The First Amendment
And now we get to the part where even the supposed experts fuck it up. The NY Times—the Paper of Record—has made the same basic factual error about Section 230 so many times they’ve had to run variations of this correction repeatedly:
If it feels like you can’t trust the mainstream media to accurately report on Section 230, you’re not wrong. And that’s why we do what we do at BestNetTech.
Even the tech press—outlets that should know better—regularly faceplants on this stuff. This Wired piece was so aggressively wrong it read like parody. The value here is watching us dissect not just the errors, but how someone can write thousands of words about a law while fundamentally misunderstanding what it does.
The title says it all. When former members of Congress—people who theoretically understand how laws work—produce something this catastrophically wrong, it reveals the scope of the problem. These aren’t random trolls; these are people with institutional credibility writing op-eds that influence policy. The danger here is that their ignorance carries weight.
Before Advocating To Repeal Section 230, It Helps To First Understand How It Works
The pattern is almost comical: someone decides 230 is bad, spends zero time understanding it, then announces a “solution” that would either accomplish nothing or catastrophically backfire. This piece is representative of dozens we’ve written, each time responding to a new flavor of the same fundamental confusion, like no other publication online.
No, Revoking Section 230 Would Not ‘Save Democracy’
People have assigned Section 230 almost mystical properties—that it’s the reason democracy is failing, or that repealing it would somehow fix polarization, or radicalization, or misinformation. The law does none of these things, good or bad. This piece dismantles the fantasy thinking that treats 230 like a magic wand.
Five Section 230 Cases That Made Online Communities Better
Amid all the doom-saying, it’s worth remembering what 230 actually enables. Jess Miers walks through five specific cases where the law protected communities, support groups, review sites, and services that improve people’s lives. Repealing 230 doesn’t just hurt Facebook—it destroys the ecosystem of smaller communities that depend on user-generated content.
Please support our continued reporting on Section 230
There are dozens more pieces in our archives, each responding to new variations of the same fundamental misunderstandings. We’ve been doing this for nearly three decades—long before it was politically fashionable to attack 230, and we’ll keep doing it as long as the law is under threat.
Because here’s what happens if we lose this fight: the internet consolidates into a handful of platforms big enough to survive the legal costs. Smaller communities die. Innovation gets strangled in the crib. And ironically, the problems people blame on 230—misinformation, radicalization, abuse—all get worse, because only the giants with the resources to over-moderate will survive, and they’ll moderate in whatever way keeps advertisers and governments happy, not in whatever way actually serves users.
That’s the stakes. Not whether Facebook thrives, but whether the next generation of internet services can even exist.
We’re committed to making sure policymakers, journalists, and anyone who cares about this stuff actually understand what they’re about to destroy. But we need support to keep doing it. If you agree that Section 230 matters, and that someone needs to keep telling the truth about it when even the NY Times can’t get basic facts right, support BestNetTech today. Consider a $230 donation and get our first commemorative coin, celebrating 30 years of a law that’s under existential threat and making sure it survives to see 31.
Filed Under: journalism, section 230
Companies: BestNetTech
Comments on “Section 230 Faces Repeal. Support The Coverage That’s Been Getting It Right All Along.”
To date, there is not yet a scintilla of evidence that it’s possible to argue against Section 230 without being a lying psychopath.
The first link points to the same page as the second.
Just waiting...
For this to go passed 230 and be Aimed at other things.
Like Newspapers, TV/Internet NEWS.
Then Run up the line to the Server companies.
They have tried this before. SUE everyone and Everything Connected.
Because, Suing a Poor person does NOT pay the bills, Ya gotta get to the TOP, where all the money is made.
And Why should the Site, the corp, the server farm All be Sued cause 1 person Posted something, they didnt like.
Re:
The real problem is the US’s litigious society.
Literally in that paper: However, for other claims, First Amendment defenses have little or no effect. Section 230 equally immunizes all of these claims, so it clearly provides more protection for those claims with limited or weak First Amendment defense. He then goes into more detail, e.g. Section 230(c)(1)’s immunity does not vary with the Internet service’s scienter.36 If a plaintiff alleges that the defendant “knew” about tortious or criminal content, the defendant can still qualify for Section 230’s immunity.The First Amendment does not require this result
That is literally how publisher liability works for areas without 230, and why we got strict liability in Stratton Oakmont v Prodigy. And also how it works with distributors, with some caveats like scienter.
To quote Zeran (or really, just read Eric above): In addition, both the negligent communication of a defamatory statement and the failure to remove such a statement when first communicated by another party— each alleged by Zeran here under a negligence label—constitute publication.,In fact, every repetition of a defamatory statement is considered a publication., In this case, AOL is legally considered to be a publisher. “[E]very one who takes part in the publication … is charged with publication.” Id. Even distributors are considered to be publishers for purposes of defamation law”
I appreciate the coverage, it’s better than most, and at least it defends 230. I wish it lived up to ‘fully and accurately’ in that defense, though.
Sidenote:
No coverage of the Sunset effort in the Senate? IIRC it’s separate from Hageman’s.
Re:
Nice job proving the first comment by AC.
Re: Re:
Yeah, I’m lying by… directly quoting Eric Goldman and Zeran verbatim.
Someone’s certainly lying here. Time for you to slink off, again.
Re: Re: Re:
[https://www.bestnettech.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/](Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act)
I regret to inform you that you are wrong. I know that you’ve likely heard this from someone else — perhaps even someone respected — but it’s just not true. The law says no such thing. Again, I encourage you to read it. The law does distinguish between “interactive computer services” and “information content providers,” but that is not, as some imply, a fancy legalistic ways of saying “platform” or “publisher.” There is no “certification” or “decision” that a website needs to make to get 230 protections. It protects all websites and all users of websites when there is content posted on the sites by someone else.
To be a bit more explicit: at no point in any court case regarding Section 230 is there a need to determine whether or not a particular website is a “platform” or a “publisher.” What matters is solely the content in question. If that content is created by someone else, the website hosting it cannot be sued over it.
Really, this is the simplest, most basic understanding of Section 230: it is about placing the liability for content online on whoever created that content, and not on whoever is hosting it. If you understand that one thing, you’ll understand most of the most important things about Section 230.
To reinforce this point: there is nothing any website can do to “lose” Section 230 protections. That’s not how it works. There may be situations in which a court decides that those protections do not apply to a given piece of content, but it is very much fact-specific to the content in question. For example, in the lawsuit against Roommates.com for violating the Fair Housing Act, the court ruled against Roommates, but not that the site “lost” its Section 230 protections, or that it was now a “publisher.” Rather, the court explicitly found that some content on Roommates.com was created by 3rd party users and thus protected by Section 230, and some content (namely pulldown menus designating racial preferences) was created by the site itself, and thus not eligible for Section 230 protections.
Re: Re: Re:2
Ah, I see why you’re upset. You saw the word publisher and thought I was talking about “platforms vs publishers”. That’s not what I’m talking about (Mike is correct, the distinction does not exist). What you’re missing is that distinction doesn’t exist because websites are publishers, and 230 explicitly protects them for publishing. Mike explains this if read the linked Bluesky thread under “one claiming that Section 230 means you’re not a publisher” in the original article. To quote Mike:
Section 230 not only allows (and actually encourages!) websites to be “publishers” it absolutely allows a website to say they are a publisher. That’s actually the main point of Section 230 and why it was passed. Because @wyden & Chris Cox knew that internet services acted as publishers…
but because of the nature of the internet, they would enable so much speech that they couldn’t possibly be expected to review every bit of content for legal landmines. The goal of the law was to encourage sites to be publishers! And the method was to say “you’re not liable as a publisher.”
But the entire point of 230 is “you can do traditional publishing activity, but without being held liable for their content, since the internet enables anyone to post anything on your site.”
This has been explored in a few cases, including the 9th Circuit in Barnes v. Yahoo, in which the court clearly says Yahoo receives Section 230 protections BECAUSE IT IS ACTING AS A PUBLISHER.
If you prefer a BestNetTech article, Mike also explains it here:
It’s an early decision that makes it clear Section 230 protects websites for their publishing activity of third-party content. It clearly debunks the completely backwards notion that you are “either a platform or a publisher” and only “platforms” get 230 protections. In Barnes, the court is quite clear that what Yahoo is doing is publishing activity, but since it is an interactive computer service and the underlying content is from a third party, it cannot be held liable as the publisher for that publishing activity under Section 230.
The reason platform/publishers doesn’t exist is because 230 protects websites as publishers, regardless of what type of publishing activity. (Sidenote, this is what that Zeran quote was saying. Zeran is not a random trusted expert, it’s the original court case interpreting 230)
Re: Re: Re:3
I get where you’re coming from now.
English is stupid, and I’ve been projecting its sloppiness onto you too harshly lately.
The hang-up is where for legal/liability purposes, the “publisher” that is liable for illegal content is the one who “in whole in part” created that content, which in pretty much every instance is the user that submitted the content.
There are so many bad actors still trying to end-run around the law by trying to due courts into declaring platforms are responsible for content, especially now the deranged “promoting = publishing” algorithm derangement that it’s easy for someone who has been in a defensive posture for years to conflate a declaration that platforms are the publishers of user-published content just because they can perform curation actions that true publishers do as being part of such efforts.
Why I visit BestNetTech
The “Hello You’ve Been Referred Here…” piece on Section 230 is one of (if not the) greatest articles on legal policy I’ve ever read, and I find myself citing it to others at least once a month if not more.
Glad to see the full list of resources here!
Section 230 is probably the greatest example ever of a law that people oppose without actually reading it. Makes me wish that any politician wishing to pass or repeal any law should be required to prove they actually understand it!