Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the fact is that section 230 was never about protecting the incumbents. I have spent my time in public service taking on a wide array of powerful, established interests. When I wrote this policy, I never envisioned a Facebook, but I did hope it would give the little guy and his startup a chance to grow into something big. The bottom line--the central point here--is that it worked. Despite the fact that section 230 undergirds the framework of the internet as we know it today, there is a significant effort underway to try to take it down, to collapse it. That is, largely, because the big internet companies--the biggest ones--have utterly failed to live up to the responsibility they were handed two decades ago. I am going to explain exactly what I mean. For these big companies, section 230 is both a sword and a shield. It offers protection from liability, but it also gives companies the authority and, more importantly, the responsibility to foster the sort of internet Americans want to be proud of. In years of hiding behind their shields, these big technology companies have left their swords to rust. Too many companies have become bloated and uninterested in the larger good, and when they have taken positive steps, as Wikimedia has, for example, their practices haven't been adopted by their peers. I will describe one case study that was reported last week by the tech news website Motherboard.…”