Why Donald Trump Removing Section 230 Would End the Internet as We Know it

This destructive idea is a bad one, even if some people don't know it

On Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump threatened to veto a defense spending bill if section 230 of the U.S. penal code wasn't repealed. For those not in the know, section 230 of the U.S. code is another name for Title V which protects internet companies, websites, and apps from being sued over the content created by their users. In this latest episode of presidential tantrums,

Trump is echoing conservative views that the removal of section 230 would finally give them the ability to say anything they want online without platforms without reprisal, as they feel the removal of the portion of the telecommunications act would give them the right to sue tech companies if they disallow hate speech or other speech that violates the companies' terms of service. This is patently untrue. Section 230 doesn't grant tech companies the power to be biased and its removal wouldn't guarantee the perceived neutrality that conservatives want.

Trump's tweets were just the latest in a display of brash, bizarre outbursts from the President, taking place in both public and private since Trump lost the presidential election in November. All of this comes on top of a fight in Congress that's tying up the bill's passage over the changing of the names of military bases that are named after Confederate Generals.

"Take back America NOW. Thank you!" tweeted the President as he spouted off about tech being shielded from liability.

What section 230 does is insulate tech companies from being sued over users' actions--it does not protect said companies against lawsuits for disallowing certain content in their platforms. Such a move would also jeopardize the Internet as we know it.

To understand how deleterious removing section 230 would be, let's dive a little deeper into the law and why different players on the political stage want to repeal it.

Stop and think about every single site you use. From Facebook to Twitter, YouTube to Goodreads, and even Amazon. Every place that has a comments section will be subject to lawsuit over the comments left by users, comments that tech companies with platforms as large as they have, can't possibly be expected to police to perfection. These sites are just too big, with YouTube having billions of videos watched every single day. There aren't enough people on the planet to police sites this big.

The removal of section 230 would basically cripple any site that relies on user engagement and commentary in order to operate. Social media companies would likely crumble overnight. Social media couldn't exist without users socializing. Amazon reviews, Yelp reviews, and more, all rely on users to let us know which products we ought to buy, and all of these sites would have to remove user-generated content or police it to the point of absurdity.

Can we realistically expect to hold platforms accountable for the content of their users to such a degree that nothing escapes their detection algorithms? I don't think so. Especially under the current conditions where some Democrats have spoken openly about their desire to remove 230 for entirely different reasons than Republicans. Democrats see it as a way to combat hate speech and online bullying. In other words, they think it'll help them to be able to police the entirety of the Internet which, ironically, is precisely what the Republicans think they will finally escape if they repeal 230.

Republicans and conservatives, in general, feel that they're unfairly targeted by online platforms but have come up short of providing any evidence of such claims, claims which may not be true. This raises the question if conservatives are more likely to engage in hate speech and violate the terms of service of platforms than liberals or Democrats, but without any concrete data, that could be anyone's guess (and we'd likely be wrong). What's important to note, here, is that there's a huge difference between the unfair policing of one group based on their political views, on the one hand, and that very same group adopting completely socially unpopular (and even dangerous) political views that violate companies' terms of service, on the other.

Trump is a perfect example. There have been many calls to kick Trump off Twitter. He's consistently broken a Twitter rule almost every single day that he's used the platform and they've granted him what amounts to presidential immunity because of his position. But he broke the rules that would've gotten you or I kicked from the platform, nonetheless. If millions are following in the wake of Trump's behavior, I could see how the case could be made that followers of Trump might be more likely to break the rules of platforms as they try to mimic his behavior and words without the immunity he enjoys.

Nonetheless, the problem of this tug-of-war between the two opposing sides remains and it threatens to split the Internet itself at the seems. Republicans want to remove section 230 so they can say whatever they want, under the belief that Democrats are using tech companies to control them (currently false), and the Democrats want to remove section 230 so they can more proactively control unsavory voices (this would actually make Republicans' fears true). And it would completely destroy the usability of the Internet itself in the process.

This is a developing trend to keep our eyes on. It could radically reshape (or destroy) the entire communications network and the internet as we know it. And who knows what it will be replaced with. It's just a bad idea no matter who endorses it or for what reasons.