In this session of the Guarini Colloquium: Regulating Global Digital Corporations, we welcomed Mary Anne Franks to discuss reform of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act with our students and other participants.

Should platforms should be responsible for user-generated content? If so, under what circumstances? What exactly would such responsibility look like? These are the questions that Mary Anne Franks asks in her paper with Danielle Citron titled “The Internet As a Speech Machine and Other Myths Confounding Section 230 Reform”. They encourage reform of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—a provision originally designed to encourage tech companies to clean up “offensive” online content—arguing that the public discourse around Section 230 is riddled with misconceptions.