Section 230 Protections: Can Legal Revisions or Novel Technologies Limit Online Misinformation and Abuse? A Workshop

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Congress enacted Section 230 to foster the growth of the internet by providing certain immunities for internetbased technology companies. Section 230 contains two key immunity provisions. The first specifies that a provider of an interactive computer service shall not "be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider," effectively exempting internet social media and networking services from liability under laws that apply to publishers, authors, and speakers. The second provides "good Samaritan" protection for providers who, in good faith, remove or moderate content that is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.

While Section 230 has played an important role in development of the internet as a platform for the global exchange of information and ideas, the internet has evolved in unanticipated ways since 1996. Today, a small number of large companies operate social media platforms that millions use for information and public discourse. Concentration of power, disinformation (including sophisticated disinformation campaigns), abuse on social media (hate speech, harassment, bullying, and discriminatory practices), use of algorithms to amplify and target content and advertising, and lack of transparency in content moderation have become issues of increasing concern. There are many opinions regarding potential solutions, including about whether (or by what means) Section 230 should be revised.

On April 22 and 27, 2021, the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a virtual workshop titled Section 230 Protections: Can Legal Revisions or Novel Technologies Limit Online Misinformation and Abuse? Participants and presenters explored the legal, policy, and technological aspects of Section 230 and its relationship with such critical issues as free speech, privacy, and civil rights. The workshop also addressed concerns about internet immunity protections while preserving free speech and democratic norms. This publication summarizes the presentation and discussion of the workshop.

Publication information

13 pages · 8.5 x 11 ·
ISBN Ebook: 0-309-08774-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17226/26280

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National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Section 230 Protections: Can Legal Revisions or Novel Technologies Limit Online Misinformation and Abuse?: Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

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Judith A. Miller

Judith A. Miller is an independent consultant. She was a founder and co-chair and is now Senior Advisor to the ABA Cybersecurity Legal Task Force, and was also a member of the Defense Science Board's Task Force on Cyber Deterrence. She currently co-chairs the Defense Science Board’s Task Force on Department of Defense Dependencies on Critical Infrastructure. She is active in a variety of public service and professional activities. She was Senior Vice President, General Counsel and a member of the Board of Directors of the Bechtel Group from January 2006 to January 2010. Prior to joining the Bechtel Group, she was a partner with Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, D.C. Her practice included a wide range of complex civil litigation and business related criminal litigation, corporate and individual officer counseling, internal investigations, as well as issues affecting the defense industry. She returned to the firm in January 2000, after having been the then longest serving General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense (1994-99). She clerked for Associate Justice Potter Stewart and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Harold Leventhal. Ms. Miller is a past chair (2007-08) of the American Bar Association's Section of Litigation, serves on its Executive Committee and Council, and is a section delegate to the ABA’s House of Delegates. She is a member of the Defense Science Board, the Council of the American Law Institute, and the Executive Committee of the Atlantic Council of the United States.

Ms. Miller is currently serving as a member on the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law. She has previously served as a member of the Committee on Scientific Communication and National Security, the Committee on Science, Security and Prosperity in a Changing World, and the Roundtable on Scientific Communication and National Security.

Ms. Miller earned a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Edward W. Felten

Edward W. Felten (NAE) is the Robert E. Kahn Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the founding director of Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy, a cross-disciplinary effort studying digital technologies in public life.

From 2011 to 2012 Dr. Felten served as the first chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission. His research interests include computer security and privacy, especially relating to media and consumer products; and technology law and policy. He has published about 80 papers in the research literature and two books. His research on topics such as web security, copyright and copy protection, and electronic voting has been covered extensively in the popular press.

Dr. Felten is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. He has testified at House and Senate committee hearings on privacy, electronic voting, and digital television. In 2004, Scientific American magazine named him to its list of 50 worldwide science and technology leaders. Among his committee service at NASEM, he served on the committees on Study on Directions for the AFOSR Mathematics and Space Sciences Directorate Related to Information Science and Technology (2005) and Fundamentals of Computer Science: Challenges and Opportunities (2000-2005). He served as a member of the NASEM Committee for the Study on Directions for the AFOSR Mathematics and Space Sciences Directorate Related to Information Science and Technology (2005) and the Committee on Fundamentals of Computer Science - Challenges and Opportunities (2000-2005).

Dr. Felten earned a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from the University of Washington.

Daphne Keller

Daphne Keller directs the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, and was formerly the Director of Intermediary Liability at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford. Her work focuses on platform regulation and Internet users' rights. She has published both academically and in popular press; testified and participated in legislative processes; and taught and lectured extensively. Her recent work focuses on legal protections for users’ free expression rights when state and private power intersect, particularly through platforms’ enforcement of Terms of Service or use of algorithmic ranking and recommendations. Until 2015 Keller was Associate General Counsel for Google, where she had primary responsibility for the company’s search products. She worked on groundbreaking Intermediary Liability litigation and legislation around the world and counseled both overall product development and individual content takedown decisions.

Keller received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 2000 and her B.A. from Brown University in 1995.

Martha L. Minow

Martha L. Minow is 300th Anniversary University Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Martha Minow has taught at Harvard Law School since 1981, where her courses include civil procedure, constitutional law, family law, fairness and privacy, international criminal justice, jurisprudence, law and education, nonprofit organizations, and the public law workshop. An expert in human rights and advocacy for members of racial and religious minorities and for women, children, and persons with disabilities, she also writes and teaches about AI and about design thinking. Professor Minow served as Dean of Harvard Law School between 2009 and 2017, as the inaugural Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor. She current co-chairs the advisory group for MIT's new Schwartzman College of Computing.
Professor Minow currently serves as a member of the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law. She previously served as a member on the Steering Group of the National Forum on the Future of Children and Their Families.
Professor Minow received her A.B. from the University of Michigan, Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and her J.D. from Yale Law School.

Susan S. Silbey

Susan S. Silbey holds the Leon and Anne Goldberg Chair in Humanities, Anthropology and Sociology, and is Professor of Behavioral and Policy Sciences in the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she teaches in the programs in Work and Organizational Studies and Economic Sociology. From 2017-2019, she served as Chair of the MIT Faculty. Dr. Silbey is interested in the governance, regulatory and audit processes in complex organizations. Her current research focuses on the creation of management systems for containing risks, including ethical lapses, as well as environment, health and safety hazards. In addition, for fifteen years, she has been part of a team following a national panel of engineers from college to the workplace.

Her award winning articles and books include “Subversive Stories and Hegemonic Tales: Toward A Sociology of Narrative” (1995); “Narrating Social Structure: Stories of Resistance to Legal Authority” (2003); “Governing the Gap: Forging Safe Science Through Relational Regulation,” (2011); The Common Place of Law: Stories From Everyday Life (1998). Other books include In Litigation: Do the Haves Still Come Out Ahead (2003); Law and Science (I): Epistemological, Evidentiary and Relational Engagements (2008), and Law and Science (II): Regulation of Property, Practices and Products (2008).

Dr. Silbey has previously served as a committee member for the Committee for a Study of Performance-Based Safety Regulation.

Dr. Silbey earned a B.A. from CUNY Brooklyn College, a M.A. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

David C. Vladeck

David C. Vladeck holds the position of A.B. Chettle, Jr., Professor of Law at the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown University Law Center. At Georgetown, he teaches civil procedure, federal courts, a practicum on privacy and technology (taught jointly with MIT), and directs the Civil Litigation Clinic, a student clinic that handles trial court litigation focused on public-interest cases. He also serves as Faculty Director of the Law Center's Center on Privacy and Technology. Before joining the Law Center faculty full-time in 2002, Professor Vladeck spent over 25 years with Public Citizen Litigation Group, a national public interest law firm, serving the last ten years as the Group's director. He has briefed and argued a number of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and more than sixty cases before federal courts of appeal and state courts of law resort. From 2002 to 2009, Professor Vladeck served as Director of the Civil Rights section of Georgetown Law's Institute for Public Representation, a student clinic that handles complex trial court and appellate litigation focused on civil rights and other public-interest litigation, while also teaching civil procedure and federal courts. From 2009 to 2012, he served as the Director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection.

Professor Vladeck has previously served as a member on the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law and a member on the Forum on Cyber Resilience.

Professor Vladeck received a L.L.M. from Georgetown University Law Center, a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law and a B.A from New York University, Washington Square College.

Benjamin Wittes

Benjamin Wittes is a senior fellow in Governance Studies and Research Director in Public Law at The Brookings Institution. He co-founded and is the editor-in-chief of Lawfare, which is devoted to sober and serious discussion of "Hard National Security Choices." He is a contributing writer at the Atlantic and a law analyst at NBC News and MSNBC. He is the author with Susan Hennessey of Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump's War on the World's Most Powerful Office, forthcoming in January 2020. His previous books include The Future of Violence: Robots and Germs, Hackers and Drones-Confronting A New Age of Threat (2015), coauthored with Gabriella Blum. They also include Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor After Guantanamo (2011); Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror (2008); Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times (2006); Starr: A Reassessment (2002). He has edited three books: Campaign 2012: Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy (2012), Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change (2011), and Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform (2009). Between 1997 and 2006, Wittes served as an editorial writer for the Washington Post specializing in legal affairs. Before joining the editorial page staff of the Post, Wittes covered the Justice Department and federal regulatory agencies as a reporter and news editor at Legal Times. His writing has also appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines including Slate, The New Republic, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, Policy Review, and First Things. He obtained a BA from Oberlin College in 1990.

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Section 230 Protections: Can Legal Revisions or Novel Technologies Limit Online Misinformation and Abuse? A Workshop

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Section 230 Protections: Can Legal Revisions or Novel Technologies Limit Online Misinformation and Abuse? A Workshop

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Featured publication

Section 230 Protections: Can Legal Revisions or Novel Technologies Limit Online Misinformation and Abuse?: Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief

Description

Contributors

Committee

Sponsors

Staff

Parent projects

Committee on Science, Technology, and Law

Major units and sub-units

Contact

Provide feedback

More like this

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Future pathways for the BGC Argo program: A Workshop

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