 This was the Internet in 1995. I mean, there's not a lot of cursing or swearing. There's not screen-fulls of, you know, go to hell. Communal, exciting, civil. This is the Internet today. Women just being exhausted, being targeted online. The Internet is overrun with images of child sex abuse. Thousands of Facebook ads bought by Russians. You know, fake news. Harassment Internet trolls. At the heart of the modern Internet is a two-decades-old law that has made the web a haven for free speech and free expression, home to some of the world's most profitable and powerful companies, and a breeding ground for trolls, conspiracy theorists, and sexual predators. Now, a debate is raging over whether this law, Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, is still necessary, or whether it's time to rein in the Internet's favorite law. This law is truly revolutionary legislation that will bring the future to our doorstep. In the web's early days, few used it, and even fewer understood it. How do you write to it like mail? No, a lot of people use it and communicate. I guess they can communicate with NBC writers and producers. Allison, can you explain what Internet is? I became Oregon's first new senator in more than 30 years in 1996. Senator Ron Wyden wrote the law in Section 230. It was a time when virtually nobody in the Senate, for example, even knew how to use a computer. Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tools. That might have sounded more like something you'd hear from, let's say, a crazy old man in an airport bar at 3 a.m. That new senator from Oregon teamed up with a Republican congressman from California to try to jumpstart this new industry. They just needed to figure out how they could help. That's when they heard about this guy. $22 billion at 3 a.m. Danny Porish helped start Stratton Oakmont, the brokerage firm made famous in the Wolf of Wall Street. In 1995, an anonymous user posted multiple messages on Prodigy, an early Internet service, accusing Stratton Oakmont of fraud. Since the user was anonymous, Porish and his firm sued Prodigy for $200 million for defamation. A judge ultimately sided with Porish and Stratton, claiming that because Prodigy moderated its users' posts, it was liable for the content of those posts. As a result, you have this really perverse incentive where if you're a platform, you actually reduce your liability by not moderating or controlling any harmful user content. On Capitol Hill, the two young lawmakers were paying attention. And I said back then in those early days, it's just common sense that if you own a website or a blog and you're personally liable for everything posted on your site, nobody is ever going to give you a nickel. Section 230 was born. The authors of Section 230 had two goals. This is Jeff Kossiff. He wrote the book on how Section 230 shaped the modern Internet, literally. The first goal was to allow this new Internet industry to develop without regulation, without litigation basically weighing down all of these companies. The other goal was to give the platforms the flexibility to develop the moderation practices and policies that they saw fit without suddenly being held liable for every word on their services. The dual provisions were known as Section 230's sword and shield. It's hard to imagine the Internet existing in its current state without Section 230. When you look at the most successful platforms in the world, if there is the chance of these platforms being held liable for every word that their users post, their businesses simply could not function. But critics say Internet companies haven't done enough with the law's sword to earn its shield. Now, albeit for very different reasons, both sides of the political aisle have Section 230 in their crosshairs. There's been detractors to Section 230 in recent months coming from both conservatives and liberals. Conservatives say that conservative speech has been censored online, but these second companies, Twitter, Facebook, Google, say this is not the case. On the left, we're seeing criticism that tech companies aren't acting fast enough and taking enough responsibility for extremist content on their platforms. So the tech companies are getting it from both the left and right. What does the future hold for this law? Section 230's shield has already started to show some cracks. In 2018, Congress passed a bill that held tech firms accountable for sex trafficking on their sites. Other legislative threats loom. Section 230 supporters say attempts to weaken the law, even in the pursuit of noble causes, are shortsighted. You throw 230 out, and I think you do enormous damage to the cause of innovation. I would be surprised if there was not at least one or two more significant amendments to Section 230 in the next few years. I just don't know what that would be. I think that the fact that people have so many different criticisms of Section 230 is probably what's saving it from being entirely repealed. Section 230's saving grace may just be that while everyone seems to hate it, no one can agree why.