In February, I wrote about how efforts to convince the Supreme Court to roll back Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 in Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh could backfire on conservatives. Well, it looks like we can exhale a little. Today, the Court declined to revisit the foundational internet law.
In response, American Enterprise Institute tech-policy expert Shane Tews offered the following remarks:
The Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge against Section 230, the law that shields websites from being held liable for user-generated content. While Section 230 is often conflated with the First Amendment rights allowed by the Constitution, they are both specific legal provisions that enable online speech on internet platforms. Without 230, the internet would be a one-sided experience of marketing propaganda rather than the interconnected exchange of information across the globe.
Once again, Tews is on point. A significant scaling back in the legal immunities granted to online platforms could have triggered a desire for increased censorship on the part of Big Tech, leading to an increase in content moderation. This could have resulted in social-media companies imposing more restrictions on conservative discourse, not fewer. Rest assured, this is no longer a danger . . . for now. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that Section 230’s critics on the right refrain from resurrecting this misguided endeavor.