Tag: section 230

Don’t Repeal Section 230. Clarify It.

The 26 words that “changed the internet.” Image NYT.

(This is a column I wrote for Signal360, P&G’s companion publication for its Signal conference, which I co-produce. It’s always fraught to weigh in on this fundamental piece of Internet legislation, so I welcome your thoughts!)

It’s difficult to find anything Congress agrees on these days, but when it comes to the much-misunderstood policy known as “Section 230,” it’s unanimous: this piece of 20th-century legislation needs to be fixed. And while such a fix may be needed, it could have a significant impact on how every company goes to market. 

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Stop Talking About Section 230. Start Talking About The Business Model.

No. No. No.

For the past several years, I’ve led a graduate-level class studying the early history of Internet policy in the United States. It runs just seven weeks – the truth is, there’s not that much actual legislation to review. We spend a lot of the course focused on Internet business models, which, as I hope this post will illuminate, are not well understood even amongst Ivy-league grads. But this past week, one topic leapt from my syllabus onto the front pages of every major news outlet: Section 230. Comprised of just 26 words, this once-obscure but now-trending Internet policy grants technology platforms like Facebook, Google, Airbnb, Amazon, and countless others the authority to moderate content without incurring the liability of a traditional publisher.

Thanks to the events of January 6th, Section 230 has broken into the mainstream of political dialog. Slowly – and then all of a sudden – the world has woken up to the connection between the disinformation flooding online platforms and what appears to be the rapid decay of our society.

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