55When Section 230 was passed, the leading internet companies
were underdogs. Now they’re the overlords of the U.S. econ-
omy. The inversion of power means Section 230 cases fre-
quently result in the spectacle of a tech giant squashing the
complaints of the wee internet villagers. Section230 has
enabled Twitter Inc. to dismiss allegations that it spread
Islamic State propaganda; it’s helped Yelp Inc. avoid having
to take down defamatory reviews; and it’s allowed Google to
swat away the outcry of neighborhood locksmiths who say
that Google search results are overrun with fraudulent listings.
Somewhere along the way, Section 230 crossed over from
the realm of law journals into a bankable, mainstream villain
for conservative and liberal audiences. In December, Netflix
Inc.’s topical comedy showPatriot Act with Hasan Minhaj,
which had previously tackled progressive bugbears such as
the hazards of U.S. oil dependency, did a lengthy segment
lashing out at Section 230. “This is a very difficult issue, and
the solutions here aren’t simple,” Minhaj said. “But relying on
the good faith of tech companies to regulate themselves? That
ain’t working.” Meanwhile, an article onBreitbartreferred
to Section 230 as “the golden government handout” that’s
allowed Big Tech to flourish, recommending reform of the
law as a way to “curb Google.”
Over the years there have been attempts to reform
Section 230. In 2013, 47 state attorneys general signed a let-
ter beseeching Congress to allow states to pass laws con-
tradicting the provision. The effort failed. Last year federal
lawmakers succeeded at exempting cases involving online
sex trafficking. In June of
this year, Josh Hawley, a
Republican senator from
Missouri, introduced a
bill that would require big
tech companies to get the
Federal Trade Commission
to certify their political
neutrality to qualify for the
liability protection.
Such efforts to trim
Section 230’s powers are
likely to proliferate in the
current political environ-
ment, in which pillorying the excess of Big Tech is suddenly
a la mode. They’ll be met with well-funded resistance. The
internet’s version of self-regulation might be imperfect, sup-
porters argue, but the government’s would be far worse.
David Greene, an attorney for the EFF, says Section 230 is a
victim of its own success. People look at the biggest web com-
panies, such as Facebook Inc., and think they have so much
money they should no longer receive the liability shield,
he says, but the statute is necessary to protect smaller web
services that might otherwise get crushed by unfair litigation.
Any resulting bad behavior is an unfortunate byproduct of
an otherwise effective law. “Any time you have a legal immu-
nity, you’re going to have some people abusing it,” he says.
“Think of the spousal privilege or something like that. It’s not
necessarily surprising that there have been some bad effects.”
For now, tech executives will continue to moderate the inter-
net as they see fit.At some point, the accumulation of “bad effects” can start
to look more like a national emergency. In early August, fol-
lowing a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, much of
the ensuing national outcry focused on the deadly assault
weapons—and websites—favored by domestic terrorists. On
Aug. 5, two days after the shooting, the chief executive officer
of Cloudflare Inc., a major web security company, announced
it would be cutting off service to 8Chan, an online forum pop-
ular with white nationalists, including the alleged El Paso
shooter. But to date, such piecemeal efforts at self-policing
by the tech industry have proven largely ineffective, while
individual sites are all too happy to invoke Section 230 to
deflect legal responsibility for the havoc caused by their sick-
est users. Consider Gab.
Three years ago, Andrew Torba, a conservative entre-
preneur who’d grown annoyed with progressive politics
in Silicon Valley, founded a social media site called Gab.
He positioned the service as a less restrictive alternative to
Twitter, which, due to intense public pressure, had started
to ban some of its more troublesome users. Word got around
that Gab had no policies prohibiting hate speech. Droves
of white nationalists set up shop, according to the Anti-
Defamation League. (Gab does forbid speech not protected
by the First Amendment, including calls for acts of violence
against others.)
Reached by email in late July, Torba said he supports
the efforts in Washington to investigate Big Tech for anti-
trust violations, but he dislikes Senator Hawley’s proposal
to alter the internet’s immunity protection, which he calls
“a powerful shield that allows us to protect our users’ free
speech rights.”
Those users include Robert Bowers, a middle-aged
Pennsylvanian who joined the site in early 2018 and started
stewing in the fire sauce of hateful misinformation. On Oct. 27,
he wrote a status update: “Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
He then allegedly drove to a synagogue in Pittsburgh and
murdered 11 people.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Pennsylvania Attorney
General Josh Shapiro said his office would be investigating
Bowers’s social media activity. Gab responded on the com-
pany’s Twitter feed with a knowingly dismissive taunt: “Have
you ever heard of CDA 230?” <BW>Bloomberg Businessweek TECHLASH August 12, 2019