My New Podcast ‘Otherwise Objectionable’ Explains Why Everyone’s Wrong About Section 230

At a moment when it feels like everyone is racing to “reform” Section 230, while fundamentally misunderstanding the law, and often in pursuit of conflicting goals, it’s more important than ever that people actually learn about Section 230. To that end, we’re excited that the first episode of the new podcast series I’m doing with the Competitive Enterprise Institute is now out. Episode 1 is called The Most Misunderstood Law on the Internet.

While the episode provides essential context about Section 230, it focuses on a critical question: How did this once-obscure internet law become the target of a bipartisan crusade? The answer reveals much about our current moral panic over social media and the dangerous appeal of quick-fix solutions.

As the episode details, lots of people are mad about the internet, and it makes them default to blaming Section 230 for whatever problems they see. But what they don’t realize is that Section 230 isn’t really the root of their concerns, and removing (or even reforming) it won’t fix the people on the internet. In fact, would almost certainly make things much worse.

The episode explores how gutting Section 230 would reshape the internet in ways most of its critics haven’t considered. Small websites and communities would face an impossible choice: either become purely broadcast platforms with no user interaction, or be forced to host truly toxic content with no ability to moderate it. The result wouldn’t just be fewer places to comment — it would fundamentally break the internet’s ability to foster genuine communities and enable collaborative knowledge-sharing. The only survivors would be the largest tech companies with enough lawyers and content moderators to manage the risk.

Neither would be a great outcome.

We talked to many, many people in the course of recording this podcast, and this episode features three of the best minds on Section 230: Professors Jeff Kosseff and Eric Goldman, along with tech policy expert Jessica Melugin.

Future episodes will dive deeper into Section 230’s history, examining how this law shaped the internet we know today — and why its principles matter more than ever as we grapple with questions of online speech, content moderation, and the future of digital communities.