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I am constantly amazed at how many people have totally internalized the blatantly false belief that Section 230 was premised on platforms being "neutral" when the ENTIRE point of it was the opposite, that they shouldn't have to be.

Ari Cohn@aricohn.com

Section 230 was based on the exact opposite understanding: that online services are not, and should not be forced to be "neutral channels"

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Honestly before everyone kinda went crazy over it, section 230 was literally just the forum/comment section version of 'ESRB Notice: Game Experience May Change During Online Play' which I have yet to encounter a single person who didn't look at it, laugh and say obviously.

A site where users can post and the mods delete/block ban when encountering slurs or spam or porn or their ex brother in law Steve or ppl who wear blue or however they want- no one was sure of anything, does this count as curation and create liability- Section 230 says no

The point of 230 was that they shouldn’t have to choose between being neutral, common carrier, or a publisher, as every other medium must, because that choice would inhibit massive growth

No, 230 allows platforms to moderate as they wish without being deemed publishers and liable for what users post. W/out 230 platforms don't moderate at all and the user posted content evolves them into a mess worse than 4chan, or they mod and deal with lawsuits trying to hold liable for user content

The first part of what you say is definitely true. But the situation without 230 is that you need to make a choice between moderating and not moderating at all. And not moderating at all probably means not using the algorithm, so I personally feel that the dynamic w/o 230 is preferable.

Net Neutrality has nothing to do with platforms being neutral. It's about Internet *access* providers letting you access whatever platforms and other services you want to in a neutral way as well as the platforms and services being able to obtain their own access in a neutral way to serve you.

However, I think it gets kind of muddy when they promote their own content and you consider the role of content algorithms and those biases. But this is something for the upper courts to determine, not civil juries. There are definite 1A ramifications to any decision.

It is predicated on the idea that they are conduits for communication, not publishers. Of course you don’t hold Verizon accountable for conversations on their lines. But you do hold a neo-Nazi publishing house accountable for publishing seditious screeds that incite violence. Which is X these days?

I wonder it's because how 230 evolved (Prodigy), combining publishing and moderating (c1 and c2). This could have potentially confused people. Non-ISPs platforms have evolved in various ways so there's no one simple canonical example people can follow to understand 230.