Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is the legal foundation the Internet was built on and why it was built in the United States. It provides websites immunity from legal liability created by user-generated content. It would be very dangerous to operate any website which allows users to post online without this protection, and small websites would be most at risk.
Section 230 is often described as the Sword and Shield of the Internet. The "Shield" is (c)(1), allowing platforms to host user-generated content without being treated as the publisher or speaker of that content. The "Sword" is (c)(2), allowing platforms to moderate content in good faith.
(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.
(2) Civil liability
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account ofโ(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
(B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).
There are valid arguments for modifying the "Sword" so that platforms can be held liable for "bad faith" moderation (deplatforming, censorship, infrastructure-level blacklisting). However, the current bills in Congress, H.R.6746 and S.3546, seek to throw out Section 230 entirely.
Section 230, especially the "Shield", is vitally important for smaller platforms because it is provides an absolute defense for hosting almost all user-generated content. Responding to a federal lawsuit starts at $5,000. This price goes up the longer the litigation goes on, and a full trial will cost a minumum of $75,000. Without Section 230 providing an absolute defense to terminate anti-speech lawsuits in the first filing, the legal liabilities for any small website which permits user-generated content are astronomical.
Serial litigants love to file bogus lawsuits against websites for politically motivated reasons and hurt feelings. Without Section 230, any platform which permits open discussion is at risk of being bankrupted by these frivolous lawsuits. The legitimacy of the lawsuit does not matter, the cost of responding does, and Section 230 keeps costs low.
An Internet without Section 230 is an Internet where only the large, for-profit enterprises with legal teams can afford to operate online platforms. It would stifle innovation, free expression, and competition. Entrepeneuers bootstrapping worldwide communities with few resources would soon find themselves suffocated under frivilous litigation. The EFF writes in detail about this issue here.
The world puts their websites on American servers because of Section 230. The elimination of Section 230 is also an attack on American technological leadership in general, as all other countries have far more restrictive liability laws for online platforms. The loss of Section 230 would cause a mass exodus of websites from American servers to foreign servers, harming the American economy and reducing American influence on the global Internet.
Please write your representatives now and urge them not to support H.R.6746 and S.3546. Find your House reps here (for H.R.6746) and your Senators here (for S.3546).