Understanding Section 230: Legal Protections for Online Platforms

Often it feels as though the cases and lawsuits brought against big tech firms are continuously piling up, but there never seems to be any resulting justice or resolution. There are many good reasons for this, two of which are section 230 and the first amendment.

Big Tech companies will routinely invoke 230 and the first amendment to get cases against them thrown out before they can go to trial. In part 3 of Exhibit X, Meetali Jain explains how litigators have been playing 4D chess to get the courts to hold these companies accountable.

In this episode we ask…

• What is section 230 and how to platforms use it to their benefit?
• How can we take the design decisions of a corporation out of the free speech bucket so that they can be held responsible for their actions?
• How can we start developing more levers from transparency, beyond lawsuits and whistleblowing?

Meetali Jain is a human rights lawyer, who founded the Tech Justice Law Project in 2023. The Project works with a collective of legal experts, policy advocates, digital rights organizations, and technologists to ensure that legal and policy frameworks are fit for the digital age, and that online spaces are safer and more accountable.

This episode was hosted by Alix Dunn and Prathm Juneja