> This is the part that 230 haters refuse to understand. Platforms rely on the immunity from liability that Section 230 gives them to make editorial decisions on all sorts of content. Yet, somehow, they think that taking away Section 230 would magically lead to more removals of “bad” content. That’s the opposite of true. Remove 230 and things like removing hateful information, putting in place spam filters, and stopping medical and election misinfo becomes a bigger challenge, since it will cost much more to defend (even if you’d win on First Amendment grounds years later).
The general point is that Section 230 gives companies a shield from liability for manual curation, automated curation, and algorithmic recommendations alike, and that removing 230 would result in a wild west of we're-afraid-to-moderate-so-you'll-get-unmoderated-content that would be far worse than the status quo. But it's unfair to say that the NYT article is completely wrong - because, in such a case, recommendation algorithms would be made more carefully as well.
Realistically, the entire web ecosystem and thus a significant part of our economy rely on Section 230's protections for companies. IMO, regulation that provides users of large social networks with greater transparency and control into what their algorithms are showing to them personally would be a far more fruitful discussion.
Should every human have the right to understand that an algorithm has classified them in a certain way? Should we, as a society, have the right to understand to what extent any social media company is classifying certain people as receptive to content regarding, say, specific phobias, and showing them content that is classified to amplify those phobias? Should we have the right to understand, at least, exactly how a dial turned in a tech office impacts how children learn to see the world?
We can and should iterate on ways to answer these complex questions without throwing the ability for companies to moderate content out the window.