[CookieMon]

You're railing against claims I didn't make.

Section 230 explicitly allows the tech industry to perform moderation. It was needed because ISPs were being sued for user-generated content and if the service had not moderated content they were found not at fault (Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc), but if they had moderated their user content they were found to have editorial control and thus be a publisher and legally liable (Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.), this is directly relevant to whimsicalism's analogy.

A Wikipedia summary: "The court held that although CompuServe did host defamatory content on its forums, CompuServe was merely a distributor, rather than a publisher, of the content. As a distributor, CompuServe could only be held liable for defamation if it knew, or had reason to know, of the defamatory nature of the content. As CompuServe had made no effort to review the large volume of content on its forums, it could not be held liable for the defamatory content."

Section 230 was Congress clarifying which of those ways internet services should be treated. My phrase "with the idea they acted more like" is descriptive of what ISPs are / how they are classified, not prescriptive or Congress demanding how they act. It does sound like I should have said the idea was they're "more like a distributor than a publisher", instead of "more like a common carrier than a publisher".

[triceratops]

Ah gotcha. We're on the same page.