Blog #8

 EOTO Presentation No. 2.

For this Each One Teach One I am in charge of teaching about Section 230 of the CDA. Although I have never heard of this prior to this assignment I have a pretty good idea about what it is and why it was created. Although I am not a really big fan after learning about it I still understand why it was put in place and why a lot of people love it and why a lot of people hate it.

Section 230 of the CDA is also called "The internets most important law." This is for a few reasons even though it is only 26 words in length. It is in Title 47 of the United States Code and enacted as part of the United States Communications Decency Act. This provides immunity for website platforms with respect to third-party contact. This pretty much means that Internet service providers or social media platforms and even website platforms have immunity from civil lawsuits declaring that they libeled someone by allowing third party to post on their site. Congress states that in the statute, that this was created to promote the policy to "preserve the vibrant and competitive free market." 

This law has protected big companies and monopolies such as Facebook for some time now. Although they are protected by this "blanket" whistleblowers especially Facebook's most recent whistleblower is tired of it and says the big companies should be held accountable because they say that posts on their site "harm children, stroke division, and weaken our democracy."

I could not agree more with that statement because I see what is posted daily on all social media platforms and how it divides everyone. I do believe the world has gotten softer over time and everyone thinks that everyone care about their opinions and this leads to another reason why people get their feelings hurt so much. This leads to "bullying" and other problems that these social media platforms cause. I know it is open internet and there is freedom of speech but sometimes it goes too far. 

To me the Section 230 of the CDA gives these big companies too much of a blanket for them and sometimes I do believe they should be held accountable for some things that third parties post on their sites. I like what the new Whistleblower is saying, she said Facebook needs to change their algorithms which are used to rank content. She says they should cycle feeding harmful, inflammatory or untrue. I like this because this makes it harder to come by content that is offensive and or untrue. Without the changed algorithm I do believe these big companies should be held accountable.

All together I believe that Section 230 of the CDA must be updated so that these companies are held accountable for some things that people see on their site. The reason I say this is because I find it absolutely mind boggling that they are not held accountable for posts on their sites. Yea, I understand that the Section 230 was created years back before the internet was huge but I do think it should be updated soon.