Electronic Frontier Foundation EFF30 Fireside Chat on Section 230 & Free Speech Online Thursday, December 10, 2020 4:02 – 4:47 p.m. (Pacific) Remote CART Captioning Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided to facilitate communication accessibility. CART captioning and this realtime file may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. >> Aaron Jue: Hey, everyone. I'm Aaron Jue, EFF director of engagement. Welcome to our 30th annual EFF fireside chat. To celebrate, we are hosting this series of conversations, looking back at some of the biggest issues in internet history and how they have shaped the modern web. We are saving the final portion of today's program for you, so please drop your questions into chat throughout the discussion. We'll collect them, and guests today will answer as many as they can. So now I am pleased to welcome today's esteemed guests. That's EFF legal director Dr. Corynne McSherry and Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, who was an original framer of Section 230. Thank you both for being here, and please, take it away. >> Dr. McSherry: All right. Well, welcome to everyone in the audience. We are really excited to have this conversation, and I am personally incredibly excited to be able to have this conversation with Senator Wyden, who I hope people in the audience know has been a real hero for digital rights, just on issue after issue after issue. He has stood with internet users in really important ways, and one of those ways was by helping to create Section 230, which is one of the legal pillars of the internet, and that's what we are going to talk about today. So I want to start us off by just clearing some ground, because one of the things that happens -- >> Senator Wyden: Good luck with that. >> Dr. McSherry: Well, Senator Wyden, one thing that you know for sure is there is an incredible amount of confusion about what Section 230 even is. So let me throw out a definition and see if we can get everybody on the same page, and then I'll sort of invite you to add on to it. But I think, actually, it's kind of a simple thing, at the end of the day. Section 230 simply says that internet services aren't legally on the hook for things that their users do online. It's not unlimited, so it doesn't apply, for example, to federal criminal law or federal criminal claims, no correction there. It doesn't apply to internet service providers own actions and speech. It doesn't apply when they are the speakers or actors. They can't look to Section 230 for 230; it's only for things that their users do. So, it's sort of a simple, common sense kind of policy, which is if I go online and I post something illegal, I should be the one who is held responsible for it, not, for example, the message board or the social media platform or whatever, where I posted it or the person who forwards it or retweets, but I am responsible for my own speech. And this is important, because without Section 230, right, the internet would be a very, very different place. And it's not just that we wouldn't have Facebook and Twitter, we wouldn't have Wikipedia, or your local newspaper wouldn't be able to have a comment section, and so on. And I don't think people always realize how many different kinds of services rely on Section 230, and just one other thing that Section 230 does is it protects content moderation. It makes it possible for a social media platform to make decisions or make choices about what content it wants to host and what content it doesn't want to host, social media platforms but also, again, blogs, newspapers, libraries, any kind of service that might host content generated by somebody else. They depend on Section 230. Now, I know you know this, Senator Wyden, because you helped write this bill, but it seems like a lot of other people don't, including like the New York Times, which is really hard for those of us who are working in this space. So, I wonder if you could, you know, tell us a little bit -- again, you're the person who wrote this bill, what were your motivations behind it? Take us back to the origins of this incredibly important law. What were you thinking then, and could you have imagined how important it was going to be later? >> Senator Wyden: Well, you stole most of my initial material, Corynne. >> Dr. McSherry: I'm so sorry. >> Senator Wyden: I might offer up a couple of quick thoughts, and then we'll talk about the history. >> Dr. McSherry: Sure. >> Senator Wyden: There has been so much bloviating about Section 230 over the last two years, that when I heard EFF is going to do this program, I said hallelujah, this is a chance to set the record straight. If there's one sentence that I believe we want to communicate about this law, it is that Section 230 says that the person who creates the content is the one who is responsible for it, period, full stop. And as you noted, certainly critics think otherwise, you're not getting off the hook in terms of federal criminal law. Federal criminal law applies to you, just like it does to everybody else. Two other points: Section 230 protects the ability of individual users to be heard and especially people who don't own their own TV stations. This has always been for the person who doesn't have deep pockets, and for example, I feel very strongly, without 230, a lot of the injustices dealing with Black Lives Matter would not have come to light, and it's my view, based on our research, that not a single Me Too post, accusing powerful people of wrongdoing, would be allowed on a moderated platform without Section 230. So, from the start, and this is I think particularly relevant, you asked about the history. When Congressman Chris Cox and I sat down to think about putting this together, it was always to be about innovators and people without power and clout and people who couldn't afford to be all tied up in litigation from powerful interests that were just trying to sideline their ideas, and Chris was our star lawyer. He was thinking about all of the prodigy cases, and remember, he and I had a different kind of slant than people who just wanted to stop pornography, which was a big part of the debate. Chris and I wanted to make sure that innovators and creators and people who had promising ideas and wanted to know how they were going to get it out, we wanted to make sure that this new concept known as the internet could facilitate that, and Chris went to the law books, and I said, you know, I don't know everything about the internet. I was dreaming of playing in the NBA as a young guy, never really cracked a book till college, got a scholarship. I wasn't going to make it to the NBA, because at 6'4", I was too small, and I made up for it by being really slow. But I had, even then, a sense that the internet was potentially transformative, and at one point, I said to Chris, as he was buried in all of the law books, I said, "Chris, I don't know everything about the internet, but why in the world would anybody give a few hundred bucks to a small business if they thought they were going to be held personally liable for everything that was posted?" And I literally said this to Chris. I said, "Hey, Chris, I'll bet there's going to be a lot of postings." So, we knew back then, Corynne, that this was going to be potentially useful. I never thought that we would have a book written about our work called The 26 Words That Created the Internet. But what happened was in the Communications Decency Act, they had really two sections. One was the section on pornography, and the other was the handiwork of Congressman Cox and I. It went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court struck down the pornography section, and Section 230 really came to be seen, as I said to Fox News, not always the most liberal outlet in the country, that Section 230 now is the single best law for small business innovators, and it is the single best law for free speech. >> Dr. McSherry: So I want to pick up on that a little bit in a couple of ways. So, one thing is I want to pick up on what you said about the Me Too movement, because I'm not sure that people really understand how that works, and I think what you're getting at there, just as a very practical example, is if you want to post online about an experience that you had, you need a platform that's willing to host that, right, that content, so people can read it, but if that platform is worried that what you're saying might be defamatory, right, they are not going to let you post it. They are not going to let you post it until their lawyers vet it and make sure it's perfectly true and all of that kind of stuff, and that's -- no one is going to do that. Who can pay lawyers to do that research, to do that work? And I think it's a really -- you know, it's a perfect example of what we are dealing with here. And, of course, if I say something defamatory, if I make an allegation, it's not true. I may be on the hook for it, but a platform shouldn't have to worry about that all the time, and if they do, they just won't exist. We just won't have it. But I think another thing that you said -- >> Senator Wyden: Corynne, can I just freeze that for one minute? Because you got back to this question that we talked about early on, that this was for people who aren't the folks with the deep pockets. One of the things that makes me angry about the debate, about 230, there are a number of things, but the one that really infuriates me is that Section 230 is some kind of windfall for big tech. The fact of the matter is big tech has got so much money that they can buy whatever content they want, they can buy themselves out of any kind of legal scrape, and we sure learned that when the first bill to start unravelling Section 230 passed. It was called SESTA-FOSTA (phonetic), and it was about sex trafficking. And we kept saying that you're not going to get this great win against these monsters that are engaged in sex trafficking. They are all going to move to the dark web. Well, that's what happened, but guess what deep pocket sold us out? Facebook, because Facebook said, "Hey, let's get some good publicity. We are against sex trafficking, and by the way, we can just buy off anybody we want to." So, your point, Corynne, about making it clear that this is about those voices without power and clout, not about protecting big tech, is really key. >> Dr. McSherry: Right, I 100% agree, and I was actually going to point to that example as well, because one of the things that also happened is -- so, one of the things that many people protected, including EFF, including you, I think, was that it was going to have all kinds of -- SESTA was going to cause a lot of collateral damage. It was going to cause people to overcensor, it was going to cause people to hold back, and any site could be shut down. Right after it passed, a lot of dating sites went out of business, to give one example, and guess who started their own dating site? Our friends at Facebook, who can pay lawyers to handle the risk. But lots and lots of start-ups and small businesses, they can't do that. Also, not just start-ups and small businesses but libraries and newspapers and little blogs. Ravelry, the knitting site, right, all of these place that people really don't think about -- and I completely agree with you, and that actually leads me to my question about this, because it seems to me that the conversation around Section 230 focuses so much on just a few companies and anger at just a few companies, as if it doesn't protect anything else. >> Senator Wyden: Yeah. The catalyst for techlash, which is really big techlash, by the way, clearly was the 2016 election. The companies did a horrendous job, and they didn't deal with misinformation, and basically the country was looking at them and saying the platforms really didn't do much of anything or fix anything unless it was something else that would make them even more money, help themselves, for example, sell even more ads than they were. But after the 2016 election, people were angry about some of the slime on the internet, which our law provides a tool to get off and to, you know, moderate. They were looking for answers, and because they thought 230 was the law that just made social media possible, they said, well, if we just threaten to change 230, that will force the tech companies to pay attention. Unfortunately, a big chunk of the ideas that are being thrown out right now would do more harm than good, and I didn't want to walk people through that New York Times example, because we always love the New York Times, and it's great to get the information, but they had to run a correction saying that the First Amendment, not Section 230, is what protects hate speech online. So, right now, it's very fashionable to say Section 230 is what props up, you know, hate speech and the like, but the fact is the First Amendment says government can't regulate what people say or right, except for some very narrow exceptions. So, 98% of the garbage people are concerned about on social media, like hate speech and misinformation and misleading videos, is protected by the First Amendment. So, you throw 230 in the trash can, as some want to do, it would just take longer in court for websites to win lawsuits over that kind of content, and the small innovator would find it very hard to get out of the garage. >> Dr. McSherry: Right. >> Senator Wyden: So that's what we are up against. >> Dr. McSherry: Because the small innovator can't afford to defend their First Amendment rights, and this is the thing that I think is really the other thing that's misunderstood about Section 230. It's not just what it protects, but also that it protects moderation. Actually, if you want companies to do more moderation, Section 230 is part of what protects their ability to do that, and I just think that's something that people really don't understand. If it wasn't for Section 230, then one thing that could happen is you would actually have less speech taken down. So if you're somebody who is actually worried about offensive content, you should be very happy with Section 230, instead of objecting to it. We -- I want to get to questions, and we are going to do that in about, you know, five, ten more minutes, but before we do that, I kind of want to say I think we have spent some time here talking about, you know, some of the complaints and that we are worried about and the misinformation. But I think that probably, we could agree that there is a bit of a problem. We have a problem in the sense that you do have a few companies that have an awful a lot of power over online speech, as a practical matter. Now, legally, you know they have First Amendment rights, and all of those things are true, but it's worrisome that we have just a few companies that seem to really have an outsized influence on what is online and what isn't online, and that's just a reality, and I wonder if you have thoughts about -- if you don't want to be focusing on -- if we believe Section 230 is the wrong focus, if that's what you're worried about, what are some better things that we could be encouraging Congress today, that we could be encouraging companies to do, to sort of address this problem? >> Senator Wyden: Well, the first thing that we ought to do is tackle the incredible abuses in the privacy area. Every other week in this country, Americans learn about what amounts to yet another privacy disaster, and it's kind of lather, rinse, and repeat. The company apologizes. It promises to do better, and then like clockwork, it happens all over again. I'm going to introduce a piece of legislation very soon called The Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale. And this is yet another area that we ought to be focused on, because we all see these commercial databases selling our location data and all kinds of other things, and the apps and the data brokers really ought to be reined in here. So, to me, the first thing that we ought to do coming up is take steps to protect the privacy of Americans. By the way, we got Facebook and Jack Dorsey to say, when I asked him a question in an open intelligence hearing, was it a national security issue, and both of them finally answered yes, which is an indication of its importance. And to me, if you want to get tough on big tech, you ought to get behind my bill, the Mind Your Own Business Act, which would require personal consequences for executives like Mark Zuckerberg, who lie to the federal government about their privacy policy. They could be held personally accountable. So, which would you think makes more sense? Passing Mind Your Own Business to protect millions of Americans, or go out and pass -- I think you said you had Lindsey Graham or up watching Lindsey Graham -- that EARN IT Act is more of SESTA-FOSTA, exactly the same thing. It's not going to sound good, but the sexual monsters I think will be flourishing under it, and if you want to go after the monsters as I do, you ought to pass my legislation to provide more resources to prosecute them. >> Dr. McSherry: It seems to me that one thing -- if you're really trying to go after big tech, you should ask yourselves a few questions when big tech comes out to support your bill, as with SESTA-FOSTA, and another thing that I keep seeing over and over is executives of big companies brought in to ask questions. That's fine. I have no problem with calling them onto the carpet. But I think we should bring in all of the other people who would be affected by these laws. It comes back to how Section 230 protects so many different kinds of services, but when we have hearings on Section 230 reform, we don't talk to all of those people and just ask Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg what they think. I'm not saying we shouldn't be hearing from them, but I want us to be hearing from other folks, and I think if we heard from other folks, one thing -- I think the legislation you're suggesting sounds exciting. Protecting privacy is really important. A couple of other things I think we could think about are looking at ways to promote competition, because one of the things that happens is that we have to worry a lot more about the choices that Facebook makes or Twitter makes or YouTube makes because we don't have enough alternatives, right, and so maybe we should reduce the amount of power that they have over our speech by thinking about ways to foster alternatives. And there are alternatives out there, but I think not enough, and that's a thing that we think about a lot at EFF. And also, you know, what can we do to encourage companies to develop tools to put users in control of their privacy, for sure, but also of their own internet experience? I think if they put a fraction of the money that they are investing in content moderation into developing user tools, so that we can make our own decisions, I think that would be pretty exciting. Another thing that we work on at EFF is, you know, when you have companies that have a lot of power over speech, they know they are going to make mistakes; we know they are going to make mistakes. So, one thing that -- and I don't think this is something that should be legislated but rather be voluntary, is, you know, committing to providing real due process for their users or a kind of due process with the ability to appeal and maybe a little bit more transparency into what they are up to, which would be great. >> Senator Wyden: That's too logical. >> Dr. McSherry: That's hard. One of the things that actually can be valuable about the hearings, I think, is you all have the power to ask them questions that ordinary users can't get answers to. It's really -- it's unfortunate. >> Senator Wyden: Corynne, before we go to question, to me, I just want to make one last point, because I know we are about ready to go there. Look, I have never said that Section 230 or any law is perfect. There's not a law that you can't come up with better ways to proceed, to get the results that are in the public interest. I do think states could be given more leeway to enforce state laws that are similar to federal laws. I'm very concerned about what we are hearing from civil rights groups about discrimination online, particularly violations of fair housing laws. Part of the problem is that we have had so much, as I call it, bloviating about 230, where we have had to run around and kind of figure out how to deal with all of this hot air, we haven't even I think had a chance to analyze whether the problem with respect to housing is a failure of enforcement at the FTC or the Department of Justice or if new laws are needed to address the problem. So on the proposition, I think this is what you're saying, is well, there ought to be some basic fact finding before the Congress just jumps into making sweeping changes in speech, you know, online. I remember when I got started and people in Congress were saying the internet is a series of tubes and, you know, people weren't sure how platforms made money and things like that. Let's make sure people really understand what's at issue here. >> Dr. McSherry: Yeah, I think that that's completely true, and especially, you know, we need that fact finding so that we really make smart technology policy. I mean, I think that given how important -- I actually really continue to think that people underestimate just how important Section 230 is and just how risky it is when you mess with it, and I think our experience with SESTA, which was an important and big change, but smaller than some of the changes that I have been hearing about, and we saw that cause so much collateral damage, it really should be a cautionary tale, and one of the things that I know has been proposed has been actually fact finding into the effects of SESTA, into the effects of SESTA-FOSTA. It does seem to me that we could maybe see how that turned out before we mess around with the law any more. So, I think you and I are, as we say often say in EFF, in violent agreement on this question. I think now I want to bring in the audience, because I think there's a whole bunch of people who have lots of questions for us. >> Senator Wyden: Corynne, I'm afraid people might be losing some of the important comments you're making, so let's see what happened with -- I'm losing a little bit on my mind, not too much. Go ahead. >> Dr. McSherry: I was just saying that I was going to now move into opening up for questions. >> Senator Wyden: Good. >> Dr. McSherry: So, we have -- let's see -- so, one question I have already is this: A question from one of our audience members is if a person chooses to retweet, is that the same as a blog platform allowing someone to post a blog entry, so that both are protected? I think the question is an audience member is trying to understand a little bit better how does Section 230 simultaneously protect users who are retweeting something and Twitter itself? >> Senator Wyden: Well, I think we are going to have to work through all of those issues going forward. So, I probably would put it back on our questioner what they would like to see be the policy in this area. >> Dr. McSherry: I think that's fair, but I also think what we are trying to get at is the notion behind Section 230 and what its fundamental protections are when it comes to online speech, you are not responsible for what someone else says, whether you're a platform or you're someone who is just forwarding an email. It's not on you to be responsible for what the original person is saying. That person, though, can be held responsible and should be, you know, in appropriate circumstances. >> Senator Wyden: I think I would generally go along with that view. I'm not sure I'm ready to make it an across-the-board principle. And maybe I should have done this before we got to questions. To have a serious discussion here, we really ought to use two measures. These are the measures that I'm focused on. The first is is the change going to get in the way of constitutionally protected speech? That's kind of principle number one. And second, is it going to discourage moderation? So, every bill I have seen on 230 violates one or both of these tenants. I think your point about if you're retweeting somebody else's comment, it's still all free speech. It strikes me as still free speech, but I'm going to want to like sit down and kind of think about some of the examples of what might be retweeted. >> Dr. McSherry: Right. I mean, I do think that some of the proposals that I have seen, it seems to me, would really fundamentally violate the First Amendment in many ways, but certainly in the basic thing of interfering with the ability of companies to make their own decisions about what speech they host. And it surprises me a lot that people would want that so very much. It seems to me that our tradition would be to be hands-off on that kind of thing. >> Senator Wyden: Ask our caller who wondered about the legal protection for retweeting what he or she was thinking. >> Dr. McSherry: Is there a way that we can do that? Okay. Our moderators say we will get that in a minute. >> Senator Wyden: Good, that's what I meant, good. >> Dr. McSherry: Okay. So, give me a second. Let's see. So, we have another question that says, "What are your thoughts on the YouTube announcement this week that it would take down any discussion on election fraud?" I think, actually, what I heard this morning is that YouTube announced it would take down content alleging widespread election -- >> Senator Wyden: That was it. That is why I think it is very much in line with the spirit of 230. If we are talking about widespread election fraud, where clearly even Bill Barr and others have said they haven't been able to prove it, I think that's exactly the kind of information that the public deserves to have put in context, and people could take it down. >> Dr. McSherry: So, the other -- a related question from the same person is concerned about Twitter -- what they are calling Twitter's censorship of conservative voices, and the question I sent you, as a democrat, I don't agree about censoring things that I don't agree with or being unwilling to share or discuss ideas, and to paraphrase, I'm worried that 230 is being exploited. >> Senator Wyden: Hey, Corynne, on that point, I really want to spend some time, because we have watched, as I say, a lot of my colleagues in the Senate just sort of make stuff up. For example, my colleague said, "Do you know Section 230 requires neutrality?" There's not a single word in Section 230 that requires neutrality, and then they -- when they couldn't prove that it required neutrality, they want on to the point that you're talking about, which is that somehow social media is wildly against conservative voices. That, too, is just factual baloney, because a lot of days, I look at the postings, and usually, on a typical day, the conservative voices are outnumbering the liberal or moderate voices by three to one. I mean, it's not like a close call, 55-45. It's like three to one conservative voices over other kinds of voices. And let's be clear about the voices that really get attention. The voices that get attention in social media are voices that make money. That's what drives it, not philosophy. It's money, period. >> Dr. McSherry: I think that there has been -- what we have seen at EFF is the research doesn't suggest partisanship on either -- on behalf of any of the platforms, and there's some research actually that suggests that alternative voices or progressive voices actually get shut down more. So, I think -- I do think -- I want to hit on another thing though, because I do think that's right. I think there is another point of confusion around Section 230 that you only get protections if you're neutral, and that somehow -- this again takes us back to social media companies, but we again have to remember it's not just them. It's also Ravelry.com -- that if you're not neutral in your moderation decisions, somehow you should lose the protections. >> Senator Wyden: Can I address that? >> Dr. McSherry: Yeah, please. >> Senator Wyden: You can go back and see comments that we made early on about what the point of the law was, what Chris Cox and I said. The point was essentially to let lots of flowers bloom. If you want to have a conservative platform, more power to you. More power to you to be able to talk about conservative ideas and conservative issues and conservative politics. It's your baby. If you want to have a progressive platform, more power to you, same thing, your baby. Look at those voices. Make sure that you have a chance to have principles and ideas from progressive sources that you would like to have get out. So, the fact is that this whole question of neutrality, A, it is not in the statute. There's not a single word in Section 230 that even resembles the notion of building in neutrality. So, that's number one. Number two, if you look just numerically at posts on a typical day, the conservatives outnumber the liberals something like three to one, and third, the whole point of the law, Corynne -- and I guess we are wrapping up in a second, because my staff looks like they may be taking me to something, so we can get in a couple more, maybe, but the whole point of 230 was to let a lot of flowers bloom, and if we have somebody who is listening today who wants to set up a conservative website, I want to let them have every opportunity to do it, to enjoy the protections of constitutionally protected speech and the right to moderate, just like people who have political views 180 degrees the other way. >> Dr. McSherry: Right, okay. Just real quick, there was two questions. One is a person was very sad about the loss of Craigslist personal ads after SESTA passed, and they were wondering if there's anything that we can do about that, and I just want to hit that one very quickly and say there is something that EFF is trying to do about that, which is we are representing a host of organizations as challenging SESTA-FOSTA as unconstitutional. So, you know, fingers crossed, hold tight, and if we are successful, then we will see those personal ads come back again, because we will have gotten rid of this unconstitutional law. >> Senator Wyden: And the reality, Corynne, is in a number of jurisdictions, and we have this data, essentially sex trafficking actually went up, and I always felt that if you were given a choice between having something that is transparent and out in the open, or having something move to the dark web, and we all know what you're talking about with the dark web, some place that you can't get with a search engine -- without a search engine, that these questions are going to be increasingly ones where the Congress spends time on stuff that sounds good but really ends up like in sex trafficking, driving everything to the dark web, increasing it in jurisdictions. And by the way, I think EARN IT, which is the Graham bill, which is sort of a successor to SESTA-FOSTA, will do exactly the same thing. It will make it harder for us to catch these monsters, these monsters that are exploiting children, and I have made it clear to members of Congress and prosecutors, hey, if you're serious about the problem, get behind my legislation that actually provides resources to do something about it rather than pass something that sounds good but doesn't do anything. >> Dr. McSherry: Well, that's a perfect segue to what I think has to be the last question for us here, which is, okay, so we are seeing -- we think, you know, in this coming year, there's just a real growing consensus that something is going to happen with Section 230. There's a lot of push to change it one way or another. What can our audience, what can people do about that to make sure that either the changes don't happen or that they don't undermine the core purpose of the legislation? I can tell you one thing you can do is follow EFF, because we will be fighting [ simultaneous speech ]. >> Senator Wyden: Yeah. >> Dr. McSherry: So that we don't undermine Section 230 in ways that ruin the internet. That's core to our values, and I know it's core to your values too, Senator Wyden, so tell our audience what they can do. >> Senator Wyden: Think about some of the core things that we have talked about tonight, and, you know, you always try to kind of recap it a little bit. When you get a piece of legislation in front of you that sounds good, ask what does it do to constitutionally protected speech, ask what does it do to moderation, what is it going to do to the people who don't have deep pockets, the Me Too movement, the Black Lives Matter folks. What is it going to do when most speech is protected by the First Amendment? 98% of what people hate so much is protected by the First Amendment, so why would you want to take away a tool that is so helpful to people without power and clout and helps you to moderate some of the garbage? So, what we are going to do is sort of build out a checklist. I just gave you, I think, four or five kind of elements, and EFF has done it as well. That's what people should do anytime a proposal comes up and anytime they are faced with, "Oh, well, of course I hate sex trafficking. We all hate sex trafficking," and the reason that I introduced the bill to provide help for prosecutors and investigators is I said, hey, you have got a choice: You can do something that basically follows up on SESTA and FOSTA, which has already been a mess, or you could do something that we should have done years ago, which is to put real resources into prosecution and have a deterrent, and so much of this -- you know, my friend Nick Christoff, he's from Oregon, wrote a really powerful story about Pornhub recently, and one of the things that I point out is Section 230 doesn't provide any protection for federal crimes, and hosting child pornography is definitely a federal crime. So let's get out the point that 230 sure as well doesn't provide any protections for crimes like Nick Christoff was writing about. >> Dr. McSherry: Right, it reminds me about -- SESTA-FOSTA, one of the things that it was very focused on was a company called Back Page, and in fact, federal prosecutors went after Back Page just fine without any needs for changes to Section 230. >> Senator Wyden: To remind you how Congress gets caught up in this bloviating, senator after senator went to the floor of the United States Senate and said if we are going to deal with the sex trafficking, by God, we have got to have this SESTA-FOSTA thing to deal with Back Page, and then I pointed out to a bunch of them that Back Page got busted not with SESTA-FOSTA but with existing law, which I want to use those principles for to get more prosecutors. >> Dr. McSherry: Excellent. Well, I think that is a solid way to end this. I want to say for those of you who care about Section 230, please do follow EFF. Please also follow Senator Wyden. Follow him on Twitter, sign up for his newsletter. He is always at the forefront on digital rights, just like EFF is. So if you keep up with us, you will know what's going on, and you will also know when you can take action, which is really very important. So, thank you. Thank you so much, Senator Wyden. >> Senator Wyden: A lot of fun. To be continued. >> Dr. McSherry: All right. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Now I'm going to hand this back to Aaron Jue, and he will bring us on out. Thank you. >> Senator Wyden: Thanks, Aaron. >> Aaron Jue: Thank you, Corynne and Senator Wyden for joining us. There is so much to say about Section 230, and luckily, Section 230, that's what it is for. It's for your ability to speak your minds without censorship on the internet. So there is no doubt that the way that we handle Section 230 will have profound effects on free speech and the shape of the internet for generations. So to learn more, check out EFF.org/CDA230. Thanks to everyone for watching today. For 30 years, EFF's fight for your rights online has been powered by people just like you around the world, and we could sure use your help. If you can help out, go to EFF.org/CDA230 and become a member. Thank you for attending our fireside chat today, and we'll see you next time.