I always wondered why Section 230 does not have a carve-out exemption to deal with the censorship issue.
I think we'd all agree that most websites are better off with curation and moderation of some kind. If you don't like it, you are free to leave the forum, website, etc. The problem is that Big Tech fails to work in the same way, because those properties are becoming effectively the "public highways" where everyone must pass by.
This is not dissimilar from say, public utilities.
So, why not define how a tech company becomes a Big Tech "utility", and therefore, cannot hide behind 230 exception for things that it willingly does, like censorship ?
Wonder no longer! It's Section 230 of the communications "decency" act, not the communication freedoms and regulations act. It doesn't talk about censorship because that wasn't in the scope of the bill. (And actually it does talk about censorship of obscene material in order to explicitly encourage it.)
I think we'd all agree that most websites are better off with curation and moderation of some kind. If you don't like it, you are free to leave the forum, website, etc. The problem is that Big Tech fails to work in the same way, because those properties are becoming effectively the "public highways" where everyone must pass by.
This is not dissimilar from say, public utilities.
So, why not define how a tech company becomes a Big Tech "utility", and therefore, cannot hide behind 230 exception for things that it willingly does, like censorship ?