Section 230 Explained
I&#x27;m having a moment here where I am considering this from another viewpoint. While I hate the idea of siding with Ted Cruz on literally anything I want to take a moment to really consider something.<p>Section 230 makes sites like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, Instagram and even Hacker News possible. Revoking Section 230 could expose those platforms to the possibility of liability for content posted on them. This might cause a re-shaping of the Internet in general.<p>Part of me seriously wonders - would that necessarily be a bad thing? I am not convinced, by any stretch of the imagination, that these social media opinion aggregation platforms are universally positive. Everyone keeps acting like the existence of Facebook somehow democratizes content publishing for the masses, even when we are faced with clear evidence that this isn&#x27;t the case. The centralized nature of Facebook actually allows for larger scale manipulation of the narrative.<p>And how would this affect Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Netflix and other sites? I suppose opening them up to liability for negative reviews could be a problem.<p>I&#x27;m thinking on the fly here, but if Facebook just disappeared off of the Internet tomorrow - I&#x27;m not really sure I would mourn that. And if new Internet companies were burdened with stricter moderation requirements (or the need to stand behind every piece of content posted onto their site), maybe that would actually be good? Maybe that would drive people to create their own websites once again.<p>I&#x27;m sure I haven&#x27;t thought deeply enough on this but I definitely feel the tide here is a knee-jerk protection of Section 230. Yet the companies it protects the most are the ones I feel are the worst.