Section 230

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SEE SOCIAL MEDIA BIAS BS

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THIEL DIALOG 6 26

[### Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Listen to Queer Youth on Section 230

Fight for the Future

https://www.fightforthefuture.org › actions › joseph-go...](https://www.fightforthefuture.org/actions/joseph-gordon-levitt-letter/)

NCOSE (formerly Morality in Media), the Heritage Foundation, and other groups know people are angry at Big Tech—and they're exploiting our anger, subtly ...Read more

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Joseph Gordon-Levitt is promoting pro-ICE AI surveillance laws, while claiming to be "progressive."

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The actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt has gone on an unhinged pivot, aligning himself with The Heritage Foundation, Lindsey Graham, and far right fundamentalist groups to dismantle Section 230, a crucial law that protects free expression online. He is boosting an extremist legal effort to enact mass AI surveillance, destroy free speech, obliterate privacy, and dismantle independent journalism, all in the name of "protecting kids."

While Gordon-Levitt claims to be a progressive, he is actively pushing for mass surveillance laws that will empower ICE, destroy encryption, and hand the internet over to Big Tech and AI monopolies.

I dove deep into his hypocrisy, his ties to Effective Altruism, Silicon Valley billionaires, and the strange connection between his wife's role at OpenAI and épidémie his sudden desire to censor the internet.

Section 230 is often misunderstood, but it is the legal foundation that allows:

Free speech online

Anonymous posting

Independent journalism

Small platforms to exist

Encrypted messaging and group chats

Criticism of corporations and government agencies

Without Section 230, platforms would be forced to **pre-screen every single thing you say** (even on group chats), likely using AI. That means no encryption, no anonymity, and no ability to criticize the government!!!!!!

Despite his lies claiming that he is “holding Big Tech accountable,” repealing Section 230 would actually BENEFIT the largest tech monopolies by allowing them to consolidate power, destroy smaller competitors, and it would give the government unprecedented control over online speech, all while enabling broader surveillance by agencies like ICE.

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Topics covered:

Section 230 explained

Joseph Gordon-Levitt congressional testimony

Heritage Foundation tech policy

Mass surveillance and government censorship

Encryption zachary bolduc and online privacy threats

Content moderation and platform liability

Independent journalism and free speech

Data harvesting and algorithmic manipulation

ICE and government surveillance expansion

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The Controversy: His push drew intense backlash from digital rights advocates. Critics pointed out that repealing Section 230 is also a core policy goal of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 agenda, as it would likely lead to aggressive internet censorship and cripple smaller online communities that lack the legal resources to defend themselves. [1, 2, 4]

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Legislative Action: Gordon-Levitt has actively thrown his weight behind legislation requiring age verification, such as California's proposed AB 1064, and has argued for reforming Section 230 to hold Big Tech platforms legally accountable for algorithmic harms. His outspoken activism even landed him a United Nations appointment for human-centric digital governance.

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gmail 3 26

You Are Being Lied to About Algorithms

AI Amish influencers, baby gut health, Kai Trump's Erewhon vlog, bed rotting for art, the Substack book, MrBeast banking, Quittr, a new Ellison, Ben Affleck's AI startup, Heated Rivalry fanfic drama

Taylor Lorenz

Mar 10

I just released the latest episode of my Section 230 mini-series, where I sat down with Eric Goldman, associate dean for research and a professor at Santa Clara Law, one of the nation's foremost experts on internet law, to debunk the biggest myths surrounding Section 230 and algorithmic amplification.

One big thing I’ve heard since starting this series is, “platforms should lose their Section 230 protections because they use algorithms.” This is very silly, and Mike Masnick, (as usual!!) has debunked this well. But I wanted to help people understand why this line of thinking is so flawed.

Most people don't even understand what an algorithm even is. Eric discusses how even the beloved "reverse chronological order" feed is an algorithm, and how it actually rewards spammers, trolls, and bad actors.

We dive deep into how politicians are using the techlash to amass more power, how censorship has become a bipartisan value, and how companies like Meta actually want Section 230 amended so they can wipe out their smaller competitors.

From the dangers of age verification laws to the truth about how algorithms protect us from a dystopian, miserable internet full of spam and scams, Eric and I discuss the real existential threats to the open web, and how arguments about "algorithms" miss the real powers at play. [WATCH]

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Scott Galloway on TikTok, Musk, and the Radicalization Pipeline | Best of Lincoln Square

959 views Premiered 3 hours ago #politics #lincolnsquare #democracy

:{:{Scott Galloway lays out the real fix for social media: end legal cover for algorithmic amplification, force competition, and age-gate the platforms that harm kids. Then he explains why TikTok (and Elon’s Twitter) supercharge polarization and radicalization. Published Sept 25, 2023. Watch the original video: [ • Society's Negative Impact On Young People ...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYMBB_WaQeI}:

Remove Section 230 for algorithmic amplificatioN

Break up big tech (competition as “oxygen” Age-gate social media for minor Why TikTok is uniquely dangerouS Influence at scale: “CCP owning everything” analog The attention economy (and why it’s overpowering TikTok’s growth + why numbers may be understate Radicalization pipeline + Musk’s Twitter}:

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WIRED

Makena Kelly

:{Politics Nov 20, 2024

Trump’s FCC Pick Wants to Be the Speech Police. That’s Not His Job

Brendan Carr wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the Federal Communications Commission. Now Donald Trump has tapped him to run the agency.}:

:{Brendan Carr at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, wants to refashion the broadband regulator into the nation’s speech police on social platforms.

As FCC chair, Carr would set the agency’s agenda on issues like broadband deployment, net neutrality, and telecom privacy. But since Carr was nominated as a commissioner in 2017 by Trump, he’s spent much of his time focusing on contentious internet speech rules that the agency has historically never played a role in. Without a massive regulatory overhaul from Congress or the courts, passing his agenda would be an uphill battle.

In a Sunday statement appointing Carr, Trump called him “a warrior for Free Speech” who will “end the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America’s Job Creators.” Thanking Trump, Carr wrote on X, “We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans.”

Carr authored the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC, writing that the agency needed to prioritize issues like “reining in Big tech” and “promoting national security.” Specifically on his to-do list, Carr says that the FCC should issue an order that reinterprets Section 230 to eliminate the “expansive” liability immunities it provides to social platforms. Section 230 is part of the Communications Decency Act passed in 1996, which protects internet companies from being sued over content that appears on their platforms and has given companies the ability to decide what content can or cannot be posted.

But there is no precedent for the FCC governing online speech, and experts tell WIRED that the agency has no authority to act on Trump and Carr’s speech prescriptions.

“This is a radical view that they can somehow do something about Section 230 at the FCC,” says Chris Lewis, president and CEO at Public Knowledge, a progressive tech advocacy group.

In his Project 2025 write-up, Carr specifically argues that companies should allow users to personalize their own content filters and that platforms should remove only illegal user-generated content. Carr has also forged a relationship with X owner Elon Musk, who has also suggested that platforms like his own should only take down unlawful content like child abuse imagery. (Carr appeared with Musk and Trump at a Tuesday SpaceX launch.)

“What he can do and wants to do is use his bully pulpit to bully companies that moderate content in a way he doesn’t like,” says Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, a digital rights advocacy group. “And if he continues to do that, he's very likely to run smack into the First Amendment, which, contrary to misconception, is the real thing that protects online speech.” Section 230 protects social media companies from being sued over the content users post on their platforms, while the First Amendment explicitly bars the government from interfering in someone’s ability to exercise free speech. Over the summer, the Supreme Court ruled that a company’s moderation decisions are protected under the First Amendment.

As for Section 230, the Supreme Court may have just made it more difficult for administrative agencies like the FCC to reinterpret it to their liking. Over the summer, the court overturned Chevron v. Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC), a decision that had allowed for government agencies to independently interpret their authorities. With the Chevron deference made moot, it could be an uphill battle for the FCC to make its own interpretations of the law.

“Agencies are basically losing the ability to interpret how they can enforce when language is vague in the statute,” says Lewis. “Section 230’s language is actually very short and very straightforward and has no FCC action attached to it.” If Carr decided to issue a rule modifying Section 230, it would likely be met with legal challenges. Still, Republicans currently control all three branches of government and could either rule in the administration’s favor or pass new legislation putting the FCC as the top cop on the beat.

Trump has tried to deputize the FCC into policing online speech before. In 2020, Trump signed an executive order instructing the FCC to begin a rule-making process to reinterpret when Section 230 would apply to social platforms like Facebook and Instagram. The Center for Democracy and Technology, which receives funding from big tech companies, challenged the order as unconstitutional, saying that it unfairly punished X, then known as Twitter, “to chill the constitutionally protected speech of all online platforms and individuals.”

Months later, FCC general counsel Tom Johnson published a blog post arguing that the agency has the authority to reinterpret the foundational internet law. A few days after that, then FCC chairman Ajit Pai announced that the agency would move forward on a rule-making process, but no rule was ordered before President Joe Biden’s inauguration, giving Democrats control over agency decisions.

“It was ignored and rejected, basically,” says Lewis.

Democratic FCC members called the Section 230 directive “politically motivated and legally unsound.” At the time, current FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel said, “The FCC has no business being the president’s speech police.”

Concerns over Carr’s leadership at the commission extend beyond regulating social media moderation. In Carr’s Project 2025 chapter, he said that the agency should not only target internet companies over censorship concerns, but TV and radio broadcasters as well. Trump has regularly threatened or sued media outlets over negative coverage. Just this week, the former president sued The New York Times and Penguin Random House for alleged bias.

In recent letters and statements, Carr appears eager to get to work. When Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on Saturday Night Live earlier this month, Carr floated the idea of revoking NBC’s broadcasting license, something that is in the FCC’s control.

“This is a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” Carr wrote on X at the time. Carr also recently suggested that the FCC could go after 60 Minutes over a complaint that the program violated the agency’s news distortion rule by editing an interview with Kamala Harris. CBS News maintains that the clip was an honest depiction of Harris’ answer. Carr said this week that the FCC would examine the complaint as it reviews a proposed merger between Skydance and Paramount global, CBS’s parent company.

Carr has also taken Musk’s side in regulatory issues the Starlink maker has before the FCC. In a dissenting statement on the FCC’s decision to bar Starlink from broadband subsidies, Carr equated the agency’s actions to “regulatory harassment.” With a Republican majority and Carr as FCC chair, he would have more control over which internet companies receive federal funding.

It remains unclear exactly how Carr would pursue changes to Section 230 and if they would survive legal scrutiny. But if the agency cannot go after online speech, Carr’s chairmanship could be defined more by what it decided not to do in place of what it couldn’t.

“He wants to abdicate his responsibility running an agency that's supposed to protect the public from exploitation, greed, and abuse of big telecom companies by pointing his finger and waving over there at this other set of companies that he doesn't actually have any meaningful authority to regulate,” says Greer.

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On MSNBC, Angelo Carusone explains that Zuckerberg capitulating to MAGA is the culmination of “the right wing working the refs” with false claims of conservative censorship}:

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January 11, 2025, edition of MSNBC's Ayman

AYMAN MOHYELDIN (HOST): So that was Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg arguing that when the U.S. government targets or attacks tech companies, it sets a dangerous precedent. And it seems kind of rich coming from Mark Zuckerberg because you know it was Zuck that Donald Trump literally threatened to throw in prison for the rest of his life if he did anything illegal to influence the presidential election. And this week, Trump even gloated that Zuckerberg rolled back his fact-checking program because he scared him into it. And with that capitulation, Zuck seems to have completed his full transformation from tech bro to MAGA world. The transformation includes bulking up, abandoning his hoodie for an oversized black tee, and of course a little bling around his neck. And to be honest, the signs have been there for a while. This was not an overnight transformation.

...

Angelo, your take on this full transformation by Zuckerberg? I mean, it's — We can joke around a little bit, but it carries some serious and dangerous weight for a lot in this country.

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah, it really does, for a lot of reasons. I mean, this isn't surprising. I mean, he's done this before. Let's not forget that back in 2016, you know, after Glenn Beck, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham did this meeting with him in May of 2016, he radically overhauled Facebook's policies around the trending topics section and right-wing misinformation and content exploded. There's been this idea, at least that sort of metastasized, that somehow Facebook has been suppressing or censoring conservative content. It's just the right wing working the refs. I mean, we did a big study that looked at 29 million posts. Right-wing content had 42% of the engagements, even though it only accounted for 19% of the content. I mean, that's not what suppression and censorship looks like.

But part of what we're seeing is the culmination of a strategy of working the refs and doing two things. You threaten them and bully them. In this case, you know, Zuckerberg not only got threatened to be jailed, but then in November, right after Trump won the election, the guy that's going to be the new FCC chair sent a letter saying, “Hey, we're going to come after your Section 230 immunity protections unless you stop censoring.” So one was to avoid consequences, and then the second part, which is even scarier — and this is going to be the new norm — is that you could also get something out of it.

And that's what Zuckerberg saw, is that if you don't just say nice things to Trump, but you actually start to take what you have, which is his ecosystem, and use it to empower MAGA and the megaphone that we were just talking about in the first segment, you can get something out of it. And what he wants is less accountability from other countries that are actually cracking down on the types of misinformation, disinformation, extremism, sort of surveillance, you know, advertising that the platform is doing, and they're trying to rein it in. And what he wants is protection.

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12 22 mma claimed by vincen j

KIRK (TPUSA PRESIDENT): If you would've asked the question six months ago, I was extremely pessimistic about the status of free speech. But Elon has changed the game. I gotta tell you, he has been an unexpected entry into this entire dynamic. Because I used to say, you know, we got to have section 230 reform and have all these different things. I still believe that.

But, man, him spending 44 billion dollars to go purchase a company – to go restore Donald Trump's Twitter account and let all these people back online and all these prisoners of war from the meme wars, I mean it is – it's fair. They're POWs, God bless them. That's a big threat to the regime.

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https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2022/03/justice-thomas-really-really-wants-section-230-repealed-even-if-he-has-to-do-it-himself.htm}:

justice Thomas Really, REALLY Wants Section 230 Repealed (Even If He Has to Do It Himself)

March 9, 2022 · by Eric Goldman · in Content Regulation, Derivative Liability

The Supreme Court denied certiorari in Doe v. Facebook, a FOSTA case. The Texas Supreme Court held that FOSTA excluded some claims fromSection 230 (disregarding the statutory language Congress adopted), while other claims remain preempted by Section 230. The case will now go back on remand to deal with the FOSTA-excluded claims.}:

Along with the cert denial, Justice Thomas issued a “statement” bashing Section 230. This is his third solo-authored anti-Section 230 statement; the prior rants came in the Knight First Amendment v. Trump (2021) and Malwarebytes v. Enigma (2020) cases. Those earlier two statements were surely aided by his then-law clerk Josh Divine. a Hawley protégé. I had hoped that maybe Justice Thomas’ anti-230 statements would fade away following Divine’s departure. No such luck.

Justice Thomas writes: “It is hard to see why the protection §230(c)(1) grants publishers against being held strictly liable for third parties’ content should protect Facebook from liability for its own ‘acts and omissions.'” To be clear, Section 230 largely does not address “strict liability” for Internet services because that’s governed by the First Amendment, which typically makes strict liability for publishing or distributing third-party content unconstitutional. See, e.g., Smith v. California.

Also, Facebook’s “acts and omissions” at issue here solely involve the publication of third-party content, which is why Section 230 extends to them. As I’ve explained many times, treating publication decisions as “conduct” and not “speech” would make Section 230 a nullity. (Which, of course, is Justice Thomas’ objective…)

Justice Thomas also writes: “Assuming Congress does not step in to clarify §230’s scope, we should do so in an appropriate case.” Is that an implied threat to Congress? Whatever happened to judicial deference to legislatures? Courts fixing a statute’s “scope” when a legislature doesn’t is called judicial activism/legislating from the bench.

On the plus side, Justice Thomas has been utterly transparent about how he will rule on Section 230 when he gets his chance. He’s now said three times he’s ready to tear up Section 230–apparently regardless of the merits of a defendant’s arguments. That kind of immutable bias going into a case should prompt recusal, but Justice Thomas also has relaxed views about recusal.

More commentary from Mike Masnick at Techdirt.

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NY POST BS

NO LNX

Business

FCC Chair Brendan Carr taking first steps in eroding key legal protection enjoyed by Big Tech

By Charles Gasparino

:{Published Feb. 22, 2025,

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr is taking the first steps in eroding a key legal protection enjoyed by Big Tech, which if successful has the potential of costing some of the most profitable companies in the world billions of dollars in market value, the Post has learned.

Since being picked by President Trump to run the agency, Carr’s actions to throttle Paramount’s sale to Skydance over concerns of relentless partisanship at CBS, violating the FCC’s “public interest” rules, have garnered the most attention.

But his still inchoate plan to weaken the so-called “Section 230” protections of major tech and social media companies could — depending on how they are written and interpreted by the courts — have the most far-reaching implications.

It’s not just the Big Tech companies’ social media businesses like Facebook or Twitter (now known as X) that rely on this “liability shield” to save countless billions of dollars in legal costs over alleged libelous posting and other possible liabilities.

Investors who have piled into stocks like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and even Apple could be impacted as well depending on how far he goes in weakening liabilities of all kinds that 230 protects them from.

Congress passed the Section 230 provision as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 — essentially giving tech a pass for third-party postings on their platforms.