Is it finally time to reform this provision, once and for all, or would such reform efforts actually be harmful and/or counterproductive to advocates’ stated goal—to protect the ideological diversity and robustness of online speech?
Will Chamberlain of the Internet Accountability Project debates Matthew Feeney of the Cato Institute on Section 230 reform in our latest Newsweek “Debate of the Week.” We hope you enjoy the exchange.
Josh Hammer is Newsweek opinion editor, a syndicated columnist and a research fellow at the Edmund Burke Foundation.
Something is wrong, and it looks like there is finally momentum to use legislation to bring these arrogant tech behemoths to heel. Perhaps signaling the beginning of the end for this kind of corporate control of democracy, the Senate Judiciary Committee just voted to subpoena Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to come before Congress and explain their companies’ electoral interference.
At the core of Section 230 is personal responsibility. The law states that you—not the service you use to share content—are responsible for what you post. There are a few exceptions, but by and large Section 230 leaves the responsibility for online posts with the appropriate agent: the user.
