Putting the whole sales tax discussion aside, as it's really an entirely different issues, I'm not sure what you think Section 230 does exactly. Yes, it does e

Putting the whole sales tax discussion aside, as it's really an entirely different issues, I'm not sure what you think Section 230 does exactly. Yes, it does explicitly protect me and my sites. Without Section 230 I'm potentially (and personally) liable for any libelous or illegal content a user posts to the small forums I operate. I can be sued for damages or charged even if I take the content down when I see it. I wouldn't have to worry about being shut-down by a large deep-pocketed company, as I'd get sued into oblivion by every litigious person who didn’t like what someone on my forum was saying about them, or charged with facilitation when some trolls decided to start spamming it will illegal content. The legal and financial risks would permanently shutter most open forums and smaller social media sites. Only those big deep-pocketed companies you're concerned about would be able to continue operating, as they have the financial means to defend themselves, and individuals in the company are protected from direct prosecution by the corporate structure. It also explicitly protects users, as without Section 230 a user forwarding or 'liking' content that turns out to be libelous can be construed to be a publisher of that content. I know this one sounds a bit insane, but it's already happened, see Barrett v. Rosenthal [1]. If you're worried about the "disagreeable content they don't silence" then you WANT Section 230. In Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy [2] the judge ruled that since Prodigy did moderate it's message boards, that meant it would be liable for anything it left up. Section 230 overruled that judicial decision. It’s impossible for any public forum to be moderated perfectly, small ones due to limited funds/manpower and large ones due to scale. So, without Section 230, the only way for one to avoid liability is to NOT moderate at all and leave up all that "disagreeable" content unless ordered to remove it by a court. The whole issue of large companies who use the legal system to shut down small competitors and silence people is a huge problem, but is has little to do with Section 230 other than the fact that revoking Section 230 would just give those big companies yet another tool to do so. Imagine the simple case of a forum that is created as a place to discuss problems with some big company that actively does this kind of silencing. Without Section 230 the operator of the forum would either need to (a) not moderate and allow the site to be overrun by spam and fake posts from the company saying how it's all lies and the company is great, or (b) carefully fact-check every post someone made before allowing it, or get sued for libel the first (and every) time a post contains a false negative statement about the company. It's written a bit rudely for dramatic effect, but this is a great resource to really understand what Section 230 does and the implications of revoking it. It goes into more detail on the issues and court cases I mentioned: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_v._Rosenthal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_v._Rosenthal [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prodigy_Services_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....