> I'm not a supreme court justice. Okay, so you have even less authority to dictate what Section 230 actually means. Are you arguing about what Section 230 ac

> I'm not a supreme court justice. Okay, so you have even less authority to dictate what Section 230 actually means. Are you arguing about what Section 230 actually does, or are you arguing about what you personally would like it to do, because those are two very different conversations to have. > So why does section 230 exist? For a lot of reasons, one giant one being that Congress wanted to make it easier for companies to censor in certain situations. Section 230 was born out of two lawsuits about illegal content against two early Internet companies, one completely unmoderated and one where the company in question had been trying to do some moderation, but some illegal content still slipped past. The one who was doing no moderation at all successfully got off with the defense that it was not a publisher, the company that had been doing some moderation didn't. From Wikipedia: > Service providers made their Congresspersons aware of these cases, believing that if followed by other courts across the nation, the cases would stifle the growth of the Internet. United States Representative Christopher Cox (R-CA) had read an article about the two cases and felt the decisions were backwards. "It struck me that if that rule was going to take hold then the internet would become the Wild West and nobody would have any incentive to keep the internet civil," Cox stated. Section 230 has a number of benefits, including benefits that reduce censorship online by making it safer to operate smaller forums (including HN). But it also allows communities to more easily moderate without that moderation being treated as itself a liability risk. But don't take my word for it, go read up on the actual people who wrote the bill that are still alive today and who have on multiple occasions commented on their intentions. The bill was never intended to restrict what content platforms could moderate. > You aren't liable anymore right? You can say whatever you want right? Section 230 is a protection against speech that your users say. CNN is still liable for its own speech (and so is Twitter for that matter), but it is not liable for the speech that happens in its comments section.