Want to Kill Facebook and Google? Preserving Section 230 Is Your Best Hope

Abstract

47 USC 230 does more than promote free speech. The immunity also plays a major role in economic and competition policy. Section 230 implicitly provides what amounts to a financial subsidy to online republishers. That subsidy, counterintuitively, may represent our best hope for dethroning the Internet giants.

Keywords: section 230, 47 usc 230, cda, startups, entry barriers, litigation costs, Google, Facebook

JEL Classification: K4, K21