Section 230
In plain wordsA 1996 US law that generally protects websites and apps from being sued over what their users post, and lets them remove content in good faith. Whether it protects what AI chatbots themselves say is unsettled.
A provision of the US Communications Act, added by the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and codified at 47 U.S.C. § 230, under which neither an online service (an 'interactive computer service') nor its users may be held responsible as if they had published or uttered material that another party (an 'information content provider') supplied. Subsection (c)(1) bars most civil claims, such as defamation and negligence, that would hold platforms liable for third-party content; subsection (c)(2) protects good-faith removal of objectionable material. Federal criminal law, intellectual-property claims and, since 2018, certain sex-trafficking claims are excluded. Read broadly by courts since Zeran v. America Online (1997), it underpins user-generated platforms, search engines and recommender systemsrecommender system, n.: Software that guesses which songs, products, posts or jobs you are most likely to want and shows those first, as when a video app lines up the next clip or a shop suggests an add-on.. Its application to generative AIgenerative AI, n.: AI that produces something new on request, such as an essay, a picture, a song or a piece of code, having absorbed from enormous numbers of existing examples what such things typically look like. is unsettled: because a chatbot's output is arguably created or developed in part by its provider — which the statute treats as an information content provider — many scholars think the immunity does not apply, while providers argue that outputs derive from third-party data and users' prompts.
Counsel doubts Section 230 will cover the chatbot's defamatory answer, since the company's own model wrote it.
Origin
Drafted by Representatives Christopher Cox and Ron Wyden in response to Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy (1995), which held an online service liable as a publisher because it moderated user posts, and enacted in February 1996 as part of the Telecommunications Act. The Supreme Court struck down most of the Communications Decency Act's indecency provisions in Reno v. ACLU (1997), but Section 230 survived.
Usage note
The Supreme Court declined to narrow it in Gonzalez v. Google (2023). As of mid-2026 no federal appeals court had squarely decided whether it covers AI-generated output; district-court rulings on platforms' use of generative AI turned on how much the provider contributed to the content. A 2023 Senate bill to exclude generative AI did not advance, and co-author Ron Wyden has said it should not shield AI output.
Related
- content moderationcontent moderation, n.: Checking what people post, or what an AI produces, and removing, limiting or labeling whatever breaks the rules or the law — done by people, by AI, or by both together.
- Digital Services ActDigital Services Act, prop. n.: The EU law that sets rules for online platforms and search engines — how they handle illegal content, explain their recommendation algorithms and manage the risks their services create for society.
- TAKE IT DOWN ActTAKE IT DOWN Act, prop. n.: A 2025 US federal law that forces websites to remove intimate images of a person posted without consent, including AI-made fakes, within 48 hours of the victim's request, and makes posting them a crime.
- AI liabilityAI liability, n.: Who has to pay or answer in court when an AI system causes harm — the company that built it, the business that used it or the person who relied on it — and under which laws.
- recommender systemrecommender system, n.: Software that guesses which songs, products, posts or jobs you are most likely to want and shows those first, as when a video app lines up the next clip or a shop suggests an add-on.
- algorithmic accountabilityalgorithmic accountability, n.: The idea that the people and organizations behind automated decision systems must be able to explain and justify those systems' effects, answer for the harm they cause, and fix it.
Sources
- Kosseff, J. (2019). The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet. Cornell University Press.
- Zeran v. America Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir. 1997).
Defined in law or standards
47 U.S.C. § 230 (Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material)
Mentioned in
NO FAKES ActNO FAKES Act, prop. n.: A proposed US law that would let people control AI-made copies of their voice and face, and would require websites to take down unauthorized fakes once notified.