......well, we’re talking apples and oranges. Your right on Section 230 protecting them from liability of third parties on their platforms for saying bad things.
But, that’s not the point. The point is that Dorsey, Zuckerberg and the other guy “selectively” enforce what in effect is censorship of political thought and they think 230 protects them from being sued when they block you. Trump and others want to STOP that and modify (not repeal) the law to allow people to SUE for being censored and violating their free speech rights. Thousands of lawsuits will bring em all to their knee’s (meaning Zuckerberg, Dorsey and the other guy whose name i can’t remember).
Well I agree of course that Jack, Mark and the rest selectively enforce their rules to suit their whims and agendas. There was a story I saw that the PA Health Authority sent out thousands of letters that arrived the last few days to rural residents stating something to the effect of “you have been identified as being exposed to Covid-19 and must quarantine for 14 days” but did not give any explanation. It was a clear attempt at voter suppression on election day in rural PA counties. Facebook’s “independent fact checkers” said the story was fake, but they did not deny the letters went out they only said it was “fake” because the CDC issued a statement saying covid-infected people can go vote. The letter did not say they could not go vote, only said “you must quarantine” which is effectively the same thing. It’s a head-screw in 2 directions.
Anyway that is why I added my reply to the other poster. These are private corporations (publicly traded, but private - not subject to Constitutional limits on behavior as government or public utilities are). So I don’t see how repealing 230 would allow lawsuits against them. Don’t like the site policies, don’t use them.
Which is why I said, forget about section 230. It’s not going to change anything. The only way to change them is to force them to be regulated like utilities when they reach some number of users; e.g. if you have more than 3 or 5 or 10 million users, you cannot do anything but let the users control what they see, what they like, what they dislike, what they want to discuss, whom to friend or follow etc. And if the users break the law (conspiracies to commit crimes, evidence of crimes, incitement etc) then send the info to the authorities.
Google is a bigger problem to tackle, because they are even more opaque than FB/TW. They do take down content as well, and also do shadow banning and limiting of distribution, but they don’t flag things with warning labels and “fact checking” they just keep the content from showing up, and feed different users different types of information based on what their computers think will sway the user’s mind. It’s really insidious and much harder to regulate.