https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-trumps-executive-order-is-the-most-futile-attack-on-230-yet/

On Tuesday, Twitter placed fact-checking labels on a pair of tweets by President Donald Trump, in which he made baseless claims that the use of mail-in ballots in the 2020 general election will enable large-scale fraud. Rebukes from the Trump administration swiftly followed, and Trump took to Twitter with a warning: “Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.”

Two days later, the promised retribution arrived: an executive order taking aim at key protections for online platforms provided under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Enacted in 1996, CDA 230 protects platforms like Twitter in two ways, immunizing them against liability arising from most content posted by users, and from their “good faith” efforts to remove or restrict access to “objectionable” content. The law distinguishes between internet platforms and print publishers like newspapers or magazines, which can be held liable when they print legally actionable speech like defamation—even when it’s sourced from others, like letters to the editor. In the absence of CDA 230’s protections, social media platforms would, by their nature, be forced either to accept liability on a crushing scale (Twitter would be responsible for the hundreds of millions of tweets its users produce every day), or to take on the Sisyphian task of weeding out any user-generated content that might be actionable—a predicament recognized by the lawmakers and courts responsible for CDA 230’s development.