Researchers at the New York University (NYU) Stern Center for Business and Human Rights released a report on Tuesday calling for amendments to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to include stronger regulatory provisions
The 1996 Communications Decency Act was one of the first attempts by the US government to regulate the then-novel World Wide Web, targeted mainly at limiting access to pornographic material via the Internet. Though the sections of the act aimed at indecency were struck down by the US Supreme Court only a year later, the remaining provision of the act, Section 230, remained in effect. Section 230 states that websites are not legally considered the publisher or author of content submitted by users, effectively rendering social media websites and internet forums largely immune to lawsuits for the content they host. The law has come under increasing attack by both Republican and Democratic politicians, including President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order to attempt to reinterpret Section 230 in May, and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who said in an interview with the New York Times that the law should be “revoked immediately.” However, free speech advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have described Section 230 as “critical” to protecting free speech online and that without its broad protections “people’s ability to create, communicate, and build community online” would be severely hampered.
The NYU report recommends a middle ground between the two positions. Instead of repealing Section 230, the report advocates for maintaining the current liability shield while imposing stricter moderation requirements that would require websites to actively moderate content hosted by their platform. Instead of the current structure that confers the liability shield to all websites hosting user-submitted content, the report argues for a “quid pro quo” approach that mandates that websites make good-faith efforts to police their platforms or face the loss of the liability protection. In addition, the report says that the federal government should establish an independent Digital Regulatory Agency to evaluate websites’ compliance with the requirements. The board would not have the ability to question specific moderation choices made by websites, but would instead monitor whether sites were adequately fulfilling their duty to police harmful content in order to maintain safe harbor protections.
The report’s release came only hours before Congressional Republicans, led by Senators Lindsey Graham, Roger Wicker, and Marsha Blackburn unveiled the Online Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Act on Tuesday night. The Act seeks to amend Section 230 by stripping liability protection for any website that fails to provide “objectively reasonable” justification for moderation choices, while simultaneously limiting categories of content that can be moderated to topics like “promoting terrorism” and “unlawful” content.
