Two Supreme Court cases that could break the internet
The whole point of Section 230 was that we wanted to simultaneously incentivize user-content platforms (so, services that just allowed people to freely express themselves without concerning itself too much about the content) while simultaneously encouraging those services to take down illegal content. That was it.<p>The whole reason it was needed was because these platforms were worried that if they took down content, it might be seen as implicitly endorsing the content that remained. If that was the case, then they&#x27;d be liable for the content that remained. Including things like libel laws... it would be the same as a newspaper printing that content.<p>They didn&#x27;t want that, so this was the compromise. You can do light moderation and we&#x27;ll grant you exemption.<p>Fast-forward to today. Facebook and Twitter do not do &quot;light moderation&quot;. They decide what you see and what you don&#x27;t... they direct your attention from smaller stories to bigger ones, they spend countless thousands of employee hours catering to the whole experience. If that doesn&#x27;t count as a modern digital scaled form of editorialization, I don&#x27;t know what would.<p>I think a law designed to encourage very light moderation in no way applies to full-fledged algorithmic determination, and that distinction needs to be made and clarified.