Judge tosses social platforms' Section 230 blanket defense in child safety case

arstechnica.com

10 points·isaacfrond··3 comments

>Alleged defects not barred by Section 230 include: not providing effective parental controls; not providing options for young users to self-restrict time used on the platform; [...]

It seems excessively burdensome to require websites to provide "effective" (interpret that as you will) parental controls. There is only so much you can do as a website owner to restrict children from misusing your platform without resorting to extremely intrusive methods (i.e. requesting some form of ID). Because at the end of the day, anyone can create a gmail account and sign up for Facebook while pretending they're 21.

The comments section on the article discuss this at some length.

Personally, I think most governments will eventually decide to legislate both safety and privacy together. The argument will be that requiring ID is acceptable when the data tied to that ID has privacy protections. The EU seems headed in this direction.

I expect keeping that compact will be next to impossible, but governments work with the tools they have—legislation and regulation—and expect the industry involved to solve the implementation details.

My interpretation of this isn’t that they don’t have 230 protection, but that they failed to successfully argue that in their motion to dismiss. E.g it seems like they might still be allowed to argue 230 based immunity in a full trial?

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