What? Not only does the legal concept of a "neutral platform" not exist, the examples you cite (Fox, CNN) are certainly not "neutral platforms." They aren't responsible for what their commenters post on their sites either (and it is certainly... eye-opening to check out their comment sections sometimes).

Twitter already does have libel liabilities, just like Fox and CNN, if they were to themselves post something libelous - just like if Fox were to produce a segment themselves that is libelous.

No they don't. Twitter cannot be sued for something someone tweets that is false or defamatory about someone else. That individual tweeter is responsible. Unlike Fox or CNN who are responsible for what their reporters and commentators say. If Twitter ventures against the spirit of 230 protection, which was designed to protect neutral platforms like a utility, then they deserve to lose it. It's not about who produces a segment, Twitter is clearly the publisher and distributor. 230 was designed to protect free speech not to allow unlimited corporate intervention into speech.

Here's section 230, it's very short: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 Please can you explain how this was "designed to protect neutral platforms like a utility", given that the text contains none of the words "neutral", "platform" or "utility"? It also doesn't contain "editorialise" or any variant that I can see.

Here's the whole bill it was attached to, it's very long: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_19...

Note the original TCA created the FCC. That entire bill was packed with legislation to regulate cable and phone companies as well as providers of internet services...ergo utility.

Section 230 was developed in response to a pair of lawsuits against Internet service providers in the early 1990s that had different interpretations of whether the service providers should be treated as publishers or distributors of content created by its users.

Note, it is my strong opinion that Twitter selectively fact checking and blocking tweets or shadowbanning particular users that do not violate any laws or TOS means they are venturing into the publisher role more and more.

Section 230 was clearly designed to preserve free speech not to encourage its destruction by homogeneous corporations.

If Twitter themselves posted a tweet defaming someone, they'd have the exact same liabilities as those reporters at CNN, who are employed by CNN to create content for CNN.

Twitter can't be sued for a libelous tweet that someone else posts. Just like Fox can't be sued for a libelous comment that someone else leaves on a story. Well, you can sue anyone for anything, the point is neither of these suits would be successful.

I mean, this is just a common sense way of things working. In fact, the liability following-through to whoever actually did the bad thing was the entire motivation behind why S230 was created.

> 230 protection, which was designed to protect neutral platforms like a utility,

The text of section 230 has none of the words "neutral platform" nor "utility," nor are they legal concepts that exist in this context.

Fox has been photoshopping a man with an assault rifle onto pictures of a peaceful protest for the last week.

What legal consequences have they faced, or are they going to face for these blatant lies?

In addition to the they other comments, we know from history that section 230 was written to encourage sites to moderate content.

The historical revisionism around platform neutrality and section 230 is all made up.

No of course they're not a neutral platform - I assume they ban spam and they have a terms of service and require adult content to be marked and all sorts of things. Isn't the point of 230 that they're allowed to moderate without taking on those liabilities because otherwise they obviously wouldn't exist?

Yes, that's the entire point of Section 230. Should those protections be removed, most of these sites would increase their moderation, and remove anything potentially libelous. A huge chilling effect on speech.

There is an ongoing effort to upend those protections and bifurcate the internet into locked-down, heavily-moderated walled-garden sites, and sites that have no moderation at all. The motivations behind this movement range from malice (wanting the internet to become an unproductive wasteland) to political revenge (their favorite user got banned from Twitter and they want to lash out). I suppose "misunderstanding" of what S230 actually does is another motivation, but at this point if someone is still making an argument against it from that perspective, they're not arguing in good faith.

The result of removing S230 protections is not "the internet becomes a wonderful place where all 'political opinions' can be expressed equally," the result is "all Internet sites become 4chan or Nickelodeon, pick one."

You’re free to make an argument that they should be liable, but they are not actually liable under the law as it exists today.

why should twitter be responsible for user content? Certainly libel and defamation already apply to any material that twitter themselves post.

These arguments are always full of motivated reasoning; they start with the desired goal (Twitter shouldn’t be allowed to block people I like, usually), then they try to work backwards from the law to that outcome. This produces some fairly hilarious misinterpretations of how Section 230 works, along with the occasional misreference to State Action by the better read.

Because they are supposedly active in moderating content (I am not talking about taking down illegal stuff here). Moderating content to fit their narrative arguably makes them a publisher with all the consequences.

I guess what they are saying (entities that are meddling with 230) is either be totally neutral with the exception of taking down illegal stuff and spam or face the outcome.

> Moderating content to fit their narrative arguably makes them a publisher with all the consequences.

The problem being that there is no proof that this happens. Despite all attempts to construct some kind of "one side gets moderated stronger than the other" narrative this stays a conspiracy theory.

The other problem is that moderating content doesn’t make them the publisher. That is literally the point of section 230, giving platforms the ability to moderate without becoming responsible for the content.