Section 230

In the United States, Section 230 is a section of the Communications Act of 1934 that was enacted as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which is Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and generally provides immunity for online computer services with respect to third-party content generated by their users.

At its core, Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an "interactive computer service" who publish information provided by third-party users:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

Section 230(c)(2) further provides "Good Samaritan" protection from civil liability for operators of interactive computer services in the voluntary good faith removal or moderation of third-party material the operator "considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected." Passed when Internet use was just starting to expand in both breadth of services and range of consumers in the United States, Section 230 has frequently been referred to as a key law which allowed the Internet to develop.

Section 230 was developed in response to a pair of lawsuits against online discussion platforms in the early 1990s that resulted in conflicting interpretations of whether the service providers should be treated as publishers (as held in Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.), or merely as distributors of content created by their users (as held in Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc.). The section's authors, Representatives Christopher Cox and Ron Wyden, believed interactive computer services should be treated as distributors, not liable for the content they distributed, as a means to protect the then-growing Internet. Section 230 was enacted via the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996. While most of the CDA was deemed unconstitutional in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union (1997), Section 230 was determined to be severable from the rest of the legislation and remained in place. Since then, several legal challenges have validated the constitutionality of Section 230.

Section 230 protections do not apply to material that violates federal criminal law, intellectual property law, or human trafficking law, meaning providers are liable if they do not remove such content. In 2018, Section 230 was amended by the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA-SESTA) to require the removal of material violating federal and state sex trafficking laws.

Section 230 has come under increasing scrutiny since the 2010s, particularly related to hate speech, terrorism, and ideological biases from both left-wing and right-wing politics though for different reasons. Proponents of the law assert it is necessary to protect speech covered by the First Amendment, and repealing the law would not automatically confer liability to platforms for user-generated content consisting of hate speech or disinformation. Proponents also argue that calls to repeal or reform the law are generally based on a misinterpretation or misunderstanding of the law, as highlighted by the contradictory nature of left and right wing criticisms, and that abolishing Section 230 would greatly restrict freedom of speech and freedom of expression online.