Panic World - The internet sucks, and Congress might make it worse

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

The law Section 230 is maybe the invisible force that governs everything in our lives. With a California court ruling against Meta, what are we to do? How responsible should social media companies be for the content posted on them? Brian Reed joins us to discuss Section 230 and its implications, both past and present. Our guest Brian Reed is the host of Question Everything. Check it out anywhere you listen to podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're today talking about something that I think, you know, we'll be coming up at a lot of Christmas parties, a lot of families around the dinner table this year talking about Section 230. So I would love to hear your like one line sentence for why the average person should be aware of Section 230. Oh boy. Section 230 is the invisible force that governs everything that happens basically. on the internet, which is to say essentially everything that happens in our lives. I would tend to agree with you there. Yes. In fact, I was literally describing that that opening was kind of a joke, but I was at a party last night and I was actually describing section 230 because how'd you do it? How'd you do it? This guy was talking about Roblox and he was basically

saying that like his son had a Roblox account for many years and the Roblox account was named after his son's friend as a joke, but the son's friend's initials, which are C and P. So he had a Roblox account called like CP money or something, which was flagged by Roblox as possibly being connected to child pornography. And he was frustrated that Roblox decided to just nuke the account without really looking at it. And I tried to explain to him after several drinks that because of Section 230, and we can get into deeper about it and you can maybe tell me if I'm, I even explain it wrong.

Because of Section 230, it's easier and safer for a large platform to large-scale nuke a pocket of what may be objectionable material than actually being aware of that objectionable material on their platform. No, it's the opposite. Say it again. I'd say it again to me. Can I say it wrong? Maybe.

See, it's a very paradoxical law. It's a very paradoxical law. So, yeah. You know what? We'll save it for the meat of the episode because I had several glasses of wine and I may have told them the opposite. But we'll find all that out in just a second. My name is Ryan Broderick.

With me as always is my producer Grant Irving. He is federally mandated to be on this show as sort of my caretaker. So I want to thank him for that. And joining us this week for a very special edition of our show is the host of Question Everything, which turns out is not a QAnonon on a podcast. Brian Reed, welcome to the show. How are you doing? I'm good. Thanks for having me. So this is a special episode because we typically start with like an argument that I want to make to the guests and then see if I can manipulate and confuse and bewilder them into agreeing with me.

But this time you have an argument that you would like to make on the show. Outline it for us before we get deeper in. So what is your problem with Section 230? What do you think should happen here? My problem with Section 230 is that it removes any reasonable way to get accountability from some of the most powerful companies in the internet platforms that are part of all of our lives, our democracy. It's made it so that it is almost impossible in most cases to sue them for stuff that happens on their platforms, which is bad for the

people who might be harmed by something that happens there as individuals. But it's also just made it bad for all of us. It's made, you know, like there's no real deterrent for them to stop bad behavior, also because there's not that many regulations in our country for these platforms either, like the two ways that you would really, you know, get them to behave better. Right. Outside of like goodwill and like, you know, market pressures are regulations or lawsuits, you know, like real liability. Like it hurt their bottom line.

And without that, I just think, like, I've come to think that like it's what's allowed, like, the internet to get so warped and kind of nasty and for all of our experiences to just feel kind of, I don't know, but I'm not going to speak for everybody, but certainly me and like, I think lots of people feel like a little bit just like overwhelmed and helpless and like, is this really a net benefit now or a net, you know, or not? And I think that section 23 is a big part of that. So before we get into how we ended up with section 230 and to possibly help me the next time I have several glasses of wine and have to explain it to somebody, can you define what section 230 is? Yes, it has two major parts.

but people often only know about the first one. So the first part makes it so that any like internet service provider essentially, but that could be like a company operating a website. It could be Facebook. It could be Wikipedia. Is not treated as the publisher or speaker of stuff that's posted on their platformer site. So by another person. So, you know, if I post something on Facebook, Facebook is not liable.

Can't be sued for what I post on Facebook. And if I call someone a murderer and they're not a murderer, they can sue me for defamation, but they can't sue Facebook. Even if Facebook like amplifies that post. So that's the part one. Part two in the law says that these sites are sites, platforms, apps, social media services are free to moderate however they want. And that doesn't, and they still get this immunity from being sued. So it like enshrines their ability to decide if they want to block certain users. If they want to have certain content they don't allow, which like technically they're allowed to do under the First Amendment still.

But this just like gives them like an extra protection basically. And I think that's the part of it that a lot of people forget often. So what's your problem with that? I don't have a problem with number two, honestly, because number two is like a First Amendment right. There's a reason that's in, yeah. I think number, I think part one is the part where I'm like, if we did anything to that, the entire internet, well, I guess we'd have to just like decide what a service provider is in that instance.

But like, yeah, so what's your problem with part one? I think part one should be changed. I think that, yes, part one made sense like, you know, this law was passed in 96. So imagine the internet of those days. Exactly. the same as now, right? Yes, exactly. It's identical.

The cases that kind of like surround, oh. It's okay. He'll pop in and out. Got it. I was grabbing a tissue. I'm sorry. We want to see you blow your nose on camera. Great.

Yeah, that's very delicate of you. Yeah. The cases that were happening. We're keeping that entire interaction in. You're very delicate blowing of your nose. Oh yeah. So what is your problem with part one of Section 230? So like, yeah, when it was past, like the cases that were happening, you know, were against like prodigy comp,

CompuServe AOL and they had to do with people posting, you know, something on CompuServe about like a TV journalist saying he got and fired and he was like, I didn't get fired. That's defamatory and he sued CompuServe, you know, just for someone having posted this thing with Prodigy like someone posted and said that the Wolf of Wall Street firm, the firm that that movie's based on was involved in fraud and they were like, that's bullshit and they sued. It was an anonymous poster. They sued Prodigy. Those are the types of cases that were happening. But if you think about the internet of today, where platforms are using very powerful machine learning models to choose content to amplify based on engagement metrics

and the type of content that's in those posts that they're amplifying to rake in tons of profit and they can do that without having to incorporate, like think about the liability at all of what they're doing, that's where I think it should be changed, basically, that we have to come up with changes that account for the way the internet is today. Well, let's start with Prodigy here because you mentioned it, and that's kind of where our story begins. So in 1995, Prodigy is one of the biggest forum hosting sites on the web, and it's sued for defamation, which was posted on honestly on one of their forums. They said they had nothing to do with the message. Court finds them liable because they're sued for defamation. They are supposed to be censoring illegal harm from material. In 1996, Congress passes the Communications Decency Act as part of the larger Telecommunications Act.

And Section 230 is proposed by representatives Chris Cox and Ron Wyden, who's now a senator, because of the prodigy case. But the Community Decency Act, now mostly unconstitutional, was designed to punish Internet pornography after a moral panic, our favorite kind of thing on this show a previous year. So 1995-1986 is when the CDA, the Communications Decency Act, was initially considered and then passed, and it leads to the first major online protest, organized by John Perry Barlow, founder of Wired and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And Grant has a really good image that he's going to pull up for us of what these protests look like. I don't think I've seen this, show me. Yeah, it's from the Internet Day of Protest across major U.S. cities. And so we've got we've got this one right here.

This is like a text-based website that says, join hundreds of thousands of other internet users in 48 hours of protest after President Clinton signs the bill that will censor the internet. And it's got like a whole bunch of sort of like cute, like old internet resources you can like click on to like find out what's going on. I love this stuff. So Brian, you don't think this represents the internet today. You don't think this is this HTML1 website represents. It represents. Remember that curse, like the, what do you call the slide bar on the side?

Like that thing. Oh, yeah. The blocky thing. The blocky, the Netscape cursor. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, but I do think that this points to something that I will always sort of rankle over, which is like, I agree with moderating large corporate algorithmic driven platforms that control

our whole planet. Sure. But I do become extremely uncomfortable. comfortable at the idea of anything that could also impact like the average internet users ability to speak freely online. When this happens, of course, like in February 96, hundreds of websites go dark. They changed their UI in protests. About 5% of the internet basically in the US was affected, which is wild.

Just because they were doing this in response to the Communications Decency Act proposal basically. Yeah. Yeah, there's this guy like James Exxon, the senator for Nebraska. who, you know, was railing against pornography on the internet. And he had a little blue book that he'd carry around the Senate with a bunch of porn that he'd printed out, like in black and white in it. And that he'd be like, I'd ask any member who's interested to come by my desk and look at this disgusting pornography.

Come look at my porn father. That's sick. That rules actually. Yeah, exactly. Matt Gates was saying the same thing and it got him in trouble. That's crazy. It did remind me of Gates. Yeah, for sure. Um, so this, um, that's what he was using like push for these rules to basically like, it was something like, you know, would make it illegal and you could even get jail time for posting something indecent on the internet that could be accessed by a child. Interesting.

Um, or a minor. So it was like, you know, it was just like very broad essentially. And even Newt Gingrich in the house and a bunch of people in the house were like, this is unconstitutional. When you've lost Newt Gingrich, you know that like you've really hit like a like a self-suffical dead end. So in 1987, the ACLU sues Attorney General Janet Reno to block the CDA.

The Supreme Court rules that it violates the First Amendment. Some parts of the law, though, like Section 230 remain. And so I do think it's interesting for this larger conversation that like Section 230's origins do come from like a weird freak in his porn folder being like, we need to block all sexual expression on the internet. Like every free speech fight in America, you know, major one it has to do with sex. We are a country upset. We just Americans should not be allowed to look at their own genitalia.

Like, I just, I think that we can, we can really just fix things really quickly if we get that in place. Is that the change to Section 230 that you're looking for, Brian? That's the thing. Yeah, it's just no, it's no, it's no. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, let's just. That's all. Yeah, that's what matters to me. In November 97, Section 230 is used in a Supreme Court ruling for the first time.

Someone buys an AOL ad for T-shirts with jokes about the other thing. Another thing that Americans are obsessed with, beyond sharing. pornography is making fun of like mass casualty events. So yeah, a guy buys an AOL ad for t-shirts. We have to bring listeners in on this. This is the jokes about the Oklahoma City bombing. Guys, for those listening, yes, we have been doing this since we got the internet. There have been people making fun of mass casualty events since we had internet connections.

So yeah, he buys an ad for T-shirts with jokes about the Oklahoma City bombing. The ad tells people to call a man for more information. the man has no idea and is clueless when his phone takes your own up with an incredibly good bit honestly he was a dude who's like he was like a real estate agent maybe or something a real estate broker but he was just living in his parents house in seattle he had no connection to oklahoma city like no connection to this at all was was he picked at random was it wasn't i don't think they really know yeah i don't know i don't know but you know like people don't go homes any worse were pissed uh i think some like local radio show hosts like you know talked about this and they're like call this dude

That's so funny. Yeah, so AOL takes the ads down at the poor guy's request. He sues AOL for not posting our attraction and the court rules that AOL isn't liable. So this is the beginning of the venue for user generated content is not legally considered a publisher in the same way that if a newspaper had run a letter to the editor saying call this guy for more information about the Oklahoma City bombing, they probably would have been liable. AOL in this case is not. And then basically like very little changes with the use of Section 230 in the 2000s. People complain about it when they can't sue websites for what their users do. And a good example of this would be John Siegenthallor.

Are you familiar with this name? It's not ringing a bell, but tell me. Maybe I'll remember it. He was a lawyer that worked for RFK Senior in 2005. His Wikipedia page was updated to say he was a suspect in RFK's assassination. Oh, yeah, yeah. He wrote an op-ed in USA Today complaining about Section 230 because it meant he couldn't sue Wikipedia. And like, I do think this is where I start to like kind of unravel around section 230.

Because essentially the backbone of all what we would now call social media, but let's say user generated content for simplicity sake is possible because of this. And social media has tons and tons and tons of problems. But I guess like if you were maybe this is where we should say like, what would you like to change to section 230 concerning the liability of a service provider? Because I feel like the architecture of the internet would have to like change drastically to say like if you like yeah, I'm sort of stumped. Like so what what do you see here? All right.

I can let me say two things here. I'm currently exploring like there's all sorts of different reform proposals and they really run the gamut, you know, and there's different things you can do. I don't have 100% like my favorite one yet. But like some options. Okay. You could say you don't get immunity when you're, you know, using very powerful algorithms, basically. Like that, there's some liability introduced for that. I was kind of into that idea, like when I kind of first started like really tuning into this.

For instance, that is what the Facebook whistleblower Francis Howgan proposed in Congress when she came forward. But I've dug into it more. And there are people I respect, including Francis Howgan now, who are like, maybe that's not the best way to go about it. I just talked to her like a week ago and I don't know, I guess she changed her mind, though she didn't really say that either. But I do think that's a compelling idea worth considering. There's this idea that like we gave this industry and these companies, this really valuable thing and got nothing for it.

So like if you look at the text of Section 230 and like the kind of legislative like history around it, it is labeled a good Samaritan provision. You know, so the idea that like a doctor is driving by someone who was, you know, a car accident on the side of the road goes to try to save their life and it doesn't work and they die, the doctor can't be held liable for malpractice because that would just like disincentivize them from even trying in the first place. And so this is a good Samaritan law. It's meant to be. And that's what that second part is. That second part is you guys like, you know, internet services like we're giving you this to encourage you to keep the internet clean, like keep

that stuff out there to kind of like treat the market well. And I think a lot of people make the argument. And I feel this that like they've not really lived up to that end of the bargaining and it didn't require it. And so you could structure things that actually do require certain behaviors, best practices, even just transparency is something a lot of people talk about. Like you only get the immunity if you're really transparent about your algorithms or if you give users choice about whether to opt into algorithmic or chronological timelines, things like that. So it's basically like we gave them this giant thing that's so valuable without requires. requiring anything, just kind of hoping that with goodwill, they would do good stuff. So those are different ways you could structure it. And there are other ideas as well.

You know, like there are some crazy cases that Section 230 has been used to protect. I have a few here. Let me spin through a couple like greatest hits here before we, we go to break. So in 2008, a major ruling against Section 230 arrives. A court finds Roommates.com isn't immune from getting sued for discrimination. under Section 230 because it makes all their users say their race, et cetera, to sign up. Back in 2012, Backpage is able to cite Section 230 as a way to avoid lawsuits for prostitution and child sexual abuse material on their sites. And this goes back and forth for a while. It's one of the major reasons behind the proposal for Fasta Sesta. We did a whole episode about that.

If you guys want to go into our archive and check that out, and we'll link in the show's notes. But basically, it's a false assessed. You can blame New York Times, and you can listen to our episode about that. But 2013, because of the backpage stuff, state attorney general's attempt to try to exempt Section 230 from applying to state-level cases. This leads to a lot of backlash from like the pro-tech community. And then between 2017 and 2020, Republicans start really beating the drum about Section 230 because it means that they can't sue websites. when people say mean things about them online. And this includes people like Devin Nunez,

Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Trump signs an executive order trying to curtail Section 230 because Twitter keeps fact-checking him. And then we start to see like a rise in another thing we've done episodes about, which is like heavily online mass shooters. And when that starts to kick off around 2018, 2019, Democrats start getting unhappy with Section 230 because it means there's no liability for platforms that allow hate speech. Facebook is found not liable that same year for Hamas using Messenger to coordinate attacks. And then that takes us into the 2020s where now like Project 2025 has like a whole thing about eliminating Section 230, which is why I start to feel very titchy about it because I...

But that's why it's important to know about the two parts. I know you mean I went to the Heritage Foundation. I've talked to those guys about what they want to do. And because I saw that as well. I want to hear all about that. But first, a word from our sponsors, the Heritage Foundation. The Koch brothers. The best brothers still around.

Project 2026 coming to an internet near you. What was it like talking to the Heritage Foundation about Section 230? That's why it's important to know about the two parts of the law. They are more focused on the second part of the law and wanting to change that. And now again, the second part of the law is the part that says, platforms are protected, they can make whatever choices they want about how they want to moderate what content they want to allow or not, if they want to de-platform somebody, all that stuff is protected in Section 230.

That is just First Amendment law. Like you don't need that protection, Section 230. Unless it's like a government-run social media platform. But these are private companies. It is their First Amendment right. If they see a bunch of like COVID disinformation on their site and they don't want to have blood on their hands that like people aren't taking a vaccine, they have a First Amendment right to say like, we don't want to promote that stuff or allow it on our platform. They're a private

company. And that's what that enshrines. And when you talk to those guys, like, you get the sense that what they're going after is that because they, there's this, you know, narrative on the right that these platforms have like overly censored conservative speech. There's not evidence supporting that, frankly. No. But that's a very, you know, well, you know, highly believed narrative on the right. They want to be able to go after platforms for that reason. And they have different ways of doing it. And this is one of them. And so they're focused on that second part when you kind of dig into it with them.

And that's why it's helpful to kind of know the nuances of the law to see like what are people actually looking at changing? And that would be like a real First Amendment issue, you know, if that was weakened at all. 100%. The first part, if you think about it, is beyond the First Amendment. When you think about the protection it gives to companies, it's saying you can know. never have liability at all. You know, even like all of us getting incredibly robust First Amendment protections, we still are liable for certain types of prescribed speech like, of course, defamatory stuff.

And they are not. And so that's why I'm more comfortable looking at that part because it is something extra that has been given to this industry that I think has not lived up to their end of the bargain on the Good Samaritan side, basically. So, I mean, that's like the kind of distinction between like at least the Project 2025, proposal. I also want to go back, like you said something earlier that I think is interesting to think about, something about how like Section 230 is the only reason we have like kind of the internet, the kind of, you know, wide open, free speech conducive internet that we have today. I want to go back

to that prodigy decision. That is the reason that it was passed. I would put a caveat of like, it is the reason we have an internet in which every internet user does not have their own server and web page. Basically, user-generated content as we understand it, I would sort of say is thanks to that prodigy decision. Is that not, do you feel like that's not correct? It is, thanks to Section 230, but I want to take you back to that moment. Like I've, as I've kind of like thought about the history here and learned about it.

So the prodigy decision, basically Wolf of Wall Street firm in Long Island, somebody posts. Who are not committing fraud, by the way. I actually think this, maybe they weren't this claim of fraud. They only said it's, I think this one. Maybe I don't know the I don't know exactly, but they claim that this one was bullshit and it might actually been somebody said they're involved in fraud on a money talks Forum in a prodigy They and Danny Porish the founder of the firm who Jonah Hill possibly plays You know representative of in in the movie though he claims it's not true

They sue Prodigy for defamation the judge looks at it and prodigy says like there's been one other case like this about the internet happened like a few years earlier It's comp you serve got sued for something similar somebody sued CompuServe for, you know, like hosting a post that they said was defamatory. And the judge in that case was like CompuServe's not liable. You're like a newsstand. You don't know all, you can't know all the posts that are on here. You know, you didn't know about this post. And so you're not liable for what this person said.

And they didn't allow CompiServe to be sued. And so Prodigy was like, same thing. We're like CompuServe, you know, like we're not liable for this post about the Wolf of Wall Street firm. And the judge looked at and said, actually you are. And the reason you are is because Prodigy, unlike CompuServe, tried to be very family-friendly. They marketed it that way. They took a really strong hand with like moderation and banned content. And they had like, you know, terms of service and standards that they upheld.

They put a lot of work and money into making like a nice place for families for like people, the kids to do their homework and stuff. CompuServe did not do that. And he said, because you did this, you are responsible. And so it was this weird, like, perverse incentive that was set up where it was like, oh, you're going to go out of your way and spend a bunch of money to make like a nice internet, you know, for your users. Then you're responsible for it.

Well, we're going to make it easier to sue you. And if you just say, fuck all, it'll be hard to sue you. So it's this really perverse incentive that did seem like a problem, right? Okay. But here's the thing. It was treated like a big problem. This is like very specifically why Cox and Wyatt had passed Section 230. Like one of the big reasons was like, oh, shit.

like, especially with all these like, you know, Bible thumpers saying like we're worried about porn on the internet. Our best shot at fixing that is having companies be incentivized to police their own platforms for this stuff. And now we've got this like backwards incentive where why would they if they're going to get sued more easily? But this was not a binding decision. This was like one trial court judge on Long Island. It was not a Supreme Court case and a pellet case. No other court had to abide by this at all. people paid attention to it. It mattered because it was like one of the first ones and like it was this new industry. And if you look back at this judge, his name is Justice Stewart Ayn.

He's a funky dude. Like he had been censured, but allowed to remain on the bench after he was doing a separate case where he like from the bench asked a lawyer, I believe, what his ethnicity was. The guy was like I'm Arab. Okay. Yeah. And he said to him from the. bench, you're our sworn enemies. Here's what I have to say for you. He gives them the middle finger from the bench and says, what the fuck do you people want anyway? Okay. This judge in some random

courtroom on Long Island made this one decision that applied to Prodigy and the Wolf of Wall Street firm. And Congress took it and said, oh shit, like, we're going to have a totally messed up internet if we don't like respond to this. Right. And I just don't think that was a foregone conclusion. had we not had Section 230, it is very possible there would have been other cases in this new industry that would have gone to other, you know, gone up the chain in different courts, you know, been reviewed. We have a very strong First Amendment and a different legal framework that isn't so absolutist that is that is in line with very strong First Amendment protections could have taken place. But the Internet was never given a chance to do that because Section 230 came in from this one dude.

Okay. So what you're saying is like Section 230. was like a knee-jerk congressional response to like an insane judge on Long Island's decision arguably over on the Wolf of Wall Street guys and instead of taking the time to build out the legislative framework that something as complex as the internet would require we just sort of slapped section 230 on it and we're like go with God yeah or allowing it to just proceed through the courts you know like with other media that have happened and and letting the courts kind of like apply the First Amendment to this new technology.

Right. We had had two cases, CompuServe and Prodigy. Those are the only cases that had ever looked at liability of platforms for what other people post. Okay. So let's go deeper into this because like I am with you that Section 230 has problems. And the way that I always sort of approach it is like, okay, if you want an internet in which the average person does not need to own a server and know how to make a website, then they have to rely on other services to upload and distribute and transmit and communicate.

So if Section 230, the first part is changed to make providers more liable for what people are using their services for, how does that work? Why do we have to game it out for the companies? I feel like this this argument, this conversation always, it puts us in the position of having to make, like, like kind of prescriptions for these companies. I don't totally know how it would work. It's a giant world in industry. And to me, it's about like shifting the incentives slightly and saying, hey, company, you're actually going to have some risk here that you're going to have to think about in

your business model. Maybe your business model will have to shift slightly or your algorithm will have to shift slightly to prioritize other things than just engagement or outrage. Like, that's why I like Section 230 as a lever, because it's like a free market. market solution rather than like a bunch of regulations coming in and saying like this is how you should do it. It's like let's just like bring them closer in line with very strong first member protections that we all have, but that still have some risk involved. So okay, well, let me let me throw something at you because like I'm not disagreeing.

I can disagree. It's fine. No, no, but I'm not. But I have questions. And and I agree with you that like yeah, why are we doing the work? But at the. same time, like I would rather we figure it out because I don't like how the corporations continue to figure this out, right? But my question with all of this is like, does Section 230 in its current forum still have issues if we attack this problem with antitrust law? So like the thing that you keep going back to is, okay, we have these massive algorithm, like the specific massive algorithmic platforms that like five or six that like determine how

the internet works. They're bigger than they've ever been. And the stat I always uses like Facebook has more members than the Catholic Church. Like it's these are massive issues of scale and one's coming in the future that we don't know about yet new entrance you know like this is the framework that we have moving forward to you know yeah I thought you're like is like do you know about a new platform is going to be are you launching a platform right now? Okay so yeah back social here's my thing like instead of saying okay we need to basically change

the architecture of the internet, why go about it that way when what we could do is like, my most radical take is like, why can't you cap users? We have laws in place for like how many people can like be in a room. Like we have, we have laws in place for like, uh, well, we used to have laws in place for like how big a company could be or like how many movie studios it could own or if that movie studio could own a fucking movie theater. We used to have those laws. So like, Instead of saying, okay, we're going to basically make it so that whatever I type into Discord, Discord is legally liable for and however Discord wants to deal with that issue is up to them. The total accelerationist in me kind of loves that idea because it's like, see you later, social media,

because it won't exist. It's not possible. It's not possible for Facebook to exist. Oh man, wait. I'm getting kind of, getting kind of turned on by this idea, actually. We should just flip the switch. Are you right? Are you read pulling yourself?

No, possibly. No, there's, there's an argument. Listen, like there, I've heard a couple people make the argument or like at least through the thought experiment like just totally repealing 230. Yeah. And and that that's not the worst thing you could do. And I mean, you know, and like the proposals to repeal it like there's a bipartisan proposal in the Senate right now to sunset 230 and two years. Like I think those are ultimately my understanding like from talking to people. That's a threat that basically would you need to do that to like force the companies to the table to come up with some kind of like compromise over over how to limit it, you know. But anyway, there is an interesting world to imagine if you do. I mean, it is kind of fun to imagine like the purge, but for lawsuits. Like just like at midnight, section 230 is repealed and like God help you.

You know, meta. But why go at it that way when I feel like there are other regulatory levers to pull here that would still allow the average person with zero, like little to none, technical know-how to express themselves online, which is, The thing that like I always come back to whenever I get like two down the rabbit hole with like, you know, internet woke scolds about like what people should be saying online. I'm kind of like, well, they should be able to maybe say, I don't know, I have that streak in me of like you should be able to communicate however you want. Because if you couldn't, like a lot of the modern world would be different in bad ways. You know, like me too, Black Lives Matter.

Like these like massive movements that started with like somebody basically doing something. And then like, I don't know a corporation would allow if they felt like they were legally liable for Me Too in particular. The Me Too movement basically could not happen without Section 230. I think it's possible. Yeah, for sure. I hear you. And do you look at like, you mentioned the Warner Brothers being bought up right now. Now those laws are just at the whim of like appealing to your king where it seems like Paramount's going to win because they're like, will kill,

woke for you. Like, I guess my, my fear is on the same line of like, you know, like, you're just at the whims of an administration for like which, which like. If you, if you reform section 230 you're talking about. Yeah. If there, Ryan's. I see you're more at the whims. Like, I think the current case you're talking about shows that like the regulations are more risky because you're then giving a regulatory body that's run by the administration. They're using those regulatory bodies as sticks to get what they want out of these platforms, which dictator's speech. These platforms are shadow banning stuff. They are taking down, you know, forms for speech at the behest of the current administration.

I mean, Facebook took down Facebook group in Chicago that people were using to track ICE because the administration asked them to. And there's no liability or recourse. It's happening now. So loop that back to Section 230, though, because, like, that's where I get kind of lost here. So, like, do you think that Section 230 allows the. current administration to pressure Facebook to remove like let's say an ice watch group in Chicago no I think it removes the public's ability to hold the platforms accountable same

more because I'm curious as we're doing that but I think regulation regular I think like we're learning that like regulatory regimes can be abused by administrations I see what you mean happening with the FCC like the FCC would probably be the one to do this you know or something like it the regulations you're talking about who I hate no I I think it should be the I I think it should be the FTC. Okay. Like, like, I personally hate this. Listen, I'm not against, like, I don't, like, totally reject regulation, like,

regulation as, like, an approach. I don't know, the more conversation to have with people I'm coming around to it. There's just an elegance to me of, like, it's just fairer. You know what I mean? Like, it's just fairer that these companies, and I do believe the First Amendment would hold in a way that would not shut down the internet as we know it. I actually think like the profit motive is so strong on a lot of these platforms. And the First Amendment is so solid that there might be some changes, obviously, but I don't know. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that it would

just like be a grenade in the internet. I don't, we don't know that. We've never had the internet without it. We don't know. Are you from, so a dream guest of mine for Panic World is Elizabeth Warren. Okay. Not because, uh, have you, I don't know if you've heard of her. I think I know her. So I've always wanted to talk to Elizabeth Warren about one specific thing, which is her idea of a law that would not allow a marketplace to compete against its own vendors online. Okay. And it breaks that down for me, break that down for me. So basically like Amazon couldn't sell Amazon basics on a marketplace that they also allow

third party vendors. Okay. And then if you sort of extrapolate that logic across the web, it's a really fascinating way of thinking about platforms. So like basically like if you were to moderate platforms and you were to define platforms, basically by our third party businesses making money on that platform, then that platform itself cannot financially compete with those third party vendors with its own goods and services. If you take it to sort of like it's like most extreme idea, it's like you could basically

say like you can't have algorithmic recommendation systems at all. How does that, sorry, how does the marketplace idea lead to that? Exactly. You could basically like, I mean, in a dream scenario, I would argue like if I am running a business on Facebook and Facebook's algorithm is determining how my business is viewed by my customers possible customers, I could soothe him and be like, you're throttling my business, which they do all the time. And so you could actually attack this from a free market standpoint by saying, these are

unregulated marketplaces that are competing against their own vendors unfairly and just smash the whole thing down that way. That's a cool idea. That's interesting. You think that would apply across the major platforms, like it would reply to like creators' businesses and stuff like that possibly? And it wouldn't hurt, let's say the small message board that wants to bitch about how Apple products can't be modified or the hobbyist community that's like modding video games.

and passing them back. Like the smaller communities that sort of make up the bulk of how like an average person might use the web. The choice of the platform in that instance would be either not putting their own products on their own platform and they could keep algorithm boosting or getting rid of algorithms. Or you could make it simple where it's like if you are going to be a marketplace in which people are like paying for advertising or selling goods and you're taking a cut of this or in any way, you are now a marketplace.

and you can't you you shouldn't be allowed to determine like how my fucking socks rank on amazon compared to another vendor and nor should you be able to sell your own socks at at a cheaper price to compete with the ones that I'm selling and so like you would basically financially kind of gut a lot of these companies that are engaging in what I think are pretty unfair practices that's an interesting idea coming out of from that that way is that like so that's her proposal is there any other support behind that I'm kind of I think I did like a better version of it to be honest, but like, yeah. I think this simply, she had basically a medium account, like when she was running for president

a couple years ago that like she was just like kind of blogging on and being like, what if we attack them as, you know, what if we went after marketplaces that competed against their own marketplace, right? But while you, while we both sit and ponder what could have been under a warm presidency, we're going to go to a word from our sponsors. Oh, what's this? Again, it's the Heritage Foundation. Okay.

So you have brought some links today for us to discuss. And I would like to sort of to go through what you have brought for the class today. I think there's a lot of different ways you could come at like being critical of Section 230. There's like a lot of different doors of entry. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of child safety stuff. Like it really does govern so many aspects of our lives, you know, sexual assault, people getting harassed. Like there's all these different terrorism.

Like it is protected sites and companies from being sued for a lot of different types of cases. I'm a journalist. Like I came at it like through the door. of lies kind of overwhelming us online and missing misinformation is what you're saying yeah yeah yeah and like there were a couple like case studies that really helped me kind of like start thinking about it okay one being uh the lie about the sandy hook shooting just uh just to just to catch people up uh you're talking about alex jones and the idea of like crisis actors at sandy hook exactly like the claim that like sandy hook didn't happen kids weren't killed it was all actors uh and like a ruse put on to try and

like, you know, put, you know, put gun control in place. You know, it's an interesting case because basically the, you know, a number of the families who of the kids who were killed, who then were lied about by Alex Jones and called actors and like they were faking their kids' deaths. They sued him for defamation. He's the speaker of the content, so he was able to be sued. And I just started thinking like, okay, so you've got this control where they were able to sue him for defamation.

That's a real deterrent against him saying those lies anymore. And other people like him saying those lies. Right. You know, a billion dollar judgment. But really, like, it's YouTube that's responsible for what happened to them. And, you know, I would argue, like, both the damage to them, but also the damage to us as a society. Like, there was some survey shortly after the Sandy Hook shooting where, like, one in four Americans said the truth of the Sandy Hook shooting was being hidden. Maybe not, like, totally believed it was fake, but that they didn't trust, like, the story they were getting, basically.

And, you know, I think there's an argument that, like, Sandy Hook. was like the beginning of like our current misinformation age. Like that was pretty early, 2012. I often pinpoint 2012 is the sort of spread from Hurricane Sandy to Sandy Hook, the sort of beginning of the idea that people could lie on the internet and people would believe it in a large scale way. So you get the shark in the highway and a couple months later you get crisis actors at Sandy Hook. That's kind of how I think about it.

Yeah. So it's been on my mind. And then I was this summer, I was with a producer at the Iowa State Fair interviewing people. And, you know, in a couple hours, you know, we talked to maybe like two dozen people. My producer met somebody who was who told him like, yeah, I believe Sandy Hook was a hoax for many, many years. And now I don't. I knew the impact the lie had on the victims, families. Like, many of them had to move.

You know, they're dealing with the worst grief imaginable of their kid getting killed. And then on top of it, they're being harassed, like both online and in person. And their lives are being ruined even further by this lie. So I knew about that. But I had never heard anybody who was on the other side of believing the lie who could talk about just the toll it takes on you too. So we did an episode like six months ago, probably almost now where we had people calling and basically like sort of share the conspiracy theories that like their loved ones had fallen for. And we sort of kind of did like a pseudo call and show with it. And we've heard a lot of these stories.

The most extreme one we heard was basically a young man whose dad moved their whole family to a compound in Texas. assuming that Y2K was about to happen because he had been sort of red-pilled on early 90s message boards and ended up in, you know, a doomsday kind of cult situation. So how do you see Section 230 playing into this woman, effectively like spending years not knowing, not thinking that Sandy Hook was rude? I think that the, um, the Sandy Hook families, in addition to being able to sue Alex Jones for lying about them, should have been able to sue YouTube. for algorithmically boosting those lies and actually like, you know, making them take hold.

So it's not that she has a cause of action. Right. It's like I'm not talking about her being able to sue. But she's like the impact of like when these lies spread. It's how we kind of explore it on our show, kind of what you're talking about, what people calling in. I'm with you. So Alex Jones is an interesting case because he is known obviously at his peak from being on YouTube.

but he he wasn't really dependent on platforms like we've even done we've done stuff about like his earliest like online presence where he was able to basically move his public action show onto a direct streaming setup

and has been running that consistently I think he still is in some capacity so in this situation like do you also think that something like, let's say, Cloudflare could be activated in this to be like, you have to take down his actual website for, because he's sim-like, everything you put on YouTube, he's simulcasting. So, like, in this instance, do you think the San Hoke family should be able to say,

Cloudflare, I'm going to sue you for hosting his site, assuming that they were? I lean more towards, like, reforms that focus on, like, machine learning algorithms that are boosting content based on it being conspiratorial, you know, outrage-inducing, you know, engagement-driven. You know, which, again, and I don't think it's not like Section 23 is some panacea. Most lies are constitutionally protected, and they should be. But there are some that are not. This is arguably one of them. It's defamatory.

And those are often the most harmful, like the same as like the Dominion, you know, case against Fox, where Fox, you know, ended up settling this defamation case, you know, lying about these voting machines to, like, spread conspiracies about the choice. 2020 election and it's huge settlement. But again, like none of the platforms that played a part in spreading that lie have to think at all about the liability for doing that. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, I've exhausted you. No, I'm with you when we're talking about algorithmic platforms. The thing that I sort of come up against is like section 230, I agree, starts to sort of like break down when we're talking about something like YouTube, which is as much a platform as it is a publisher at this point. It has an in-house style that you have to hit. You know, it is, it is very active and it is very automated in the content that you're seeing. But I wanted to look this up just so I got the date right. But basically, I interviewed the, the, the C, did I interview them? I think I did. Oh, I talked to, I talked to a representative

from Cloudflare in 2019 after the El Paso shooting. And it was that, it was, it was the, the weekend, the night, whatever it was when they decided to finally take down 8chan. Okay. And it was like, it was a massive decision because it was the moment that like, effectively like a hosting service was like, we are not going to host 8chan. It is, it, we've, it is hit the point here. And it, I remember like cloud at the time was like extremely nervous about even doing this because it was considered so far beyond what they felt their role was. which was like infrastructure. And it is hard to imagine any kind of regulation about liability on the internet that doesn't

eventually get to something at the cloud flare level. Like I don't know how you would say, okay, YouTube hosting Alex Jones, they are liable for him in this defamation suit without then going cloud flare is also liable. for hosting Alex, the simulcast of Alex Jones' live stream on his site. It opens up like an architectural problem in the internet that like, I am with you that these are problems, but I don't know how you, how you how you separate a platform like YouTube from a hosting service like Cloudflare using section, using Section 230. How does Cloud Fair work exactly? It's a hosting service. So like for instance,

Garbage Day, we are D, our DNS records and stuff are all managed by Cloudflare. It's, it's infrastructure. Like we, it allows our URL to go to the database that has the surfer that has, you know, the website on it's that. It's that. So and this is the stuff that I kind of love to think about because you start to what you're talking about is like there's a world where without section 230 once we get the Epsine emails, Google is now liable for effectively running a pedophile ring because he was using his vacation Gmail account to do so. I hear you. And I'm not saying I have like a clear answer to this. It's a complicated thing like with. like, you know, like, there's no, there's no, there's no change. There's no change that like doesn't have downsides and possibly like really problematic ones. I just kind of feel like the status quo is maybe idealized a little too much, you know, too comfortable. But like the precedent before the internet, you know, they had to do with like radio stations, like newsstands as like, you know, law that had to do with distributors or hosts of content. You still had to know. You had to show prior knowledge of like what was in the speech that you were then being sued for.

It's not just like you're suddenly like if there's something defamatory on your on your platform, you're automatically liable. There are still First Amendment protections for distributing speech that like promoted the idea that we need to have forums that are able to distribute speech pretty widely. Let's say radio, right? So like if I have a radio like which is a totally different beast, it's broadcast signals regulated by the FCC. I have a radio call and show. Someone calls in and they're like the president is a pedophile or my neighbor did the Oklahoma City bombing. Or my podcast producer Grant has fake muscles that he wears under his clothes while we record. I would as the radio host, I assume be liable for airing that over the airwave.

Yes, that's different. I was responding to like your email kind of example. But yeah, because the internet is sort of, you know, such a Russian nesting doll of different services and infrastructure and architecture that allows it to work, I think defining what a service provider is is like very important in this conversation. Yes, that's part of it. I hear you. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, your other idea from from Elizabeth Warren also reminded me of a proposal I heard from a, from a First Amendment attorney who thinks Section 2 should change, where like the

way the first part is written now, it says like you're not liable for information provided, like a platform's not liable for information provided by another user. Sure. You could change that word to speech because information has been read so broadly. So then you get cases like this one I wanted to mention like, you know, where a guy in Wisconsin who basically goes on, I think it's called arms. lists.com to buy a gun because he wouldn't have passed a background check in real life. Right.

And use the gun to kill his wife. And his wife's estate then sues arms list for like facilitating this transaction because it has all these kind of anonymity protections. Like it's kind of there to allow this to happen without saying it. Right. And they're able to throw up section 230 and not have any liability. Is that speech exactly? Is that like a free speech protection?

And is that like something we're willing to say like we have to have. that in order to have free speech on the internet. I do think like we have to really think about these counter examples, you know, and how they're, how Section 230 is like allowing them to proliferate too. Like if someone put up a poster like on a telephone pole in your neighborhood saying like I have like a gun market in my backyard like come grab a gun. Would we think of that as like a speech issue? Yeah, it's like I want you to stick your hand through this glory hole and I'm going to get with money and I'll give you a gun in exchange and I won't know who you are like come by at five yeah I know what you mean and that I think you're right I think the

skeleton key for a lot of those circles that we've been going around in delightfully so I must say this episode have been about like since section 230 launched in the in the mid to late 90s it has been I think very advantageous of the corporations to effectively flatten the marketplace and speech into the same thing. Like, they want us to have this sort of confusing issue. And you're right, like, buying a gun anonymously on the internet and saying, like, I don't like this K-pop band should not be legally considered the same thing.

But it is. Like, it is on Earth. Yeah. Yeah. And there was a flip in how the internet functioned. probably, you know, as you said, around the early 2010s in which everything became speech. And so everything is sort of being filtered through a free speech law that, as you said, also goes above and beyond what even the First Amendment allows.

And it's funny, like a lot of what you're talking about, the sort of like, okay, this bad thing is made possible by the same thing that allows this good thing. We had a similar kind of like, circular conversation around Foster Sesta in our episode about how the online networks that allow like malicious and dangerous content to be spread also allow an LGBT teenager in an area where they can't be out to explore and understand their sexuality. The same technology that allows Nick Fuentes and you know a bunch of like Gen Z fascists to communicate also allows anti-fascists and, you know, activists to do the same or black Americans to document police violence. Like these things are very tied together in this very confusing way. Yeah, I know.

And like when you talk to people who are really into Section 230, they're just like, this is, this is humanity and it's reflected on the internet. Right. And I hear that. But our current internet is not just that. It's not just like some open kind of stage on which humanity is like casting about. it's being curated by very powerful algorithms with no accountability. And I agree with you that maybe Section 230 is not your preferred way of dealing with that.

But I think it's got to be part of it. The same way that free speech is like a civil liberties personal issue, I think the Sandy Hook families not being able to sue for any accountability of these platforms is also an issue. You know, like at least try to make a case. They can't even get into court because it's like this shield that just goes up. to make a case, you know, where the First Amendment would still apply. I know what you mean. I mean, I've often thought about like applying food safety regulations to the internet

or like platforms over like basically like if a platform had over a certain amount of users based in the US, it would be like regulated in a way where like they would be nutritional, quote unquote info for algorithms and that they would be legally liable for like content of that like reached a certain threshold. Like I think there are a lot of ways to do this. Yeah. And I think actually, I think like even if that's the route you end up going, section 230 is a way you probably get that possibly.

I think you know, it's a stick to get them to the table. Or you even say like section 230 doesn't apply to like platforms of a certain size or shape or scale, you know, like right or or makeup. You know, like it we we talk about this a ton where it's like yeah there are entertainment platforms now, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Reels specifically that I would not classify a social media anymore. I would actually put them closer to something like Netflix, which I think need totally different regulations than something like X or something like Blue Sky, which are text-based and

largely user generated. So all of this is to say, I think the verdict is clear answers. I'm with you and I have so many more questions than we can fit into a single podcast episode. It's like you questioned everything. It's like I've questioned everything. Grant, do you have any questions before we send our lovely guest home today? I do. And I just want to make clear that I was trying to interrupt you to say that I mean like just throw off my flow into it to yeah, I know.

And it was just to say, I think it's too hard to buy a gun in this country. So I think a website like this is necessary. Oh, you're trying to interrupt me for it. You're trying to interrupt me for just. Yeah, I was only only like a really dumb. You've got some. It's like the first and second amendment. They're right here.

There you go. Wow. This is where they intersect. Yeah. Flack and Section 230. I have some serious ones. The first is just like, I think our Skinny Talk episode, an episode about eating disorder influencers that we did a couple months back was when I felt like something has to be done.

This isn't just a random phenomena. And we talked about in that episode, eating disorder content is like always going to exist. That is always going to be, you know, and people can see. it out but like how much it's fed to people is a dramatic difference and like we had an internet before that it was harder to find and it was able to be combated and we've lost that capability and like we cannot throw our hands up about that the way that we have about like doing nothing about school shootings yeah amen and then the question is like do you approach it from a regulatory situation and how do you do that because that's where i get tripped up on the regulation side

where it's like, are we creating an agency that like determines what speech is harmful, what categories of speech is harmful? That's where, you know, like I'm a little, that's where I get worried on that side. And I'm more comfortable with people who are harmed, making a case in court, liability being established and like the kind of the market kind of pushing, you know, in different ways for that content to be addressed. But maybe there's something about the regulations that I'm not seeing, you know. I think E.J. Dixon in that episode said that when she reached out to TikTok for comment,

they were like, well, we just kept showing it to people who want to see this. And like that is like not an answer when like, so like giving a 12 year old girl tricks on like how to not eat is like that can't be that can't be like the shrug emoji of it. Even if they claim they don't control the algorithm and it's not like content based, they ultimately had knowledge of how it was operating. And like, you know, we haven't even talked about AI at all in the context of this episode. But like, yeah, I think in a lot of ways, the way you regulate AI is actually by regulating algorithmic social media first because like it will impact it.

And I do think so, okay, like these platforms want to say like online commerce is the same as online speech is the same as everything else. Okay. Well, then like if TikTok, let's say if I have, TikTok runs TikTok shop and that integrates into TikTok's for you page, which is run by an algorithm that determines if I want to watch a man chug metamusel. into limp biscuit highly recommend that account by the way it's called uh drinking metamusel to music and it rules um i did it all for the metamusel yeah it's great um so if you want to watch that okay but there's also

something in there that determines how many uh like ads for water picks it wants to show me because it really wants me to buy a water pick right now yeah if i was a water pick company i would be fucking i should be fucking furious that my water pick is like not being treated as seriously in the algorithm as maybe TikTok's eventual knockoff of my water pick. And so to me, like that's unfair market practices. And if you basically just said, like, you can't have an algorithmic marketplace on the internet. It has to be either chronological or search based. I mean, it might break the platforms. I mean, I've, I've gone back and forth with Google about this for years where it's like, they're just like, we can't show raw search.

It's not it we no one would use it. It's like, well, okay. All right. Well, then die. I don't know. Like, I don't know what to tell you. No, I think it's I also think yeah, like a lot of these debates get into like a lot of overprotection of the existing business models where I'm like maybe they shouldn't exist as business models right now. If we know, yeah.

We can't show people what they're actually searching for because it without pay drink it would look crazy. All right. Die. I don't care. Like whatever like I or dude. We just did this, you know, like we just covered like the reporting from Reuters. like about the scams on meta. If you followed all that, like just it's a, you know, their own internal like documents show that they estimate their meta platforms

are involved in a third of all successful scams in America. They're like a pillar. It's like 10% of their revenue last year they estimated would be from scam ads. It has to be like 95% certain that it's a scam for them to take it down. Insane. And you can't sue them. I have, I've won.

I think we need to talk about porn. If we're talking about these different processes of pulling back, the first thing that comes up is, oh, so like we would make porn illegal on the internet. I don't think, I don't see that as being the case, though. Like, I don't think, I mean, tell me if you're, I'm wrong, but I don't think repeating 6.2.30 would make porn illegal.

What it would make, it would actually probably trigger a lot more cases like the Porn Hub, Apocalypse from a couple years ago when like basically there was a massive, massive emptying out of non-verified pornography, which like didn't fix those problems. But if porn hub was legally liable for the content on Porn Hub, I mean, it probably couldn't exist. Like there's no way. There's an argument you made that it would actually make viewing pornography a lot safer. Probably harder, but a lot safer. The stories like girls do porn or the like millions and millions of images of non-consensual sexual material like it uploaded to porn hub every second. Like that would be a lot easier to litigate because you could just be like you're liable for this.

No, I think that's right. Yeah. I think in a weird way like the repealing of Section 230 would make the consumption of online pornography a lot safer but a lot more complicated because it would be a greater risk to host. But I think it could also drive it again to more specialized sites or like. niche or sites that really focus on a thing that they're willing to take the risk. I don't know. I think it could shake the market out in different ways. But again, we don't know because we've never.

Right. That's an interesting one to consider where it's like furry inflation sites. They're like, this is worth it for us. Like us foot guys, like we're willing to roll the dice on this one. But like normal pornography, I'm sorry, I shouldn't say normal, but more mainstream pornography might be harder to find. Yeah. All right.

Well, I'm going to continue to contemplate that. But I want to thank you for coming on the show. I ask all of our guests, where can people follow you on the internet? You can follow me. What do I want to say here? When they finally repeals X230, anyone wants to yell at you, where can they do that? On a major social media platform, Instagram at Bri A.Reed. And our podcast, question everything.

Go listen to that. It's a great show. And I want to thank you for coming on. Apple, Spotify. This is super fun. And yeah, thank you again. This is great. Yeah, thanks for jesting with me.

I appreciate you guys. It's very smart. I appreciate it. Panic World is a production of Courier. It is written and produced. by Grant Irving and hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Josh Fielstead is our production coordinator, and our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis.

From Courier is Shane Verkest, who edits our video episodes, along with our producer, Devin Maroney, and National Managing Director and Executive Producer, Kevin Dreyfus. R.C. DeMezo is their VP of Brand and Social.

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