Re:Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account
by thu2111 on Tuesday October 27, 2020 @06:24AM
(#24906000)
It seems "Otherwise objectionable" is doing a lot of work in that paragraph. The intent seems pretty clearly "censorship of stuff that violates 1990s era morality is OK". Extrapolating to that to arbitrary censorship of ordinary political views isn't what Congress meant with this clause, and presumably adjusting Section 230 to tighten or simply remove "otherwise objectionable" would mean they could no longer do moderation for political reasons without losing that protection.
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account ofโ (A)any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected
With that it seems reasonable to read Section 230 as "you don't have to proactively moderate, and any good faith moderation you do doesn't break that protection".
Regardless of whether or not this is the right thing for society, it seems that Facebook and Twitter are well within the bounds of section 230 to do some moderation without losing the protection of section 230.