No matter how much of a nutjob Senator Whitehouse might be (and I agree he is too clueless to be in government) it doesn't change the fact that Section 230 is really, really bad and should be eliminated.
The problem is that most of the people who want to eliminate Section 230 are nutjob Republicans ranting about imaginary "censorship" and so facts get obscured and the whole debate gets badly derailed. This is extra ironic because Section 230 is entirely a Republican creation.
A brief history lesson for those who may not remember (or who might not be old enough):
In 1994, halfway through Bill Clinton's first term as president, Republicans took control of both the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years.
Republicans were confident that they would defeat Clinton when he ran for re-election and so in preparation for that, in 1996 they created The Communications Decency Act, a law whose only real purpose is to allow greater government censorship of radio and television by greatly increasing the fines that could be levied by the FCC for broadcasting "indecent" content.
The now-infamous Section 230 was added as an afterthought and nobody even noticed it at the time. Remember, in 1996 things were VERY different. What we call "The Internet" barely existed back then. Google, Facebook, Twitter and all the other "social-media" companies DID NOT EXIST. (Mark Zuckerberg was only 10 years old.)
It would be more than 15 years before Section 230 would become relevant.
Throughout history many newspapers, magazines, radio and television programs have been successfully sued for libel, defamation and publishing blatantly false stories. But Section 230 pretends that Internet Websites are not publishers.
And so we are stuck with this absurd, ridiculous law that does nothing good and creates far more problems than it solves.
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Section 230 Must Go
No matter how much of a nutjob Senator Whitehouse might be (and I agree he is too clueless to be in government) it doesn't change the fact that Section 230 is really, really bad and should be eliminated. The problem is that most of the people who want to eliminate Section 230 are nutjob Republicans ranting about imaginary "censorship" and so facts get obscured and the whole debate gets badly derailed. This is extra ironic because Section 230 is entirely a Republican creation. A brief history lesson for those who may not remember (or who might not be old enough): In 1994, halfway through Bill Clinton's first term as president, Republicans took control of both the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years. Republicans were confident that they would defeat Clinton when he ran for re-election and so in preparation for that, in 1996 they created The Communications Decency Act, a law whose only real purpose is to allow greater government censorship of radio and television by greatly increasing the fines that could be levied by the FCC for broadcasting "indecent" content. The now-infamous Section 230 was added as an afterthought and nobody even noticed it at the time. Remember, in 1996 things were VERY different. What we call "The Internet" barely existed back then. Google, Facebook, Twitter and all the other "social-media" companies DID NOT EXIST. (Mark Zuckerberg was only 10 years old.) It would be more than 15 years before Section 230 would become relevant. Throughout history many newspapers, magazines, radio and television programs have been successfully sued for libel, defamation and publishing blatantly false stories. But Section 230 pretends that Internet Websites are not publishers. And so we are stuck with this absurd, ridiculous law that does nothing good and creates far more problems than it solves.