Section 230

When someone writes something false or offensive about another person on a website, a legal question arises: Who is liable for that? The author alone, or also the company on whose site the text appears? In the US, a short piece of legislative text from 1996 answers this question. It’s called Section 230, and it comes from a law called the Communications Decency Act. The decisive sentence states, in essence: A provider that passes along content from others is not considered the author of that content. This legally protects an operator if its users post something unlawful. A second part of the rule additionally allows it to delete content without losing this protection.

The reason comment sections exist

Without this protection, any platform with user-generated content would be an enormous financial risk. On large networks, hundreds of millions of posts are created every day. No company could have each one legally reviewed in advance. The logical reaction would be to stop allowing third-party content altogether. Section 230 removes exactly this pressure.

The background is a contradiction between two court rulings from the early nineties. One service that didn’t moderate its forums at all was acquitted. Another service that cleaned up and removed offensive posts was held liable precisely because of that. It had taken care of the content and was thus considered a kind of publisher. The result was absurd: whoever tried to maintain order was punished. Section 230 was meant to eliminate this perverse incentive.

That’s why the rule matters in both directions. It protects platforms from being held liable for content posted by others. And it protects them from being punished for cleaning up. Together, both aspects explain why it was precisely in the US that the world’s largest platforms emerged.

Where the limits of the protection lie

The protection only applies to content that originates from others. If a platform writes a text itself, it is liable for it just like any publisher. The decisive question, then, is who actually authored something. In a dispute, a court examines exactly that.

The protection is also not unlimited. It does not apply to copyright infringements, for which separate rules exist. It also does not apply to federal crimes. Since 2018, there has additionally been an exception for content related to human trafficking and prostitution. And Section 230 is US law. In Germany and the EU, the Digital Services Act (Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz) and the EU Digital Services Act apply instead, imposing considerably more obligations on platforms.

A common misconception is that platforms must remain neutral in order to keep the protection. That is not actually stated in the law. The text explicitly allows content to be removed according to a platform’s own standards. A platform may therefore moderate in a biased way and still remain protected.

The point of contention behind many tech headlines

Section 230 regularly comes up in news about Google, Meta, or X. Politicians from both major US parties want to change the rule, though for opposite reasons. One side accuses platforms of deleting too much. The other accuses them of doing too little against hate and misinformation. So far, no majority has formed in favor of a reform.

A new and still unresolved question concerns artificial intelligence. Section 230 protects the passing along of content from others. But a chatbot doesn’t pass along someone else’s text — it generates a new sentence itself. If that sentence wrongly accuses a person, it is unclear whether the protection even applies. Several lawsuits on exactly this question are currently underway in the US.

For you as a user, the effect is nonetheless felt in everyday life. Comments under videos, reviews on online shops, and posts in forums exist because someone can allow them without facing incalculable liability risk. If Section 230 were simply abolished with nothing to replace it, many of these features would likely be severely restricted.