| Section 230 obviously has multiple effects. It is not simply one or the other. It can benefit small sites that produce their own content and large ones that don't at the same time. But if, effectvely, the only way web users find or discover a small site is through a large one that acts as an intermediary (middleman) then perhaps the fact of the intermediary poses a greater, more practical threat of "censorship" than a lack of Section 230 immunity. Because Section 230 has allowed the growth of "Big Tech", the argument around small sites with controversial content "staying online" is no longer only an issue of having Section 230 protection, it is an issue of whether certain gigantic, third party intermediaries will allow these small sites to be found/discovered and to continue to receive "service". Operating a personal website is rare. Publishing on the web today is mostly sharecropping in a feudal system. It's publishing pages on someone else's website. Section 230 allowed the www to go from a public resource to a private one, controlled by a handful of mega-sized websites, now with so much cash and control over the web's direction that no one thinks of them as merely websites anymore. We are now stuck with a web of intermediaries, middelmen formed for commercial purpose of surveilling web users and targeted them with ads. The big ones are so big that people believe they do not need Section 230 protection. But they could never have grown so big without Section 230. Section 230 has positive effects and it has negative ones. It's good and it's bad. There are Section 230's well-intentioned, theoretical incentives and then there are actual, historical events that it has enabled. What actually happened. No one can predict the future. But Section 230 is an experiment that has run its course. We know what happened and we know the role that Section 230 played in it. |