Once an obscure remnant of a mostly defunct law, Section 230 now captures headlines. Politicians on both sides blame it for the failures of big tech, who profited from its protections against harmful speech. While it’s convenient to claim that repealing Section 230 might be the answer to challenges around brand safety online, the truth is far more complicated. “Any effort to force companies to moderate in a specific way almost certainly would violate the First Amendment [of the US Constitution governing free speech] and would almost certainly be struck down,” says Mike Masnick, founder of Techdirt, in a Signal Conversation with John Battelle. Instead, Masnick offers a solution that requires harder work: A reimagining of the core protocols that drive the modern Internet.
Watch this fascinating conversation in a two-part series, below:
