Section 230 is a part of the Communication Decency Act, which has shielded Big Tech from accountability and censorship. U.S. lawmakers have been debating reforms to laws that govern Big Tech to allow for more transparency and fairness.

섹션 230은 책임과 검열로부터 Big Tech를 보호한 Communication Decency Act의 일부이다. 미국 의회의원들은 더 많은 투명성과 공정성을 허용하기 위해 Big Tech를 지배하는 법률에 대한 개혁을 논의해 왔다.

Despite Tesla founder Elon Musk’s attempts to buy Twitter and his pledge to honor the First Amendment, Rachel Bovard, senior tech columnist at The Federalist, said reforms still need to be made to laws, including Section 230, that govern the “massive behemoths that now control the entry points to our national discourse.”

Tesla 창업자 Elon Musk의 트위터 인수 시도와 수정헌법 1조 준수 약속에도 불구하고 Federalist의 수석 기술 칼럼니스트인 Rachel Bovard는 “모든 국민의 의견개진의 진입점을 통제하는" 지금의 거대한 거물을 규제하는 230항을 포함한 법률에 대한 개혁이 여전히 필요하다고 말했다. 

“I think our public policy needs to respond to that. Part of that is Section 230, but I would even go further and suggest potentially common carriers should be considered, basically saying you have to admit all comers, and that’s something that’s under consideration in the Senate, as well as robust antitrust enforcement,” Bovard told the host of NTD’s Capitol Report, Steve Lance, during a recent interview.

"나는 우리의 공공 정책이 그것에 대응해야 한다고 생각한다. 그 일부는 섹션 230이지만 더 나아가 잠재적인 일반적인 업체(SNS)들를 고려해야 한다고 제안한다. 기본적으로 모든 가입자를 허용해야 하며, 이는 상원에서 고려 중인 사항이며 강력한 독점 금지 사항이다.”라고 Bovard는 말했습니다. 최근 인터뷰에서 NTD의 Capitol Report 진행자인 Steve Lance에게 말했다.

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) introduced a bill called the 21st Century Free Speech Act, which aims to curb the censorship by companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google by declaring the platforms “common carriers,” a term also used for companies that are obligated to transport goods without discrimination.

Bill Hagerty 상원의원(R-Tenn.)은 Twitter, Facebook 및 Google과 같은 플랫폼을 사용하는 회사의 검열을 억제하는 것을 목표로 하는 21세기 표현의 자유법이라는 법안을 발의했다. 플랫폼을 '일반적인 전달자'로 선언하며 차별 없이 의견들을 전달해야 하는 회사를 지칭하는 용어이기도 하다.

Section 230, when it was first put in place in 1996, “was designed to protect the companies from being sued for any content posted by their users,” said Bovard. “It was designed to again encourage companies to remove the things people don’t want to see. The pornography, the smut, the harassing, the lascivious content that people don’t want, while at the same time promoting, as the law says, ‘a diversity of views.’”

섹션 230은 1996년에 처음 시행되었을 때 "사용자가 게시한 콘텐츠로 인해 회사가 소송을 당하지 않도록 보호하기 위해 고안되었다"라고 Bovard는 말했다. “사람들이 보고 싶어하지 않는 것들 즉 음란물,희롱,사람들이 원하지 않는 음탕한 내용등을 제거하도록 기업을 독려하기 위해 고안되었다. 동시에 법에 명시된 대로 '관점의 다양성'을 살리는 내용의 법이다.

More specifically, Section 230 states: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider” (47 U.S.C. § 230).

“So, the original intent of the law, I think, was probably a good one. But it has evolved in such a way that it has made these companies almost immune to any kind of recourse by their user or anyone else.”

Over time, the courts have stretched the law to where it is a “bulletproof shield, protecting these companies when they sort of censor and curate all kinds of content in a way that a lot of First Amendment actors are not protected,” said Bovard, adding that “newspapers, movie companies, they don’t have the same protection that these social media giants have.”

However, Bovard does think that Musk buying Twitter will shake up the Big Tech world because Twitter will stand in stark contrast to the picking and choosing that companies like Facebook and Google do on content like the Hunter Biden laptop story, she said.

“I think if Elon Musk is successful in his bid to transform Twitter into what he calls more of a free speech company, it will put into stark relief the far more sort of censorious actions that Facebook and particularly Google take when it comes to content that they don’t like.”

Since making his bid for Twitter, Musk has expressed a desire to make Twitter less extreme. “For Twitter to deserve public trust it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally,” Musk wrote on Twitter.

Bovard said the changes Musk would implement will shed light on the corrupt practices of other Big Tech companies.

“If Twitter acts independently and begins to allow more speech and more content, it is going to show Facebook and Google for what they are, which is already what we know, right, which are sort of these ideologically censorious platforms,” she added.