Section 230 allows anyone to be a journalist without facing consequences for false or incorrect information. This means a post on Facebook or YouTube or their own website has equal weight as a traditional news report that relies on higher standards, like verification through multiple sources.
So a company like Facebook can host any false or unverified article posted by some random weirdo, since Facebook can't be sued for hosting that info, and the controversy draws eyeballs and draws attention away from more traditional news content. So now the attention shifts to low-quality social media and away from traditional media.
Note that traditional media still had their own problems propagated through their ownership. We never really had high-quality independent media in the US, although the current indie-media landscape might have opportunities for growth the way they wouldn't have if traditional media still existed.
Who doesn't face consequences for whose information? Nothing about Section 230 prevents you from being liable for your own words. Section 230 makes Facebook and YouTube immune from liability for what you post (barring exceptions specified in Section 230). Do note that the First Amendment also protects Facebook and YouTube from liability for what you post, but Section 230 immunity lets most such cases get dismissed before the discovery phase of a lawsuit.
> This means a post on Facebook or YouTube or their own website has equal weight as a traditional news report that relies on higher standards, like verification through multiple sources.
Equal weight how? If you mean that readers give similar truthfulness probabilities to posts on Facebook/YouTube/X/Twitter, I don't think that's the case.
> Section 230 is the reason why media was able to be consolidated into a few large corporations while eliminating higher-quality news organizations.
Could you explain in further detail how Section 230 is particularly responsible for media consolidation? Also, by "media", are you placing primarily social media companies in the same category as primarily news companies?
People don't consequences because the cost for punishment is too high. You now have to hire a lawyer to sue some random person on the internet that deliberately lied about you.
What do you think the cost of consequences should be? How much should I pay a lawyer to sue someone that posts libel?
While social media companies are immune to liability for what users post, if you file a libel lawsuit the companies have to follow court orders (unless the company's lawyers convince the court otherwise) to disclose the identity of a user who allegedly posted libel.
> You now have to hire a lawyer...
> What do you think the cost of consequences should be? How much should I pay a lawyer to sue someone that posts libel?
Unless you study law, you would have needed a lawyer to sue for defamation/libel before the age of the internet anyway. Whatever the costs are, the consequences should fall on the person who posted the libel, not on the company offering the posting service.
Without Section 230, if every place that hosts words is liable. No one is going to host user content.
I don't think anything you are saying is remotely correct. It's all a very specific weird narrow theory, picking very specific people you want to hurt & affect. But what you are asking for has such a broader zone of suffering & pain than Facebook.
Truly one of the greatest magnets for weird ass conspiracy theory horseshit. Fucking so awful, because it's that one tiny polar holding up the entire internet.
And, no, it doesn't mean no one is going to host user content. It means every user content will have an editor over them, like the "Letters to the Editor" that newspapers had.
If you want unedited and unliable speech, you can always run your own servers.
Without Section 230, you personally are just as liable for the content on your basement server as big corporations are on their platforms, but those big platforms have the budget for a legal team and a staff of moderators and editors, and you probably don't.
I can't begin to state what an absolute moronic plan this sounds like. Trying to make the whole world spin up their own servers in their basement... Because even a VPS is protected & can run only because of 230. Too stupid even to be a joke.
And then how do we have threads & comments? Sure you can post your words, but sites like this patently couldnt exist.
It's just the most brain rotted dumbest shit. The anti 230 people dont attempt even the smallest faintest attempt at making sense. Durbin has been confronted by a number of people, and it's always this fantasy world delusion, hiding behind the castle walls of the mind pretending like he's right, utterly unable to hear a single sound from outside. It's a Pam Bondi performance, a commitment to disregard any reality that doesn't meet what you want.
I have yet to meet a single anti-230 person who can even begin to be reasonable & measured in how they talk about this. There are just endless massive holes you could send a whole aircraft carrier battle group through. None of it is serious. It's probably half Russian agitprop, disinformation, begging America to stop having a freedom to share our words.
See also the recent techdirt which once again just shows how incredibly wrong anti-230 people so often are. It was designed to protect site's right to have editorializing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46998247 https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/12/joseph-gordon-levitt-goe...
