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I've seen this question come up a few times, and some of it is answered in this post from a few years ago, but let me try to answer @opinionhaver.bsky.social's question directly since he asks this every time 230 comes up. www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/h...

The real issue is you NEED to understand how 230 and the First Amendment intersect. This is a key thing that many people get wrong. The underlying issue is that MOST THINGS that companies would get sued over hosting/promoting/etc are all protected by 1A. Now, that leads some to say...

The *practical* difference, especially for smaller entities, is MASSIVE. Basically it will get a case tossed out for ~$100k rather than over $2mil. For a massive multi-billion company (Meta, Google, etc) with buildings full of lawyers, the difference is minimal.

Yes, they will have to pay a little bit more, but rounding error levels. For a smaller entity, the difference is existential. And that means that smaller entities will have terrible options: (1) shut down (2) cave to basically any legal threats (3) stop allowing users to communicate or...

(4) basically stop moderating altogether. Because (and again, this is important) under 1A precedent, for a distributor to be liable, it has to have *actual knowledge* of *violating* content. And the best way to not get actual knowledge is to stop looking/stop moderating.

Why wouldn’t these cases increase as the number of users/posts does? The more content the greater your liability exposure. This seems to take as given that both Bluesky and meta will face the same number of these cases, but there’s an order of magnitude more content on one.

They wouldn't face the same number, but the number at which it becomes existential is so different. Bluesky could handle what? One such case? Two? Meta can handle a thousand and not blink. And they wouldn't face a thousand, because most lawyers would know they'd fail.