Yeah, Section 230 is a red herring meant to distract and divert. It is really about collusion and oligopoly. And the Biden Administration won't do anything.
It's not a red herring. As far as I know, I'm the first person that made the argument on several forums four years ago. and it was widely repeated.
It was never meant to be a catch all, but was meant to stop a foreseeable problem I saw four years ago - and make gun shy the big tech companies before they became worse, as well as do something without effectively creating new laws, and which could have actually been done by regulation change. Everyone could have implemented it four years ago, and Trump is entirely at fault for not implementing it administratively.
The original messages included a list of other things that could be done, 230 was only a first step. 230 was mentioned as an example following entirely libertarian principles of monopolies don't happen long term without government interference, and listing one example of giving them special immunity for being something they claimed which they are not. And it was created specifically to foil belt way libertarians making fake arguments (ie Alinsky communists in disguise).
Of course the tech companies are violating many other laws, and are monopolies. But that is not why the 230 argument was created. It was only created as a first jab at it 4 years ago, before it became worse. Among other things, they are constantly violating intellectual property and copyrights (google couldn't even exist without it), contract fraud on a massive scale, etc - I could easily make a pages long list.
The right response to "but it's their property", is it's on a network created by the united states and a public space. They can go build their own international network, underlining protocol suit, and user base if they don't like it.
And that is the fraud right there. Even malls, genuinely privately built, have more legal protection as a semi public area. But this is a network the government built with your tax dollars, and back in the day - circa 1992/1993, you could be kicked off the network if you discriminated the way these companies have. Existing law for telephone companies, ie, would have likewise made it illegal for them.
