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DOJ to Propose Changes to Legal Shield for Tech Companies
- WarOnPrivacy 7y agoIn this article, Vicky Graham and David McLaughlin describe Section 230 as: "legal shield enjoyed by companies such as Google and Facebook". This is disingenuous, at best. Section 230 does 2 simple things. It says platforms aren't liable for what users post there. In other words, users themselves are liable for what they do. Second, it gives platforms the ability to take down harmful content w/o risk of legal threat. These two things protect every small blog w/ comments and every fledgling social platform. It's the law most responsible for allowing the internet to flourish, by helping small content creators operate w/o the threat of unearned liability. What Section 230 does not do is act as shield for criminal activity. The feds are not hampered in any way from perusing legal action against site operators who commit a crime. Damage to Section 230 will exclusively harm not-huge tech companies because that damage will allow courts & Govs to punish small/med operators - not for what they do but for what their users do. Like most reporters covering Section 230 stories, Vicky Graham and David McLaughlin appear to be clueless that eroding Section 230 won't harm Google or Facebook in the slightest. Only the largest tech firms have the massive resources to ride out what follows if Section 230 is pruned away or is killed altogether. The other issue here is that the purpose of the EARN IT act is to render encryption meaningfully insecure (via backdoors), so that Gov/LEO can break it on a whim. Lastly, notice how the reporters here just parrot what was told to them. They don't try at all to vet or analyze what they're publishing. It's stenography.