[dragonwriter]

> Some people, including both Joe Biden and Donald Trump, have called for a complete repeal of Section 230 at various times in the last year

AFAICT, that characterization of Biden's position is based entirely on a single oral interview response, which quite arguably was not saying that the law should be repeated but that, on the facts of Facebook's specific conduct, and that of some unspecified other platforms, their conduct should be excluded from Section 230 protections because they were knowingly engaging in misinformation.

Note that Section 230 protections in case law are broader than what is provided on the face of the statute; in addition to the "publisher or speaker" protection in Section 230(c)(1); courts have extended it to also prevent liability as a distributor for content, IIRC by synthesizing 230(c)(1) and the good-faith blocking rule in Section 230(c)(2) and some legislative history to add the not-express-in-statute rule that sites are also not liable even as a distributor for the material they don't block, with some exceptions. Biden's statement is consist with restricting Section 230 to what is says on the face, which would be only removing publisher/speaker liability, not distributor liability (which comes about when the distributor has knowledge or legal notice of the legal problem with the content.)

[wbl]

IANAL but The First Amdment, not Section 230, is what lets me say that Donald Trump is in league with reptilians to enslave all Americans who prefer pork to beef.

Facebook spreading the above, or other similarly ludicrous information, is likewise protected.

[dragonwriter]

> IANAL but The First Amdment, not Section 230, is what lets me say that Donald Trump is in league with reptilians to enslave all Americans who prefer pork to beef.

The First Amendment does not protect you saying that if it is false and you have knowledge that it is false or are grossly reckless in saying it without confirming its veracity, see, New York Times v. Sullivan.

Section 230 is what prevents Facebook from sharing your liability, as a publisher, if they relay your saying that in the conditions in which you would be liable for defamation.

[wbl]

Have you seen the "Eat Shit Bob" episode of John Oliver? They say many not true things about a coal executive, all harmful to his reputation. But no serious person could take them at all to be truthful. And he isn't even the President.

Section 230 repeal would just mean lawyers name Facebook under rule of the deepest pockets. It doesn't stop Facebook from saying things about politicians.

[eli]

I think that's a very generous reading of what Biden said, especially considering the followup question and the fact that he's declined to clarify his position in the intervening 8 months. Search "230" on this page to see it https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/17/opinion/joe-b...

Anyway my point was that there have been calls to repeal 230 from across the ideological spectrum.

[dragonwriter]

> I think that's a very generous reading of what Biden said, especially considering the followup question

In the followup, Biden reiterates the conduct condition and the knowing falsehood criteria, which reinforces rather than weakens the impression that he is calling for the protections of Section 230 to be inapplicable to the actor/action in question due to their knowledge, a distributor-like standard, and not for the law itself to be repealed generally.

I suppose you could read the first line of his response to the second followup ("He should be submitted to civil liability and his company to civil liability, just like you would be here at The New York Times") as calling for publisher-like liability if you ignore the explicit references to actual knowledge as the basis for nonprotection in both the original response and the first followup, but I do think that that is the more strained interpretation, not the less strained.

> and the fact that he's declined to clarify his position in the intervening 8 months.

Why would you assume that he doesn't want to clarify because he wants a full repeal? Its not as if there isn't a constituency for a full repeal, especially on the right, and a key part of Biden's strategy is holding together a Bernie Sanders-to-Bill Kristol left-right alliance against Trump. Keeping disagreements the details of his position on the issue (which is clearly peripheral to his platform, on the grand scheme of things) out of the reasons for people to not feel comfortable with him is as plausible a motivation for that regardless of which side of the full-repeal-vs.-reform his preference on 230 sits on.