The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Section 230 Reform
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2021
⏱️ 57 minutes
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Summary
On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, the Lawfare Podcast’s miniseries on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Daphne Keller, the director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center and an expert on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the statute that shields internet platforms from civil liability for third-party content on their websites. The statute has been criticized by both Democrats and Republicans, and both President Trump and President Biden separately called for its repeal. So what should we expect in terms of potential revision of 230 during the current Congress? What does Daphne think about the various proposals on the table? And how is it that so many proposals to reform 230 would be foiled by that pesky First Amendment?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:34.0 | The issue with those laws is that we know from scads and scads of empirical research that |
| 0:41.3 | they incentivize platforms to err on the side of caution and take down speech that actually |
| 0:47.3 | is legal, but that someone has made an allegation that it violates the law. |
| 0:53.6 | Or someone at the platform noticed it and thought it might be illegal. |
| 0:57.6 | Their incentive is to take that stuff down to protect themselves and to reduce the cost |
| 1:03.6 | to themselves or to just broaden the prohibitions under their terms of service so they cover |
| 1:10.4 | everything that might be illegal and then the platform never has to worry about those |
| 1:14.1 | things at all. |
| 1:16.3 | I'm Quinta Jurassic and this is the LawFair podcast, March 18, 2021. |
| 1:23.9 | Today we're bringing you another episode of Arbitus of Truth, the LawFair Podcast's mini-series |
| 1:28.8 | on our online information ecosystem. |
| 1:31.6 | Evelyn Duac and I spoke with Daphne Keller, the director of the program on platform regulation |
| 1:36.8 | at Stanford Cyber Policy Center, and our go-to person when we need help on tangling |
| 1:42.6 | the latest news about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the statute that shields internet |
| 1:48.7 | platforms from civil liability for third-party content on their websites. |
| 1:54.2 | The statute has had a bad year, or really, a bad few years. |
| 1:59.2 | It's been criticized by both Democrats and Republicans and both President Trump and |
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