“ The companies have invoked the federal law -- Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act -- in one court case after another to dismiss potentially costly lawsuits over messages, videos and other content created by users”<p>That was literally the point of section 230.<p>Section 230 was created explicitly for the purpose of allowing moderation without becoming liable for the content posted by others. In the absence of 230 platforms would be required to have <i>no</i> moderation of content - getting anything pulled, incl the grotesque, would require a court order. Not because they don’t want to remove the content, but because the moment they did of their own volition they become liable.<p>230 allowed moderation without becoming responsible for all content.<p>The framing of them somehow exploiting 230 is absurd and frustrating.
It strikes me that, perhaps, someday, people will look back at these times, and recoil seeing how we had to post content, opinion, data and speech through -somebody else's- site / property / business / systems, as a savage and barbaric proposition.-