For years, Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act has allowed social media platforms to moderate content without being liable for what their users post. Experts told CNBC that after the Jan. 6 pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol, that may be about to change.”I think that these social media companies need to be dealt with as publishers,” said former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya. “And I think at the front of the line is Facebook, because they are algorithmically deciding — there are people inside of that company that are building these things, that are amplifying the lobotomized, the intellectual cornering of people, so that they cannot learn what’s really happening, so that their worst fears and their worst concerns are amplified.”Facebook is a much larger company than it was when it was founded eight years after the Communications Decency Act was passed. It reported over 196 million daily active users across the U.S. and Canada in the third quarter of 2020 and $21.47 billion in revenue.Though all social media companies would be affected by a change to Section 230, Palihapitiya, the founder and CEO of Social Capital, differentiated Twitter from Facebook. “The problem with Facebook is different, which…
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