The debate over Section 230 often produces more heat than light.

One reason: Big Tech’s lobbyists routinely conflate statutory protections with First Amendment rights.

For instance, they argue that action on the Section 230 Petition would force websites to carry speech in violation of their First Amendment rights.

Not at all. NTIA’s Petition expressly says that websites would retain their 1st Amendment right to remove content “for any reason.”

Similarly, the claim that Section 230 reform would resurrect the Fairness Doctrine or mandate neutrality misses the mark.
 
The Petition is quite clear on this: It would not require any website to carry “any sort of content at all.”

What Section 230 reform *would do* is bring much needed clarity to the terms contained in the statutory text.

In other words, the question presented by the Section 230 Petition is not whether the First Amendment will continue to cover a take down decision (it will) but whether a particular take down *also* benefits from Section 230’s statutory protections.

The answer to that question flows from the text of the statute and leaves a website’s constitutional rights uninfringed.