On Section 230

    If the spirit of the Constitution is supposed to be recognized before its actual written iteration, how is it so that we disrespect section 230, and the original spirit of it, to continue to infringe on the rights enumerated within said Constitution while espousing the literal iteration of Section 230 being the foundation of continued bastardization of its original spirit, and the original spirit of the Constitution of the United States of America? It seems more like we are contradicting, as a society, what it means to ‘interpret’ a law as we do this in favor of state power over individual rights. While Section 230 was put into place with the intent to protect the free speech right naturally granted, it’s the one greatest threat to free speech today.

    The first amendment of the Constitution is a ‘carving out’ of the powers of government to infringe on the natural rights of the citizens that, in theory, would cause a threat to the government using said powers as a natural affect of its abuses. If one can’t speak, they may ‘act out’. If they can’t ‘act out’, they may become covert. If they become covert, the fabrication of order through the Constitution of the Government over chaos will also naturally create more chaos from the government into her people. With the intention of obliterating every origin of chaos, natural given rights of human beings will be superseded by the preference of bureaucracy by violating said natural rights, said to be “God given”, and not granted from the Constitution itself.

    The first ten amendments are ‘unalienable’. The “Constitution”, when ratified, contained the first ten amendments. The “Constitution”, when originally written – without the first ten amendments, failed to be ratified. This is to say the Constitution without the first ten amendments is currently not ratified and amending The Bill of Rights would create a need to re-write and re-ratify a new Constitution, being that the Constitution cannot be deprecated to omit said amendments. In current day, the Republicans and Democrats alike wish to attack the constitution and its original written iteration for favor of either: possibly amending the iteration of the enumerated protections of civil rights, and limitations of the governmental powers marginalizing said rights; and/or Abolishing the constitution in general, respectively. And, Republicans and Democrats alike are worried about the power that these few large companies hold over the greater mind of the population.

    Section 230, enacted in 1996, was originally put into place after a couple of important legal battles, notably in 1991 in Chubby Inc. v. CompuServe Inc and, in contrast, Stratton Oakmont Inc. v. Prodigy Services in 1996. Both defendant providers were sued for defamation and while Compuserve was declared a distributor and not liable, Prodigy was declared a publisher due to its moderation practices. This, to some, created the need to reaffirm the natural right to free speech as when platforms have to worry about legal recourse, open forums would not likely survive. After Section 230 in the CDA was enacted, platforms could not be held liable for things their users say on their domains. Where we may see a fault here is in their continued ability to moderate, and with retaining publishing privileges not obtaining any responsibility for the possible infringement on the speech of their users. While websites and domains have ultimate authority to publish whatever they may and, deductively, not publish anything they don’t want to, free speech is not necessarily at the forefront anymore. The fear of lawfare from other corporations and/or the Government itself no longer resides within the platform, rather within the user. 

    This Section was originally enacted to protect the end user. Today, seeing as mainstream media platforms are well within the range of competency necessary for widespread censorship and they are able to stand nearly entirely as publishers, I argue that Section 230 is no longer a protection that should be allotted to large media companies that hold moderation preferences not in line with the constitution. This is to say, Social Media that wishes to sew and farm a style of community particular to their brand should be responsible for their content within and Social Media that wishes to merely offer a direct means of publication directly from and to a user base should not be held liable for what their users say.