What happens on the day after Section 230 is repealed? I'm going to prognosticate a bit in today's Section 230 thread. The tl;dr is that we'll likely see a lot less speech, especially if the speech even borders on being controversial.

Recall that Section 230's core immunity says that platforms shall not be treated as the publishers of third-party content. So unless an exception applies, a social media site, for instance, cannot be successfully sued for a user's post.
The user who posted it always could be sued, but not the platform. This provides platforms with great flexibility to set their own moderation standards.
Recently, many people have criticized platforms for preferring particular political viewpoints in these moderation standards, and for not being very transparent about how they develop and implement those standards.
We can set those arguments aside for another day (basically every day for the rest of my life). What I want to talk about right now is how moderation would change on the day after Section 230 is repealed.
As I've described in other threads and congressional testimony, we don't entirely know what liability standards courts would provide platforms in a 230-free world, because we have had 230 on the books since 1996.
Our best -- though imperfect -- prediction comes from cases involving physical bookstores, which distribute speech and are not covered by 230. They are liable if they know or have reason to know of illegal/defamatory content.
Assuming that online platforms in a 230-free world face a liability standard that is anywhere similar to what bookstores face, you could reasonably predict that the finger will be much more heavily on the side of removing user content.
Let's say that there is a heated political debate on Twitter and it gets personal (I know this rarely happens on a site as civil as Twitter, but just humor me). Twitter currently has a number of potential guidelines that govern whether the content comes down or user is banned.
Twitter currently has a number of potential guidelines that govern whether the content comes down or user is banned.
Without 230, I'd expect those guidelines to tighten up significantly and more frequently result in speech takedowns. Twitter's concerns will no longer merely be about creating a safe and responsible environment. It now will be concerned about liability from the comments.
Now you might say, there are a lot of protections like the opinion privilege, the falsity requirement, actual malice, etc. that make it unlikely for the standard political debate to result in a successful defamation case, even without 230. You're probably correct. But...
Twitter most likely does not want to litigate the merits of many, many defamation cases. Litigation is time-consuming and expensive. Removing any remotely controversial content would be in Twitter's business interests in a 230-free world.
Repealing 230 also might give the subject of negative user content the ability to force the removal of that content. Don't like a tweet? Complain to Twitter, and then they "know" of the alleged defamation and could face as much liability/litigation expense as the author.
Bookstores also could be liable if they have "reason to know" of the defamatory content they distribute. If applied to online platforms, this could trigger some sort of requirement to pre-screen material if the general nature of it is known to be defamatory.
Who knows, social media companies might decide that they will just take on the increased risk and refuse to change their moderation standards. That's theoretically possible until we know for certain how courts would define liability standards. But unlikely.
In 2018, within days of Congress passing FOSTA, which created a sex trafficking and prostitution facilitation exception to Section 230, this appeared on Craigslist.
Platforms are businesses. Businesses consider risks when developing their products and services. Section 230 is a big part of the risk equation for these platforms.
So this is a long way of saying that there would be some irony in repealing Section 230 because we are upset that platforms engage in too much moderation. The result of repeal is very likely going to be more aggressive moderation. And I'm not talking about Alanis irony.
I'm sure that I'll get responses about the unfairness of platforms censoring certain users while being covered by Section 230. That is all a valid debate to engage in, but this thread seeks to answer a very specific question: what would platforms do in response to 230 repeal?

More from Society

This is a piece I've been thinking about for a long time. One of the most dominant policy ideas in Washington is that policy should, always and everywhere, move parents into paid labor. But what if that's wrong?

My reporting here convinced me that there's no large effect in either direction on labor force participation from child allowances. Canada has a bigger one than either Romney or Biden are considering, and more labor force participation among women.

But what if that wasn't true?

Forcing parents into low-wage, often exploitative, jobs by threatening them and their children with poverty may be counted as a success by some policymakers, but it’s a sign of a society that doesn’t value the most essential forms of labor.

The problem is in the very language we use. If I left my job as a New York Times columnist to care for my 2-year-old son, I’d be described as leaving the labor force. But as much as I adore him, there is no doubt I’d be working harder. I wouldn't have stopped working!

I tried to render conservative objections here fairly. I appreciate that @swinshi talked with me, and I'm sorry I couldn't include everything he said. I'll say I believe I used his strongest arguments, not more speculative ones, in the piece.

You May Also Like

I hate when I learn something new (to me) & stunning about the Jeff Epstein network (h/t MoodyKnowsNada.)

Where to begin?

So our new Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's stepfather, Samuel Pisar, was "longtime lawyer and confidant of...Robert Maxwell," Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad.


"Pisar was one of the last people to speak to Maxwell, by phone, probably an hour before the chairman of Mirror Group Newspapers fell off his luxury yacht the Lady Ghislaine on 5 November, 1991."
https://t.co/DAEgchNyTP


OK, so that's just a coincidence. Moving on, Anthony Blinken "attended the prestigious Dalton School in New York City"...wait, what? https://t.co/DnE6AvHmJg

Dalton School...Dalton School...rings a

Oh that's right.

The dad of the U.S. Attorney General under both George W. Bush & Donald Trump, William Barr, was headmaster of the Dalton School.

Donald Barr was also quite a


I'm not going to even mention that Blinken's stepdad Sam Pisar's name was in Epstein's "black book."

Lots of names in that book. I mean, for example, Cuomo, Trump, Clinton, Prince Andrew, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen - all in that book, and their reputations are spotless.
🌺श्री गरुड़ पुराण - संक्षिप्त वर्णन🌺

हिन्दु धर्म के 18 पुराणों में से एक गरुड़ पुराण का हिन्दु धर्म में बड़ा महत्व है। गरुड़ पुराण में मृत्यु के बाद सद्गती की व्याख्या मिलती है। इस पुराण के अधिष्ठातृ देव भगवान विष्णु हैं, इसलिए ये वैष्णव पुराण है।


गरुड़ पुराण के अनुसार हमारे कर्मों का फल हमें हमारे जीवन-काल में तो मिलता ही है परंतु मृत्यु के बाद भी अच्छे बुरे कार्यों का उनके अनुसार फल मिलता है। इस कारण इस पुराण में निहित ज्ञान को प्राप्त करने के लिए घर के किसी सदस्य की मृत्यु के बाद का समय निर्धारित किया गया है...

..ताकि उस समय हम जीवन-मरण से जुड़े सभी सत्य जान सकें और मृत्यु के कारण बिछडने वाले सदस्य का दुख कम हो सके।
गरुड़ पुराण में विष्णु की भक्ति व अवतारों का विस्तार से उसी प्रकार वर्णन मिलता है जिस प्रकार भगवत पुराण में।आरम्भ में मनु से सृष्टि की उत्पत्ति,ध्रुव चरित्र की कथा मिलती है।


तदुपरांत सुर्य व चंद्र ग्रहों के मंत्र, शिव-पार्वती मंत्र,इन्द्र सम्बंधित मंत्र,सरस्वती मंत्र और नौ शक्तियों के बारे में विस्तार से बताया गया है।
इस पुराण में उन्नीस हज़ार श्लोक बताए जाते हैं और इसे दो भागों में कहा जाता है।
प्रथम भाग में विष्णुभक्ति और पूजा विधियों का उल्लेख है।

मृत्यु के उपरांत गरुड़ पुराण के श्रवण का प्रावधान है ।
पुराण के द्वितीय भाग में 'प्रेतकल्प' का विस्तार से वर्णन और नरकों में जीव के पड़ने का वृत्तांत मिलता है। मरने के बाद मनुष्य की क्या गति होती है, उसका किस प्रकार की योनियों में जन्म होता है, प्रेत योनि से मुक्ति के उपाय...