01-31-2021, 07:46 PM
Ted King wrote:
Section 230 already has some limitations on "bad stuff"; e.g. this section states, "Nothing in this section shall be construed to impair the enforcement of section 223 or 231 of this title, chapter 71 (relating to obscenity) or 110 (relating to sexual exploitation of children) of title 18, or any other Federal criminal statute" and "Nothing in this section shall be construed to limit or expand any law pertaining to intellectual property."
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About your comment, "We only have prior restraints on speech when we want to censor really bad stuff", I would note that most privately owned internet platforms already have more restraints - like many things written in their Terms of Service - that are more restrictive than those outlined in Section 230 as it now stands. Twitter threw Trump off their platform. As I said in a post here, I wouldn't be surprised if Reddit already had things in its Terms of Service that restrict speech that calls for violence.
Private terms of service are not equivalent to government-enforced censorship.
Read up with a very very basic primer on prior restraints:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution...-restraint
If you get through it, you'll see why they felt comfortable leaving the obscenity exception in section 230.