Even these more modest proposals to the legal shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, could ripple across the internet. The adjustments could give companies like Facebook and YouTube an incentive to take down certain types of content while leaving up others. Critics say the shield has let the tech giants ignore criminal activity, hate speech and extremist content posted on their services. The law protects websites from many lawsuits over content posted by their users or the way sites choose to moderate that content. Major tech companies have said they are open to trimming the law, an effort to shape changes they see as increasingly likely to happen.

Source: New York Times March 09, 2021 07:52 UTC