Yes, Section 230 Also Matters In The Fight Over Abortion Rights
We've already discussed how the expected overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court may impact the debate on encryption, but it has a likelihood of impacting lots of other important tech debates as well. Senator Ron Wyden has written a thoughtful piece over at Slate, explaining how important Section 230 is in a post-Roe world as well. As he notes, for all the nonsense claims from Republicans about how they're supporting free speech, their actions show the exact opposite.
Step one in the extremist playbook is making abortion illegal. Step two is preventing pregnant people or health care providers from discussing it online. It is no accident that Republican politicians' efforts to outlaw abortion and exert state control over women's bodies have moved in tandem with their crusade to provide the government with control over what people can say, write, or teach. Conservative extremists want to force everything from websites to news to book apps for children to conform with their 1930s version of cultural norms.
And, that tracks, given the efforts by a variety of states, most notably Texas and Florida, to try to control how websites can moderate content. Section 230 was designed to prevent that from happening, which is part of the reason why so many Republican politicians have been trashing 230.
In coming months well-funded anti-choice extremists will launch a coordinated campaign to deluge websites and social media companies with lawsuits over user speech in Republican-led states where just seeking information about an abortion could become illegal. Just as anti-abortion activists worked to attack reproductive rights in statehouses across the nation, these fundamentalists will use the same playbook of coordinated laws and legal actions against the online speech of those they dislike. They've already targeted libraries and bookstores over LGBTQ books and classified health care for trans youths as child abuse.
As Wyden notes, even if these lawsuits won't win, without Section 230 acting as a protective buffer, the threat of liability becomes large enough to pressure websites into blocking discussions about abortion. This isn't theoretical. We saw it with the last change to Section 230 - FOSTA (ironically, of course, some of the foolish people co-opted into the disingenuous campaign for FOSTA, are now among those speaking out about the overturning of Roe).
They don't need to win these suits, only overwhelm the smaller companies that lack the resources to fight these claims or intimidate the big tech companies into taking down any posts on the topics of abortion or reproductive health care. The last reform to section 230, a bill called SESTA-FOSTA, resulted in marginalized groups-women, people of color, LGBTQ+ folks, and sex workers-being silenced when tech companies tried to avoid lawsuits. Meta has already banned discussion of abortion on its internal messaging platform. Is there any doubt it would do the same to Facebook and Instagram in the face of conservative pressure?
Wyden's piece goes on to talk about the other big issue at play here: how our lack of regulations on data brokers may be impacted by the overturning of Roe. As we've noted, it's not difficult for a motivated individual to purchase data from data brokers that can identify those who visited abortion clinics.
The risk of authoritarian power over speech, privacy, and human bodies seems like kind of a big issue.
Unfortunately, for reasons that still don't make any sense, the attacks on Section 230 remain bipartisan, playing right into the hands of censorial Republicans trying to stifle rights. It's time that Democrats realized, yet again, how they're being played, and focus on protecting, rather than undermining Section 230.