ROUND TABLE - What Section 230 Actually Does

Daily Tech News Show

Tom Merritt

Technology, News

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2021

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Are Facebook and Twitter protected by a shield that stops them from being responsible for any of their content? We bring on Mike Masnick from TechDirt and Shoshana Weissman from the R Street Institute to talk about what Section 230 is, what it isn’t, and whether it needs to be changed.

SHOW NOTES:

Shoshana Weissmann, Senior Manager of Digital Media and a policy Fellow at the R Street Institute.

https://senatorshoshana.medium.com/who-am-i-ff164b02707e

Mike Masnick, founder and CEO of the Copia Institute and editor of the Techdirt blog.

https://www.techdirt.com/user/mmasnick

Our discussion isn't a substitute for, nor does it constitute, legal advice. The goal of this discussion is to explore some of the legal issues surrounding CDA 230.

The central text of Section 230

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

There is also a section right after that on Civil Liability that offers further protections for taking certain moderation actions.

-- What is Section 230 designed to do?

-- What are some of the major misconceptions about Section 230?

-- If section 230 were repealed with no replacement, what do you think the effect would be?

-- Do you believe Congress should replace 230? If so, with what? If not, why?

Mike:

-Fix a typo

-Reverse FOSTA

-Remove intellectual exemption property

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Transcript

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0:00.0	A tech demo shows off the usual tech things.
0:03.7	Then I'm going to jump to a link.
0:05.2	Using the usual tech devices.
0:07.0	We have a pointing device called our mouse.
0:09.0	Doing the usual tech productivity tasks.
0:11.4	Now we're connected audio. You can see my work, you can point at it, and I can see
0:15.7	your face and we can talk. Except it's 1968 and it's going to set the computing agenda for the
0:20.5	next half century, then almost immediately be ignored.
0:24.4	The mother of all demos on NOAA Little More.
0:27.6	Get it wherever you get your podcasts. This is a special daily tech news show roundtable.
0:36.0	Today we'll discuss section 230 of US Code Title 47, aka Safe Harbor, aka Political Weapon.
0:43.0	It's a section that has recurred as a talking point in the regulation of internet companies,
0:47.2	particularly social media companies like Facebook and Twitter,
0:50.6	and we want to know a little more about what it is and what it isn't.
0:55.2	And to help us understand it, we have two excellent guests.
0:57.8	Joachana Wiesman, senior manager of digital media and a Policy Fellow at the R Street Institute.
1:04.0	Shoshana, thank you so much for joining us.
1:06.0	Thank you for having me.
1:08.0	Also joining us, Mike Masnick, founder and CEO of the Copia Institute and editor of the Tech Dirt blog. Mike, great to have you here.
1:15.3	Yeah, thanks for inviting me. This will be fun. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. We should say up front,
1:20.2	of course our discussion here is not a substitute for nor does it constitute legal advice
1:24.8	The goal of this discussion is just to explore some of the legal issues surrounding CDA 230
	...

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