| > Right now courts are applying the liability so broadly that companies aren’t liable even after they are notified about illegal behaviours on their site. Right. While the text of the bill doesn't remove distributor liability (only publisher/speaker), its applied as doing that to, and giving even actively-moderating sites only neutral platform liability. There may be justification for this in legislative history and legal construction, so it may not be a pure judicial mistake, but from a policy perspective its at least arguably an overcompensation that Congress should correct, a correction which would be much more modest than many of the reform/repeal Section 230 proposals but probably hit a better point in terms of dealing with the worst problems without creating more than it solves. > It’s also worth mentioning that before section 230 if you didn’t moderate you weren’t liable That's not entirely true. If you did actively moderate, you were liable as publisher, but if you didn't actively moderate you would still likely be held liable as a distributor. > in certain senses it’s a censorship bill The entire Communications Decency Act was a censorship bill and the express purpose of 230 as part of the CDA was to encourage sites to do moderate content instead of taking a hands-off position. OTOH, so long as there is liability for knowing-unlewful content (distributor liability) and antitrust enforcement, I think that's a good thing and reduces the social pressure for government to push the maximum line the courts will let it get away with in terms of government content restrictions. |