Why The Internet Is Broken
+ Ai;dr, r/lanadelrey drama, total boomer luxury communism, American Girl novels, Benny Blanco livestreamer, Nicki Minaj bot farms, Slxughter, POLITICO's pink slime, and a YouTuber's fake ICE tip line
We all instinctively feel like the internet kind of sucks now, and it’s true. Enshittification is destroying our social platforms and our experience of being online is declining. But, a big part of what’s driving that is a law that passed back in 2018 that fundamentally destroyed large parts of the internet and allowed big tech to consolidate big power by chipping away at Section 230, a foundational internet law that protects freedom of expression online and allows user generated content to exist.
The law I’m talking about is FOSTA-SESTA, and it was the first major “reform” aka carve out to Section 230. The law passed in large part thanks to Facebook’s lobbying, and the consequences of this attack on Section 230 have been devastating.
Today, I’m joined by activist and adult industry content creator Siri Dahl to break down how FOSTA-SESTA came to fruition and forever transformed the web. While the law was sold to the public by celebrities including Amy Schumer as “cracking down on big tech” and making the internet “safer for children,” the result was the mass deplatforming of huge swaths of people, indie sites and smaller communities being forced to shut down, and Meta and Google seizing the ability to amass even more power.
We discuss how FOSTA-SESTA effectively killed and how organizations like NCOSE (aka Morality in Media) and the Heritage Foundation are pushing a moral panic that lawmakers, especially Democrats, are buying into.
If we don’t understand the devastating effects of FOSTA-SESTA, we are doomed to repeat them with new bills like the Sunset Section 230 Act or Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). We must protect Section 230 at all costs!!!