> It allowed controversial things to be said without the host being liable for hosting them.
That was already allowed, provided they didn't, to use the phrasing being used in this thread, “pick and choose what gets heard, what gets buried, and what gets banned.” Doing that even on a limited basis made them, under pre-230 law, a publisher, subject to liability for all content on the platform.
Section 230 was adopted specifically to allow platforms to moderate user-generated content according the platform owners’ view of objectionable content without incurring publisher liability, because the pre-230 situation was viewed as encouraging a situation i which platforms who didn't feel they could completely moderate were forced to not moderate at all, making online communities persistently polluted with objectionable content.
The Communications Decency Act, of which 230 was the only substantive part to survive, was not about promoting unmoderated internet fora, but the opposite.
That was already allowed, provided they didn't, to use the phrasing being used in this thread, “pick and choose what gets heard, what gets buried, and what gets banned.” Doing that even on a limited basis made them, under pre-230 law, a publisher, subject to liability for all content on the platform.
Section 230 was adopted specifically to allow platforms to moderate user-generated content according the platform owners’ view of objectionable content without incurring publisher liability, because the pre-230 situation was viewed as encouraging a situation i which platforms who didn't feel they could completely moderate were forced to not moderate at all, making online communities persistently polluted with objectionable content.
The Communications Decency Act, of which 230 was the only substantive part to survive, was not about promoting unmoderated internet fora, but the opposite.