Welcome, one and all to the Tech Policy Podcast.

I'm Corbyn.

Section 230 offers a quick, clean route by which a website can obtain dismissal of a lawsuit attacking it for hosting or taking

down speech that originates from a third party. That is the law's primary value as a protection

of online speech, and in consequence, Section 230 is often front and center in litigation

involving content moderation. Most such litigation starts and ends with

Section 230, leaving other issues unaddressed. One unfortunate side effect of this otherwise

positive phenomenon is that there are comparatively few decisions that discuss websites

quite strong right to moderate content as they see fit under

the First Amendment. This is a double problem. First, many politicians, policymakers,

and Twitter.com law jockeys are misled into thinking that if only Section 230 were

modified or eliminated, websites' choices about what speech to host could be

heavily regulated. It could not, because the right to editorial control is fundamental under the

First Amendment. The second problem is that there aren't many decisions fleshing out the contours

of the right to editorial control as it applies online.

Into the breach steps today's guest, Malin Fiddler. She is a visiting faculty fellow at the University

of Nebraska Governance and Technology Center and an affiliate of the Berkman-Kline Center for

Internet and Society at Harvard.

She has just published a paper in the Notre Dame Law School Journal of Emerging Technology.

It is called The New Editors, Refining First Amendment protections for Internet Platforms.

Her article asks two core questions.

Should, quote, editorial privilege remain the same for online platforms as print news?

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