Lauren's Blog: Holding Social Media Responsible: Time To Change Section 230?
https://lauren.vortex.com/2025/01/07/holding-social-media-responsible-section-230
I have long held that efforts to tamper with Section 230 from the
Communications Decency Act of 1996 are dangerously misguided. It is
this section that immunizes online service providers from liability
for third-party content that they carry. I have also argued that
attempts to mandate "age verification" for social media will
spectacularly backfire in ominous ways for social media users in
general, and will not actually protect children -- and I continue to
believe that age verification systems cannot achieve their stated
goals and will cause dramatic collateral damage.
One of my key concerns in both of these cases is that they would over
time cause major social media platforms to drastically curtail the
third-party content that they host, eliminating as much as possible
that would be considered in any way controversial, in an effort to
avoid liability.
I still believe that this is true, that this would be the likely
outcome of Section 230 being altered in any significant ways and/or
widespread implementation of the sorts of age verification systems
under discussion.
But I'm now wondering if this would necessarily be such a bad outcome,
because the large social media platforms appear to have increasingly
eliminated all pretense of social responsibility, making it likely
that the damage they have done over the years through the spreading of
misinformation, disinformation, racism, and all manner of other evils
will only be exacerbated -- become much, much worse -- going forward.
Seeing billionaire Mark Zuckerberg today proclaiming nonchalantly that
he's making changes to Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) that
will inevitably increase the level of harmful content -- he
essentially said that explicitly -- is I believe a "jumping the shark"
moment for all major social media.
I feel it is time to have a serious discussion regarding potential
changes to Section 230 as it applies to large social media platforms,
with an aim toward forcing them to take responsibility for the damage
the content on their platforms causes to society, whether it is
third-party content or their own.
I would also add -- though this extends beyond the formal scope of
Section 230 and social media -- that firms who have deployed
Generative AI systems (chatbots, AI Overviews, etc.) should be held
responsible for damage done by misinformation and errors in the
content that those systems generate and provide to users.
It is obvious that the major social media platforms are at best now
providing only lip service to the concept of social responsibility, or
are effectively abandoning it entirely, for their own political and
financial expediency -- and the situation is getting rapidly worse.
We must make it clear to these firms that they serve us, not the other
way around. Changes to Section 230 as it applies to the large social
media platforms may be the most practical method to convince the
usually billionaire CEOs of these firms that our willingness to be
victimized has come to an end.
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lau...@vortex.com (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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