He’s right. Here’s the text of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which became law in February 1996 and included Section 230.
That Act was such a monstrosity that it has its own sub-Acts embedded in it, like a Russian Matryoshka nesting doll. One of those is the anti-porn Communications Decency Act, a portion of which is labeled:
SEC. 230. PROTECTION FOR PRIVATE BLOCKING AND SCREENING OF OFFENSIVE MATERIAL
The relevant statutory language is:
(c) Protection for `Good Samaritan’ Blocking and Screening of Offensive Material… 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.
The House-Senate conference committee report from January 1996 reveals what Congress thought it was enacting. The conferees said they adopted Section 230 to “empower[] parents to determine the content of communications their children receive through interactive computer services.”
Heck, the initial version of Section 230 introduced as a standalone bill in July 1995 was called in part the “Family Empowerment Act.” Gotta block Internet porn for Johnny, right? Who’s against “Good Samaritan blocking,” right?
Let’s go through this again. Politicians thought Section 230 would encourage companies to block porn. That’s it. That’s all it would do.
This is not merely speculation. As lawprof Danielle Keats Citron and Brookings’ Benjamin Wittes write about Section 230: “The CDA was part of a campaign—rather ironically in retrospect—to restrict access to sexually explicit material online. Lawmakers thought they were devising a safe harbor for online providers engaged in self-regulation…”
Congress got hoodwinked. Hornswoggled. And snookered, too. The tech company lobbyists from AOL, Netscape (it was once a thing, really), Microsoft, etc. pulled a fast one. They were simply savvier and more focused than politicians who, in 1995 and the first few weeks of 1996, had probably yet to use a web browser.
You will look in vain for any language in the CDA, or the Telecommunications Act of 1996, or its legislative history that indicates Congress ever thought, intended, or suspected that Section 230 would be used by BigTech to gleefully deplatform conservatives and libertarians or immunize companies that quietly tweak algorithms to favor certain political candidates. It ain’t there.
Attorneys general from 49 states and territories wrote a letter to Congress in 2013 asking that the CDA be fixed (their specific complaint was sex trafficking and Backpage). But nothing happened. Same with their 2017 followup letter. It’s almost like BigTech companies with trillions of dollars of combined market cap might have lots of friends in Washington or something.
Coda: It would be unbearably ironic if the congressman who tricked his colleagues into enacting this language quit to be a lawyer for BigTech paid to argue against fixing Section 230, right?
He’s right. Here’s the text of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which became law in February 1996 and included Section 230.
That Act was such a monstrosity that it has its own sub-Acts embedded in it, like a Russian Matryoshka nesting doll. One of those is the anti-porn Communications Decency Act, a portion of which is labeled: SEC. 230. PROTECTION FOR PRIVATE BLOCKING AND SCREENING OF OFFENSIVE MATERIAL
The relevant statutory language is:
The House-Senate conference committee report from January 1996 reveals what Congress thought it was enacting. The conferees said they adopted Section 230 to “empower[] parents to determine the content of communications their children receive through interactive computer services.”
Heck, the initial version of Section 230 introduced as a standalone bill in July 1995 was called in part the “Family Empowerment Act.” Gotta block Internet porn for Johnny, right? Who’s against “Good Samaritan blocking,” right?
Let’s go through this again. Politicians thought Section 230 would encourage companies to block porn. That’s it. That’s all it would do.
This is not merely speculation. As lawprof Danielle Keats Citron and Brookings’ Benjamin Wittes write about Section 230: “The CDA was part of a campaign—rather ironically in retrospect—to restrict access to sexually explicit material online. Lawmakers thought they were devising a safe harbor for online providers engaged in self-regulation…”
Congress got hoodwinked. Hornswoggled. And snookered, too. The tech company lobbyists from AOL, Netscape (it was once a thing, really), Microsoft, etc. pulled a fast one. They were simply savvier and more focused than politicians who, in 1995 and the first few weeks of 1996, had probably yet to use a web browser.
You will look in vain for any language in the CDA, or the Telecommunications Act of 1996, or its legislative history that indicates Congress ever thought, intended, or suspected that Section 230 would be used by BigTech to gleefully deplatform conservatives and libertarians or immunize companies that quietly tweak algorithms to favor certain political candidates. It ain’t there.
Attorneys general from 49 states and territories wrote a letter to Congress in 2013 asking that the CDA be fixed (their specific complaint was sex trafficking and Backpage). But nothing happened. Same with their 2017 followup letter. It’s almost like BigTech companies with trillions of dollars of combined market cap might have lots of friends in Washington or something.
Coda: It would be unbearably ironic if the congressman who tricked his colleagues into enacting this language quit to be a lawyer for BigTech paid to argue against fixing Section 230, right?