I think the user darkcalling, in commenting on this story in the current Hexbear news mega thread, had a spot on analysis of this:

Section 230 repeal is game over.

No more VPNs because they’re liable for CSAM, terrorism, death threats, copyright abuse, etc. Even if they’re off-shore and dare to thumb their noses at the US their domestic hosting partners will drop them out of liability concerns themselves. This is a terrifying unraveling of the internet as we knew it. Far more drastic than the death of blogs and forums and the rise of centralized social media. Far more drastic than even AI spam washing over everything and making real content hard to find.

There really are no alternatives waiting in the wings. You’re not going to be able to torrent blurays over L2P or Tor. You’re not going to be able to watch streaming videos with friends. For a while you’ll be able to use Canadian servers, maybe Mexico (don’t know what their laws are like) until they pass similar laws and tier one ISPs start throttling that type of traffic into/out of the US.

The boot is finally here, the death of the open internet will occur if that passes. Total narrative control. Social media companies seized by the throat by the US government, either cooperate in censoring what they want or they actually hold you accountable for everything your users do. Have good users? Here are some fed infiltrators and zionist intelligence companies who are going to spam you with illegal stuff and report it to us so you’ll be done anyways.

The speed at which western governments have been moving recently to erode privacy, and thus a free internet, really has been staggering to me, and I’ve been following this stuff for a while. There’s been a total blitz against 3 pillars of freedom: 1.) destroy our ability to have private conversations (chat control), 2.) know exactly who everyone is online and identify all your online activity (age verification), and 3.) effectively destroy user generated content - at least content which is a threat to power (this attack on Section 230).

Personally, I think this recent all-out attack is due to 2 things. The first is the genocide in Gaza. The rich and powerful were caught off guard there. They had previously been operating under the assumption that their control of mainstream traditional media meant they can control whatever narrative they want. Social media was for kids and they’re not politically relevant, so who cares. But having a genocide live-streamed completely destroyed decades of hard work at crafting a pro-Zionist public in the west. They’re not going to let that happen again, so bye-bye TikTok (the other platforms like Instagram were already compromised, TikTok was the only one outside of their grasp).

The second factor though, despite all the bluster and bravado about how “great” the economy is from Trump and the media (and tbf, Biden and the dems before him), I think they know very well just how bad things are. More than that, they know things are gonna get a lot worse. Neoliberalism was the method by which capitalism was able to extend its life. The crises it faced in the late 60s and 70s were really just an extension of the Great Depression. The only way the capitalist world was able to pull itself out of that was through a global war that destroyed so much capital that they got an economic boom for 2-3 decades just from rebuilding the world order. But now neoliberalism has spent itself and they have no answers for what to do next. Thus, they are fully expecting the people to fight back. The internet is maybe the most powerful tool that people have for organizing themselves and fighting back, so that MUST be brought under lockdown by the capitalists before it’s too late.

EDIT: I also wanted to ask, since I’m fairly new to federation… how would repealing Section 230 affect the fediverse specifically?

Section 230 doesn’t need to be repealed, it only needs to be amended.

It basically says that online platforms can’t be held liable for the content their users post.

However that was put in place before black box algorithms were put in charge of peoples feeds, and literally hacking our brains to keep us outraged, afraid, and engaged.

It needs to be amended to hold companies liable for content their algorithms recommend to people. It’s one thing to allow people to post whatever they want. That needs to preserved. But if a site "recommends " something that’s harmful, they should be held responsible for that recommendation.

As I understand it, just straight up repealing Section 230 would immediately shut down practically any ability to post comments etc. No company or individual could accept unvetted posts from users, because they would be liable for any illegal content therein. So in essence, if you hate a site and want to take it down, just make posts that land them in hot water and they will be forced to shut down eventually. And you know the Internet is full of malicious actors. Sites like Lemmy could not exist in the US. Practically, you would have to run your own server to post things you want to express - and make sure no one else has access.

Repealing Section 230 sounds just stupid and short sighted, at least without a workable alternative. So, US legislators will probably go ahead and repeal it. Brilliant.

I don’t think this would pass, the megacorps stand wayyy too much to lose here and would fight tooth and nail to prevent anything like this. Same goes for a lot of the US government. This would kill any website with user generated content because no company would risk the lawsuits and basically boils down to two options for them - get collapsed due to the cost of legal fees resulting from millions of lawsuits, or get collapsed because the major sources of income streams of your business no longer exist.

Facebook/meta - gone, youtube - gone, reddit - gone, lemmy - gone, twitter/x - gone, bluesky - gone, every chat application - gone, every email provider with a web application - gone, every search engine - gone because they wouldn’t be caught dead potentially displaying anything made by a user, etc.

This would instantly kill the thousands of data mining/brokering businesses that exist because they collect and sell this data.

Sections of government that collect the same data to spy on what people are up to would also not be happy about this. Making it so that people can’t openly discuss anything actually damages their ability to control narrative because no one would be able to speak openly anymore, including bot accounts.

Ad companies would die because users would no longer have any reason to visit half the websites where the ads are and therefore advertising on them would be useless.

IT infrastructure would collapse because there would no longer be any place to discuss fixes or workarounds to problems and every open source project would cease development - which a tonne of proprietary technology uses in their stack. Every business that uses a LAMP stack would almost immediately be fucked.

Billing systems would collapse, large numbers of people wouldn’t be receiving paychecks anymore, supply chains would crumble, etc.

Tonnes of companies would get hacked because there wouldn’t be a reasonable way for people to distribute information/stay in the know on new vulnerabilities for the masses of IT/security workers.

No one could leave reviews of any kind on any service or product which has a litany of resulting problems itself.

This would also result in an ungodly amount of lawsuits filed for any and all reasons which would basically collapse the court system under its weight.

Even if this went through, I’m sure it would immediately collapse the economy like has never been seen before and they would scramble to revert it.