I think Google and others are hiding under Section 230 and it is wrong

Google says Supreme Court ruling could potentially upend the internet

Google filed a Supreme Court brief case hoping to keep a liability shield that would keep them immune from lawsuits if content they recommend causes harm.

Fox BusinessThe Wall Street Journal

Google and other "interactive computer services" claim they can't be responsible for the bad content posted on their sites. I think that protection on Section 230 is valid when users are posting content to the services and the services are simply hosting the content and allowing people to see it.

But when the services' editors or algorithms or programmers make decisions about what content to promote on news feeds or recommendation engines then those services are creating new content. The content is the link and recommendation to go view the content that other people posted. I hope their ability to hide under Section 230 gets removed. Then they can either stop using algorithm based discovery of content or they can get serious about moderating what they host. If they stop hosting all kinds of content then content creators can start hosting their own content all over the internet and not under the control of the big tech companies. That would be better for the Internet in the long run.

<< Previous Post    Next Post >>