Depending on what you read or who you talk to, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is either a tool of censorship, a shield of Big Tech that allows it to profit off of content harmful to third parties or the only thing that enables the internet to work.

Section 230 distinguishes between an “information content provider” that creates content and the “interactive computer service” that hosts the content, and immunizes the hosting platform from responsibility for content created by its users. The legislation mandates that “[n]o 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.”