The Section 230 Sunset Act Would Cut Off Young People’s Access to Online Communities
Andriy Onufriyenko
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are eager to repeal a law that protects online speech, purportedly in the name of helping America’s children. But if this bill is passed, some of the safest spaces for young people — online communities — will be the first on the chopping block.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which holds that “no provider or user shall be treated as the publisher” of content created by another, is one of the most critical laws protecting our rights online. Repealing the current law via the Section 230 Sunset Act would wipe out those protections entirely.
The current law is in clear agreement with most Americans’ belief that people should be held responsible for their own speech, not that of other people. The law protects individual bloggers, anyone who forwards an email, and social media users who have ever reshared or retweeted another person’s content online. It also protects individual moderators who might delete or otherwise curate the online content of others, along with anyone who provides web hosting services.
Every late-night Discord chat, gaming community, art forum, blog, and YouTube video exists in part because of Section 230. The law makes it possible for everyone to publish and view content without having to create their own individual sites or services, which is particularly essential for young people who don’t have the resources to do so.
Before Section 230 was passed, in 1996, courts effectively disincentivized platforms from engaging in any speech moderation. With it, platforms are protected from being sued for moderating or removing bullying and threatening content, anti-LGBTQ+ smears, election disinformation, QAnon-based conspiracy theories (among others), COVID misinformation, and so on. This makes those spaces less toxic and gives platforms financial breathing room to allow non-paying users to view their site — again, essential for young people. These protections also help people, forums, and companies of all sizes that would be overwhelmed by a flood of costly, time-consuming legislation without it.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently conducted a survey in which young people told us that online platforms are the safest spaces for them, where they can say the things they can't in real life “for fear of torment.” These spaces have improved their mental health and given them a “haven” to talk openly and safely.
Without these online spaces that are protected by Section 230, one teen said, they would know “nothing about the genocide in Palestine, nothing about gender identity or sexuality, nothing about climate change, and nothing that I need to know as an American citizen.” Another said such online spaces have “improved my life by giving me immediate access to information and important events around the world,” and “given me friends from all over the world with their own unique experiences and lives and stories.”
Again and again, young people say online spaces are their “lifelines.” Section 230 is the law that powers and protects those lifelines. Why would legislators want to change that?
This bill is directly connected to another piece of dangerous legislation, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which young people across the country have been speaking out against. KOSA would have a huge impact on the rights of young people online. In particular, it would impose a “duty of care” for tech companies to “act in the best interests” of minors using their platforms.
How to abide by that duty would be determined by the federal government, and could include censoring important content that government officials don’t want young people to see. With KOSA, legislators are targeting Section 230 indirectly; with the Section 230 Sunset Act, they’re trying to kill it entirely.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), one of the two authors of the Section 230 Sunset Act, said during her opening remarks at a recent House Energy and Commerce subcommittee markup, “It’s my biggest fear, what’s going to happen online with my kids, because I don’t trust what’s happening at all.” Rodgers and her colleague Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed that Section 230 has “made the internet a dangerous place for America’s children.”
When we speak with young people, however, they disagree. So here’s the question: Do the legislators not trust tech companies or do they not trust young people? Maybe it’s both.
In reality, Section 230 helps children, just as it helps all of us. Using the law to shutter online spaces is an abdication of responsibility, and a disappointingly juvenile way to legislate. The internet is where people can go to find or build communities that share similar interests, tastes, views, and concerns.
But in a world where Section 230 doesn’t protect their speech, such communities are snuffed out. Young people would have fewer spaces to share their opinions, connect with others, and find community — something that’s sorely needed when offline spaces where young people can interact are, sadly, shrinking.
If Congress is at all serious about protecting children online, it should start by acknowledging the important role social media plays in everyone's life. Then Congress should enact policies that promote choice in the marketplace and digital literacy training, as well as comprehensive privacy laws that protect all internet users from the predatory data gathering, retention, and sales that target us for advertising and abuse.
Ending Section 230 won’t protect young people while they use the internet; it will erase them from it. Instead of using young people as pawns in their battle with Big Tech, lawmakers should listen to what young people are actually saying: The internet is a support system for them, and Section 230 is the backbone of that support system.
Jason Kelley is activism director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital civil liberties organization headquartered in San Francisco.
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Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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