[goodrubyist]

I stumbled upon this while going through the orders yesterday. Note that, Justice Thomas is talking in terms of how the law has been interpreted wrongly by providing concrete examples (his statement is definitely worth a read). The issue basically arises from previous judges trying to enact and enforce what they believe Congress' subjective intentions to be, not the text of the law they passed.

Unlike what many might fear, this is not a case of a Justice trying to enforce what he wishes the law were.

[couchand]

> judges trying to enact and enforce what they believe Congress' subjective intentions to be

Despite what some might have you believe, this is appropriate and well-accepted practice. Pretending not to know the policy intent is a dodge used by those who would rather undermine democratic will than engage in civic dialog.

[nine_k]

I wish an explicit intent section was a required part of an article in the code of law.

[gamblor956]

It sometimes is. And in fact, it was part of section 230(b).

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

[jessaustin]

This may be true in general, but TFA contains a number of references to cases in which protections given by the courts to large media firms clearly exceed the law that Congress wrote. Neither is this some dusty law haunting us from centuries ago. It was written in direct response to the Stratton Oakmont case from a year prior to its passing, and the cases under discussion started immediately upon that passing. None of the lobbyists who wrote this bill are dead. If someone is curious what they meant, they can be made available for discussion, given an appropriate fee.

[gamblor956]

Unfortunately, it really is Thomas trying to enforce what he wants the law to be rather than what the law actually says.

Thomas ignores the definition actually provided for "information content provider" and substitutes his own, because it's ideologically convenient for him to do so.

"information content provider" is defined in section 230 as "person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service", and as written, clearly contemplates the individual users can be information content providers for purposes of section 230 if they are providing information through the use of the Internet.

The law doesn't say that the provider has to pass-along any content it receives, only that it has to receive the content from another. Importantly, section 230's shield, as written, only restricts liability where the provider is also the creator of the content, such as when it alters content received (because in that context, it is the creator of the altered content).

But Thomas has decided that the law really means that you either post everything you get sent (unless it's illegal), or you don't get to exercise any editorial control over what shows up on your website at all unless it clearly falls within the filterable catgories of 230(c)(2) (i.e., objectionable content). But 230(c)(2) is just a safe harbor that explicitly delineates what is definitely protected provider activity, it isn't meant to be an exhaustive list of what is protected provider activity.

In fact, if you look at all the cases cited by Thomas as being wrong and actually read the decisions...you find that they are logically sound and based on technical interpretations of section 230 as actually written and not what Thomas fantasizes in his head.

TLDR: it's just Thomas being Thomas.