This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, February 14th, 2023.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The fight over Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and what it protects and what it doesn't now moves

to the US Supreme Court where the high court will for the very first time take a case with

big implications for the so-called 26 words that created the internet.

Cato's Will Duffield details some of the more practical considerations that ought to receive weight

as the court considers its options.

So really the most notable thing

is that it's the first time the Supreme Court

has interpreted Section 230.

And Section 230 is an intermediary liability protection that shields all the tools we use to communicate online.

It prevents them from being held responsible for their user speech.

And since it was passed in 1996, lower courts have interpreted it. And some of argue

that they've interpreted it broadly, but there's a canonical interpretation at this point, a good set of case law that guides courts

in applying it. Because the Supreme Court is now weighing in for the first time, they could take this anywhere, and even a good

ruling has the potential to disrupt a lot of this well-established lower court precedent. There's a kind of bull in a

China shop risk when the Supreme Court steps in. So I guess broadly what is your

view of the idea that an algorithm is essentially, well it's,

the argument seems to be that the, by programming an algorithm to do X, you're telling the algorithm to do X, you're telling the algorithm to make decisions.

So it depends on what that X is.

If that X is, serve users more videos of the sort they've already watched, then there isn't a platform

agency behind each particular recommendation.

...