马克•扎克伯格（Mark Zuckerberg）、桑德尔•皮查伊（Sundar Pichai）和杰克•多尔西（Jack Dorsey）的开场白已经在周四众议院举行的错误信息听证会之前公布，这些开场白显示，这三位首席执行官都在为科技平台处理一个异常敏感的问题。这三个声明都值得一读，多西把重点放在了内部工具上，比如Birdwatch和Pichai警告说，全面废除《通信体面法》第230条的危险。

但最详细的提议来自扎克伯格，他详细地谈到了他对第230条的首选修改。扎克伯格的提议没有像拜登总统在竞选期间所呼吁的那样完全废除这项法律，而是将第230条规定为有条件的公司维持一个删除非法内容的系统。

正如扎克伯格在信中所描述的：

We believe Congress should c***ider making platforms’ intermediary liability protection for certain types of unlawful content conditional on companies’ ability to meet best practices to combat the spread of this content. Instead of being granted immunity, platforms should be required to dem***trate that they have systems in place for identifying unlawful content and removing it. Platforms should not be held liable if a particular piece of content evades its detection — that would be impractical for platforms with billi*** of posts per day — but they should be required to have adequate systems in place to address unlawful content.

What is Section 230?

Section 230 of the Communicati*** Decency Act, which was passed in 1996, says an “interactive computer service” can’t be treated as the publisher or speaker of third-party content. This protects websites from lawsuits if a user posts something illegal, although there are excepti*** for pirated and prostitution-related material.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA) crafted Section 230 so website owners could moderate sites without worrying about legal liability. The law is particularly vital for social media networks, but it covers many sites and services, including news outlets with comment secti*** — like The Verge. The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls it “the most important law protecting internet speech.”

It’s increasingly controversial and frequently misinterpreted, however. Critics argue that its broad protecti*** let powerful companies ignore real harm to users. On the other hand, some lawmakers incorrectly claim that it only protects “neutral platforms” — a term that’s irrelevant to the law.

扎克伯格接着说，保留230项保护的标准可以由第三方制定，并将排除有关加密和隐私的要求，“这些要求本身就应该得到听证。”这使扎克伯格的提议与之前推出的230项法案（如《挣取信息技术法案》）有所不同，在一个长期寻求的加密后门上提供保护。扎克伯格的提议更接近于条约法案，该法案规定了对透明度披露和其他措施的保护，但较少关注非法内容的删除。

一般来说，企业提出如何监管的规则是不寻常的，但扎克伯格就不太寻常了，他之前曾详细阐述过有利的数据可移植性和内容节制规则。

这是扎克伯格对第230条提出的最详细的建议，而且对Facebook本身来说，这项建议几乎不需要进行实质性的修改。Facebook已经建立了重要的系统来识别和删除非法或其他令人反感的内容。尽管如此，该提案可能会解决一些对第230条最迫切的反对意见，这些反对意见通常集中在完全致力于恶意活动的小型网站上。

这一问题对于像国家失踪和受剥削儿童中心（NCMEC）这样的组织来说尤为紧迫，这些组织正在与那些不扫描或限制虐待儿童图片的网站进行斗争。

今年早些时候，NCMEC的Yiota Souras在接受《边缘报》采访时说：“有很多公司，特别是一些非常大的公司，参与了非常巨大的自愿措施。”。“但有很多公司不这样做，法律上也没有要求他们使用任何检测或筛查手段。”

听证会定于美国东部时间3月25日星期四下午12点开始。