Oversight

Liberals Beware: Repealing a Law That Protects Free Speech Online Will Only Help Trump

People on both sides of the aisle have argued that repealing Section 230 would force tech companies to moderate their content faster. In reality, the exact opposite is true.

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The law once dubbed “the most important law protecting online speech” is now the most hated law on the internet and it’s under dire threat from both progressives and the Trump administration.

For a time, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) was only familiar to civil liberties advocates and tech policy geeks. Now, it is a constant source of angry headlines, as it’s being attacked on all sides for giving “immunity” to tech companies for content users post online. The most-quoted passage of the law reads: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

Those simple words are now being flagrantly misinterpreted across the political spectrum as a way to threaten companies like Facebook and Twitter. But make no mistake: if the law is repealed, the real casualties will not be the tech giants; it will the hundreds of millions of Americans who use the internet to communicate.

If anything, repealing the law — or calling on the FCC to engage in unspecified “regulation” of tech companies’ moderation policies — would encourage tech companies to leave more hate speech up.

Many liberals mistakenly believe that Section 230 is to blame for tech companies’ plodding response to toxic content. There have been countless articles criticizing the law recently, most notably a recent New York Times op-ed which argued that a repeal of Section 230 would force tech companies to moderate their content faster, removing hate speech before it has a chance to spread.

In reality, the exact opposite is true.