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Laws and standards

Section 230

Summary

Section 230 is a US federal law, 47 U.S.C. 230, that says websites and apps are generally not treated as the publisher of what their users post, and protects them when they remove content in good faith. It became law on February 8, 1996, as part of the Communications Decency Act within the Telecommunications Act of 1996, to overturn a 1995 New York ruling against Prodigy. Courts have applied it broadly since Zeran v. America Online in 1997, and it has exceptions for federal crime, intellectual property and, since 2018, sex trafficking claims.

Web Building Encyclopedia · Laws and standards · Last reviewed October 22, 2026 · 10 min read

What Section 230 is

Section 230 is a United States federal law, found at title 47, section 230 of the US Code. Its official heading is “Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material.”1 It decides who is legally responsible for what people post online: in most cases the person who wrote a post, not the website or app that carries it.12

The section entered law on February 8, 1996, through section 509 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Public Law 104-104. Section 509 is headed “Online family empowerment.”3 It sits in Title V of that act, “Obscenity and Violence,” the part known as the Communications Decency Act, and it added a new section 230 to the Communications Act of 1934.32

The law has two core rules, both in subsection (c):

  • Not the publisher of others’ words. Section 230(c)(1) says no provider or user of an interactive computer service is to be treated as the publisher or speaker of information that another information content provider supplied.1
  • Protection for moderation. Section 230(c)(2) shields providers and users from liability for “any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material” they consider objectionable, “whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.”12

The definitions in subsection (f) decide who is covered. An interactive computer service is any information service, system or access software provider that enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server (a web server is one kind of server), including services that provide access to the internet and systems run by libraries or schools.1 An information content provider is anyone responsible, wholly or in part, for creating or developing information online.1 An access software provider supplies tools that filter, screen or organize content, or that transmit, display, cache, search or translate it.1

The protection covers users as well as providers.1 The law also opens with findings and policy statements. One policy goal is to “preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists” for the internet and other interactive services. Others are to encourage filtering tools that users control and to enforce federal laws against obscenity, stalking and harassment by computer.1

Before 1996: the CompuServe and Prodigy cases

Section 230 was a response to two court decisions, from 1991 and 1995, about online services and the material their users posted.2

In 1991, in Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc., a federal district court in New York treated CompuServe like a bookstore or newsstand: a distributor of other people’s material. A distributor could be liable for a defamatory statement in a newsletter called Rumorville only if it “knew or had reason to know” about it.2 Defamation is a false statement of fact that harms someone’s reputation.

On May 24, 1995, a New York trial court reached a different result in Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. Prodigy screened messages with software and with “Board Leaders” who removed posts that broke its guidelines. The court said “such decisions constitute editorial control,” which made Prodigy a publisher, open to liability for its users’ posts.2

Under the two rulings, Prodigy’s screening of posts was the very reason it was judged as a publisher instead of a distributor.2

Representatives Christopher Cox and Ron Wyden offered the fix as section 104 of H.R. 1555, an amendment called “Online Family Empowerment” to the House version of the Communications Decency Act. The conference report on the final law said one of its purposes was “to overrule Stratton-Oakmont v. Prodigy.”2 The section’s heading, about private blocking and screening of offensive material, reflects that goal.1

The rest of the Communications Decency Act

Section 230 was a small part of a larger law. The first subtitle of Title V dealt with “Obscene, Harassing, and Wrongful Utilization of Telecommunications Facilities,” and its provisions in section 223 of title 47 made it a crime to send indecent material to minors online.34

Those provisions were challenged in court. In Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, argued on March 19, 1997, and decided on June 26, 1997, the Supreme Court held two of them unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the opinion for seven justices; Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, concurred in part and dissented in part.4

  • Section 223(a), the “indecent transmission” rule, was struck down as applied to indecent material. The Court left its ban on obscene material in place, because obscenity has no First Amendment protection.4
  • Section 223(d), the “patently offensive display” rule, was struck down in full.4

The Court found the key terms vague and the restrictions too broad, and it noted the trial court’s finding that software controlled by users could soon give parents a way to block material. The opinion quoted a lower court’s finding that “the content on the Internet is as diverse as human thought.”4 The case concerned section 223, so Section 230 was not at issue and stayed in force.42

How courts have read Section 230

Section 230 comes up in lawsuits: a website or app sued over someone else’s content argues that the law bars the claim.2

Zeran v. America Online (1997)

An early federal appeals court decision on the law came from the Fourth Circuit, in Zeran v. America Online, Inc., decided on November 12, 1997. Chief Judge Wilkinson wrote the opinion.5

On April 25, 1995, an unknown person posted an AOL message advertising “Naughty Oklahoma T-Shirts” and told buyers to call “Ken” at Zeran’s home number in Seattle. Zeran received angry calls, including death threats. AOL said it would remove the post but refused to post a retraction, and similar posts followed. Zeran sued AOL, not the anonymous poster.5

The court ruled for AOL. It held that Section 230 bars “lawsuits seeking to hold a service provider liable for its exercise of a publisher’s traditional editorial functions.”5 It also held that distributor liability, the CompuServe standard, is a kind of publisher liability, so telling a service about a defamatory post does not remove the protection.5

The three questions courts ask

Courts that followed Zeran generally ask three questions about Section 230(c)(1). If the answer to any one is no, the law does not bar the claim.2

  1. Is the defendant a provider or user of an interactive computer service?
  2. Does the claim treat the defendant as the publisher or speaker of the content?
  3. Did the content come from another information content provider?

Roommates.com (2008): helping create the content

The third question turns on who created or developed the content. In Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC, decided on April 3, 2008, the Ninth Circuit’s en banc court looked at a roommate-matching site accused of breaking fair housing law.62 An en banc court is a larger panel of a circuit’s judges that rehears an important case.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski’s opinion split the site in two. Roommates.com wrote the registration questions, required answers and offered them as drop-down menus, so it had no protection for those answers or for search tools built on them. A free-text “Additional Comments” box, where the site gave no guidance on what to write, kept its protection.6

The test was whether a site “materially contribut[es]” to what makes the content unlawful. The court also said the Communications Decency Act “was not meant to create a lawless no-man’s-land on the Internet.”6

Design and recommendations

Later cases asked whether claims about a service’s own design are claims about third-party content at all.

  • Lemmon v. Snap (2021). On May 4, 2021, the Ninth Circuit held that Section 230 did not protect Snap from a negligent design claim over Snapchat’s Speed Filter. Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote that the claim treated Snap as a product designer, not a publisher, and did not depend on what other users posted.7
  • Anderson v. TikTok (2024). On August 27, 2024, the Third Circuit held that Section 230 did not bar claims to the extent they rested on TikTok’s algorithm recommending a “Blackout Challenge” video on a ten-year-old’s For You page. The court treated the algorithm’s curation, as alleged, as TikTok’s own expressive activity and sent the case back to the lower court.8

What Section 230 does not cover

Subsection (e) lists other laws that Section 230 leaves alone.12

SubsectionWhat stays in force
(e)(1)Federal criminal law, including obscenity and child sexual exploitation laws
(e)(2)Intellectual property law, which Section 230 does not “limit or expand”
(e)(3)State laws consistent with Section 230; inconsistent state and local laws cannot impose liability
(e)(4)The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 and similar state laws
(e)(5)Certain civil claims and state prosecutions tied to sex trafficking, added in 2018

The intellectual property exception means copyright complaints about user posts fall under copyright law instead.1 For online services, that includes the safe harbors and notice-and-takedown system in section 512 of the Copyright Act, part of the DMCA.9

The 2018 change came from the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017, known as FOSTA, H.R. 1865, approved on April 11, 2018 (Public Law 115-164).102 Its sense of Congress says Section 230 “was never intended to provide legal protection to websites that unlawfully promote and facilitate prostitution.”10

FOSTA also created a new federal crime, 18 U.S.C. 2421A, for operating an interactive computer service with intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person. As enacted in April 2018, it carries up to 10 years in prison, or up to 25 years in aggravated cases, such as conduct involving five or more people or reckless disregard of sex trafficking. The Section 230 amendment applies whether the conduct happened before, on or after the date of enactment.10

The only other amendment listed in the 2023 edition of the US Code came in 1998, when Public Law 105-277 added subsection (d). It requires providers to tell customers that parental control tools are commercially available.1

Debate and reform proposals

Since about 2020, the scope of Section 230 has been argued over by judges, presidents and federal agencies.

  • Department of Justice. The department held a public workshop on February 19, 2020, titled “Section 230: Nurturing Innovation or Fostering Unaccountability.” Its review, published in June 2020, named four areas for reform, including a “Bad Samaritan” carve-out for platforms that purposefully facilitate or solicit third-party content or activity that would violate federal criminal law and a definition of “good faith” in Section 230(c)(2).11
  • Executive Order 13925. President Donald Trump signed “Preventing Online Censorship” on May 28, 2020. It said the law’s immunity should not reach beyond its text and purpose, and it directed the Commerce Department, through the NTIA, to ask the Federal Communications Commission within 60 days to clarify the law by regulation.12 President Joe Biden revoked the order on May 14, 2021, in Executive Order 14029.13
  • Justice Thomas. On October 13, 2020, in a statement agreeing with the Court’s refusal to hear Malwarebytes v. Enigma Software, Justice Clarence Thomas questioned Zeran’s reading of distributor liability and the use of Section 230 against claims about product design. He said the Court should consider the law’s scope in a suitable case.14

The Supreme Court took up such a case in its October 2022 term, Gonzalez v. Google LLC, which sought to hold Google liable for aiding and abetting terrorism.215 On May 18, 2023, in an unsigned opinion, the Court vacated the lower ruling and sent the case back. It wrote, “We therefore decline to address the application of §230 to a complaint” that appeared to state little, if any, plausible claim.15

That conclusion came from a companion case decided the same day. In Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh, the Court held unanimously, in an opinion by Justice Thomas, that the platforms had not aided and abetted a terrorist attack under 18 U.S.C. 2333(d)(2), which requires “conscious, voluntary, and culpable participation in another’s wrongdoing.”16 The Court did not rule on Section 230 in either case.15

Bills in the 119th Congress

Two bills introduced in December 2025 would end the law outright. The versions described here are the texts as introduced; this entry does not track any later action on them.

  • Sunset To Reform Section 230 Act (H.R. 6746). Introduced in the House on December 16, 2025, by Representative Hageman and referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. It would add a subsection (g): “This section shall have no force or effect after December 31, 2026.”17
  • Sunset Section 230 Act (S. 3546). Introduced in the Senate on December 17, 2025, by Senator Graham with nine cosponsors, among them Senators Durbin, Grassley and Klobuchar, and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. It would repeal Section 230 two years after enactment and change the many other laws that refer to it.18

Timeline

  1. Sunset Section 230 Act (S. 3546) is introduced in the Senate18
  2. Sunset To Reform Section 230 Act (H.R. 6746) is introduced in the House17
  3. Third Circuit rules in Anderson v. TikTok that algorithmic recommendations are TikTok's own activity8
  4. Supreme Court decides Gonzalez v. Google without ruling on Section 23015
  5. Executive Order 14029 revokes Executive Order 1392513
  6. Ninth Circuit rules in Lemmon v. Snap that a design claim is not barred7
  7. Justice Thomas questions how courts have read Section 23014
  8. President Trump signs Executive Order 13925, Preventing Online Censorship12
  9. FOSTA adds the sex trafficking exception, Section 230(e)(5)10
  10. Ninth Circuit en banc decides Fair Housing Council v. Roommates.com6
  11. Fourth Circuit decides Zeran v. America Online5
  12. Supreme Court strikes down the CDA's indecency provisions in Reno v. ACLU4
  13. Telecommunications Act of 1996 enacts Section 2303
  14. New York court treats Prodigy as a publisher in Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy2
  15. Cubby v. CompuServe treats an online service as a distributor2

What it means for your website

This is general information, not legal advice. Whether Section 230 protects a particular site depends on the facts and the claim, so ask a lawyer before relying on it. Here is what the statute and the cases above say about ordinary business websites.

  • Comments, reviews and forum posts. If a visitor writes a comment or review on your site, the claim usually belongs against the visitor, not you, because Section 230 covers users and providers of interactive services.12 This applies to the user-contributed features associated with Web 2.0, whether your site runs on a hosted website builder or on self-hosted WordPress, which we build on every week, with comment and review plugins.
  • Your own words are yours. Section 230 protects you only for content someone else provided. Your service pages, blog posts and ads are your own content, and the law does not cover them.1
  • Do not rewrite what others say. If you help create or develop content “in part,” you become its information content provider.1 Editing a visitor’s review so it says something new could make part of it yours.
  • Design forms carefully. In the Roommates.com case, required questions and drop-down menus lost protection, while an open comment box kept it.6 A form that asks for unlawful answers is your content, not your visitors’.
  • Removing posts is allowed. Deleting spam, abuse or off-topic comments in good faith is what Section 230(c)(2) protects, and moderating does not make you liable for the posts you leave up.12
  • Copyright and crime are separate. The law does not touch intellectual property claims or federal criminal law, and since 2018 it excludes certain sex trafficking claims.110 A copyright complaint about a visitor’s upload goes through the DMCA notice-and-takedown process instead.9
  • Rules on your own conduct still apply. Section 230 is about other people’s content. How your site collects visitors’ data, including through cookies, falls under laws such as COPPA, the CCPA and, for visitors in the EU, the GDPR. The marketing email you send falls under the CAN-SPAM Act. Each has its own entry.

Our guide to US website laws covers the other rules a small business site has to follow, and our page on who owns your website explains copyright in the content you publish.

See also

References

  1. 47 U.S.C. 230: Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material (United States Code, 2023 edition). U.S. Government Publishing Office, govinfo. accessed October 22, 2026.
  2. Section 230: An Overview (R46751). Valerie C. Brannon and Eric N. Holmes, Congressional Research Service, via EveryCRSReport. 2024-01-04. accessed October 22, 2026.
  3. Public Law 104-104: Telecommunications Act of 1996. U.S. Government Publishing Office, govinfo. 1996-02-08. accessed October 22, 2026.
  4. Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997). Supreme Court of the United States, via Justia. 1997-06-26. accessed October 22, 2026.
  5. Zeran v. America Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir. 1997). U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, via Public.Resource.Org. 1997-11-12. accessed October 22, 2026.
  6. Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC, No. 04-56916 (opinion). U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. 2008-04-03. accessed October 22, 2026.
  7. Lemmon v. Snap, Inc., No. 20-55295 (opinion). U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. 2021-05-04. accessed October 22, 2026.
  8. Anderson v. TikTok, Inc., No. 22-3061 (precedential opinion). U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. 2024-08-27. accessed October 22, 2026.
  9. Section 512 of Title 17: Resources on Online Service Provider Safe Harbors and Notice-and-Takedown System. U.S. Copyright Office. accessed October 22, 2026.
  10. Public Law 115-164: Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017. U.S. Government Publishing Office, govinfo. 2018-04-11. accessed October 22, 2026.
  11. Department of Justice's Review of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. U.S. Department of Justice (archived page). 2020-06-03. accessed October 22, 2026.
  12. Executive Order 13925: Preventing Online Censorship. Federal Register, 85 FR 34079. 2020-06-02. accessed October 22, 2026.
  13. Executive Order 14029: Revocation of Certain Presidential Actions and Technical Amendment. Federal Register, 86 FR 27025. 2021-05-19. accessed October 22, 2026.
  14. Malwarebytes, Inc. v. Enigma Software Group USA, LLC, No. 19-1284, statement of Justice Thomas respecting the denial of certiorari. Supreme Court of the United States. 2020-10-13. accessed October 22, 2026.
  15. Gonzalez v. Google LLC, No. 21-1333 (per curiam opinion). Supreme Court of the United States. 2023-05-18. accessed October 22, 2026.
  16. Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh, No. 21-1496 (opinion of the Court). Supreme Court of the United States. 2023-05-18. accessed October 22, 2026.
  17. H.R. 6746: Sunset To Reform Section 230 Act (introduced in House). U.S. Government Publishing Office, govinfo. 2025-12-16. accessed October 22, 2026.
  18. S. 3546: Sunset Section 230 Act (introduced in Senate). U.S. Government Publishing Office, govinfo. 2025-12-17. accessed October 22, 2026.

Web Building Encyclopedia. First published October 22, 2026. Last reviewed October 22, 2026. Every fact on this page is linked to a source we opened. Spotted an error? Write to [email protected].