26 Words

     America's chief executive recently refused to fund the military or approve a federal budget that includes pandemic aid because he hates Section 230 and wants to see it repealed. So what the heck is Section 230?

     Basically, it's a law that frees websites from a lot of legal liability. It says:

     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.

    Let's say you have a website. Someone visits your website and writes a comment that says Cecil Thromblebottom is a namby-pamby who murdered his grandmother with a trebuchet. Thanks to Section 230, Cecil may be able to sue the commenter, but he can't take you to court. 

This is a trebuchet. You can't sue Blogger for posting this pic.

     This makes some intuitive sense. After all, if agitators use telephones in their efforts to overthrow the U.S. government, that's not sufficient cause to charge Verizon with sedition. 

     It's hard to see how the world wide web could have grown so ubiquitous without the protection afforded by Section 230. That's why it has been called "the twenty-six words that created the internet."

     But now it's 2021 and everyone is mad at the internet for one reason or another, so Section 230 has come under attack. The next president wants to repeal it because Facebook "is propagating falsehoods they know to be false...it's irresponsible." The guy he defeated wants to repeal Section 230 because Twitter started fact-checking his falsehoods. (Po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to, let's call the whole law off.) 

      Striking the 26 words from the law books would lead to chaos on the interwebs. Any website that allowed third-party content would be exposed to lawsuits from every direction. The economy would be hobbled, the world wide web would drastically shrink, and only the lawyers would be happy. Still, after 2020, one hesitates to assume that chaos will be avoided...