arrested , and can ’ t be held accountable for almost anything happening on their platforms , even if they knew all about it and failed or refused to stop it . Nor can their companies , or any of their employees or shareholders . This is because of a bizarre provision — Section 230 — of the Telecommunications Act that Congress passed and President Clinton signed in 1996 . It was supposed to help jump-start the Internet , but what it really did was make Mark Zuckerberg into the richest millennial in America ( he owns about 2 percent of all wealth held by American millennials ) and led to a nationwide mental health crisis .
The language is explicit : while a newspaper , radio station , or TV station can be held responsible for what they publish and its consequences , Facebook can ’ t be . Section 230 says it clearly :
“[ N ] o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider .”
Not only has Section 230 turned the web into a stalking ground for sexual predators ( the main focus of yesterday ’ s hearings ); it ’ s also given Russian President Putin cheap and easy access to individual Americans , an access he ’ s been using for years to tear our country apart .
For example , on a warm Sunday night leading up to the 2020 election , about 200 locals showed up in the small Oregon town of Klamath Falls armed with guns , baseball bats , and whatever other weapons they could find around the house to fight off the busloads of “ Black Antifa marauders ” who they believed Jewish billionaire George Soros had paid to put on a bus in Portland and was sending their way to “ replace ” them .
Of course , George Soros had done no such thing and there were no busloads of Black people . But the warnings were all over the Klamath Falls Facebook group , and , it turns out , similar Facebook groups for small towns all over America .
Literally from coast to coast , that weekend white residents of small towns showed up in their downtown areas with guns , rifles , hammers , and axes prepared to do battle with busloads of Black people being sent into their small white towns by George Soros .
Nobody ’ s sure whether these messages , which activated frightened white people across the nation , just came from white supremacist groups or were from Putin ’ s Russian troll farms ( social media companies aren ’ t saying what they know ) trying to tear America apart to help Trump get re-elected . But they worked . In the tiny town of Forks , Washington , frightened white people brought out chainsaws and cut down trees to block the road leading to their town to stop the busses of Black people they thought were on their way .
In South Bend , Indiana police were overwhelmed by 911 calls from frightened white people wanting to know when the “ Antifa buses ” were arriving .
And in rural Luzern County , Pennsylvania , the local neighborhood social media group warned people that busloads of Black people were “ organizing to riot and loot .”
Similar stories played out that week across the nation , from Danville , California to Jacksonville , Florida , as documented by NBC News .