Thirty years ago, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was born out of real concerns for the future.

Lawmakers feared that the early Internet, fragile and experimental, would be smothered in lawsuits before it had the chance to become the marketplace of ideas many hoped it could become.

Section 230 offered a shield, allowing platforms to host user-generated content without being treated as the publisher of every word posted.

At the time, it encouraged good-faith moderation so obscene or illegal material could be removed without punishment.

That bargain made sense in 1996, when the Internet was a digital frontier, and most platforms barely had a business model.

Section 230 is not outdated because it failed; rather, it is outdated because it worked too well.

It succeeded beyond anyone’s imagination, helping create some of the largest and most powerful corporations in history.

This success is precisely why it must now be abolished or fundamentally restructured.

There is an irony in finding common cause with trial lawyers on this issue.

Conservatives are rightly skeptical of a legal culture that treats litigation as sport.

However, this fight is about restoring free speech in a free marketplace of ideas, something Section 230 now actively undermines rather than protects.

The original premise of Section 230 was neutrality.

Platforms would not be liable because they were not publishers.

They were digital town squares, hosting speech rather than shaping it.

That distinction no longer exists in practice.

Modern platforms do not merely host content.

They curate it, amplify it, suppress it, monetize it and algorithmically steer it.

They decide what is seen, what goes viral, and what quietly disappears.

Yet they still claim the legal immunity afforded to passive message boards and dial-up-era chat rooms.

This legal fiction has allowed Big Tech to have it both ways.

When content is profitable, they act as publishers, promoting it through algorithms designed to maximize engagement and advertising revenue.

When content is harmful, defamatory or politically inconvenient, they retreat behind Section 230 and insist they are neutral platforms with no responsibility.

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