Bad Section 230 Bills Come From Both Sides Of The Aisle: Schakowsky/Castor Bill Would Be A Disaster For The Open Internet
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210511/15564546778/bad-section-230-bills-come-both-sides-aisle-schakowsky-castor-bill-would-be-disaster-open-internet.shtml
It truly is stunning how every single bill that attempts to reform Section 230 appears to be written without any intention of ever understanding how the internet or content moderation works in actual practice. We've highlighted tons of Republican-led bills that tend to try to force websites to host more content, not realizing how (1) unconstitutional that is and (2) how it will make the internet into a giant garbage fire. On the Democratic side, the focus seems to be much more on forcing companies to takedown constitutionally protected speech, which similarly (1) raises serious constitutional issues and (2) will lead to massive over-censorship of perfectly legal speech just to avoid liability.
The latest bill of the latter kind comes from Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Rep. Kathy Castor. Schakowsky has been saying for a while now that she was going to introduce this kind of bill to browbeat internet companies into being a lot more proactive in taking down speech she dislikes. The bill, called the Online Consumer Protection Act has now been introduced and it seems clear that this bill was written without ever conferring with anyone with any experience in running a website. It's the kind of thing one writes when you've just come across the problem, but don't think it's worth talking to anyone to understand how things really work. It's also very much a kind of "something must be done, this is something, we should do this" kind of bill that shows up way too often these days.