This fall the Supreme Court marked a turning point in the history of the internet. The court agreed to consider Gonzalez v. Google, its first case interpreting Section 230 — a once-obscure statute that is now widely credited for having “created the internet” and is debated by politicians on both sides of the aisle.
Section 230 states that online companies will not be “treated as the publisher” of any content provided by a third party, such as someone posting on the companies’ websites. Enacted by Congress in 1996 as part of the otherwise ill-fated Communications Decency Act, the law provides a degree of legal immunity to actors such as Google, Twitter and Facebook for the content shared on their platforms by users.
The law protects companies that provide a platform for other people’s speech from the constant threat of defamation suits — while still empowering them to remove content thought to be objectionable. This enabled the robust, often discordant discourse that defines the internet today. What might the Supreme Court’s intervention mean for its future?
