The Court Case That Enabled Today's Toxic Internet

There once was a legendary troll, and from its hideout beneath an overpass of the information superhighway, it prodded into existence the internet we know, love, and increasingly loathe. That troll, Ken ZZ03, struck in 1995. But to make sense of the profound aftereffects—and why Big Tech is finally reckoning with this part of its history—you have to look back even further. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, states that platforms are not liable for the content they host—even when, like Good Samaritans, they try to intervene. Ken ZZ03 would be its first test.

Ask many web scholars and they’ll tell you that Section 230 in general, and the Zeran case in particular, created the modern internet. CompuServe, Prodigy, and AOL became Google, Facebook, and Twitter, companies that have for years relied on Section 230 as a legal shield against claims of publishing abusive content. Yet the law never could have anticipated the unchecked growth of Big Tech.