Gutting Section 230 Will Harm The Most Marginalized

Gutting Section 230 Will Harm The Most Marginalized

5 years ago
Anonymous $4ckUSNo_FL

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190821/14465242836/gutting-section-230-will-harm-most-marginalized.shtml

Elliot Harmon, from EFF, has an excellent op-ed piece over at the Hill pointing out that nearly all the talking heads are getting it wrong when it comes to Section 230. It's not a gift to big internet companies. Indeed, as the piece argues, Facebook lobbied strongly for gutting 230 with FOSTA, and then took advantage of the gap in the market that was created after FOSTA became law:

Politicians on both sides of the aisle routinely treat Section 230 as a handout to tech companies — or a “gift,” as Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recently put it. It’s a mistake to characterize large internet companies as the primary beneficiaries of Section 230. Let’s not forget that Facebook and other big internet companies actively lobbied for FOSTA, a law that made it considerably more difficult for a startup ever to unseat Facebook. You can’t make this up: Just a few weeks after the president signed FOSTA and multiple dating sites shut down, Facebook announced that it was entering the dating business.