Deinstitutionalization

 https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/special/excerpt.html

All Asian parents should understand what liberals want to do to your children

 https://sfpsmom.com/why-we-cant-talk-about-honors-programs-without-talking-about-race/

Why We Can’t Talk About Honors Programs without Talking About Race

February 21, 2015  Posted by alimcollins  Learning at Home, Race & Racism  3 Comments

Recently, some parents and educators have initiated a campaign to reinstate honors math and English classes in our middle schools for families who “choose to have such programs.” They are calling on parents to come down to the SFUSD Board of Education office this Tuesday, February 24 to demand reinstatement of a two-track option for parents: honors and regular classes.

I have been listening to arguments on all sides of the issue and hear the very real concerns that many parents and teachers express about our district not adequately serving the needs of GATE students. Many parents complain their children are “bored to tears” (actuall parent quote) and sit day after day in classes where they are asked to tutor or translate for their lower-performing peers. In reading comments on my blog, on the PPS-SF listserve, and in emails with concerned parents, I see a consistent themes. Parents express a confusion about the district’s decision-making policies, anger about not feeling included in decisions to remove of honors classes from schools, and frustration about feeling like their concerns are dismissed.

I applaud their involvement in our schools, and appreciate their advocacy in regard to quality instruction and high expectations for SFUSD students. It is time to make serious changes in the way we meet the needs of high performing students, and parents have waited long enough to feel like active partners in this discussion. I wholeheartedly agree there is a need to revamp our current system and demand accountability for teaching all students… including students who perform well beyond grade level expectations.

That said, the issues these parents raise, does not necessitate moving back in time to a two-track system. Proponents may believe that honors classes will provide more academic challenge for their children… but at what cost?

Proponents Present a False Choice

Tracking has always been a problem in our schools as it divides students into HAVEs and HAVE-NOTs. Proponents of tracking state that elimination of the middle school honors classes has created a “lack of choice” for families:

Before SFUSD acted last year to eliminate honors classes in middle school, we had choice. About half of the middle schools had honors classes, and half did not. Parents could choose which program they felt was right for their kids. If parents were worried that the availability of honors classes in a school was a negative for their child, they could avoid such a school. If parents thought a school with honors classes was right for their kid, they could choose such a school.

So basically what they are stating is that reinstating honors classes will give families more options in educating their kids. That sounds good right?

Well, actually… no.

Here, proponents present a false choice. If participating in honors classes were truly a “choice” – wouldn’t ALL families choose it for their children? Saying parents might choose to avoid schools with honors is ridiculous. It is more likely they would complain about their children being tracked out of honors into classes with fewer resources, less experienced teachers, and more high-needs kids.

In reality, students who get tracked into these types of classes, tend to be from poor or immigrant families unaware of other options. They often lack the ability to advocate for advancement due to language or social status. These students are often denied participation in honors programs based on being ill prepared due to poverty, language, or poor instruction in previous classes

“High-performing” students who participate in honors classes, may or may not receive access to more challenging curriculum as compared to similar students in heterogeneous classrooms. (There is research to support positive AND negative outcomes in this regard.) Conversely, research on the impact of tracking on lower-performing students is much more definitive – low-performing students suffer many negative effects.

Let’s Talk About Structural Racism

Proponents contend grouping students by math ability is “fair” and there is no systematic discrimination in track placement. So how do they explain the over-representation of Black, Latino and low income students in lower-performing tracks of a two-track system?

This, they say, “stems from low grades and test scores.”

This argument may sound good on paper, but it is fundamentally flawed. The very fact that black and Latino students are overrepresented in lower-performing classes is direct evidence that a system of structural racism is in place.

Before I go further on this topic, let’s take a step back and define what we are talking about…

According to a paper for the Race and Public Policy Conference titled: Chronic Disparity: Strong and Pervasive Evidence of Racial Inequalities – Poverty Outcomes (2004) by Keith Lawrence of the Aspen Institute on Community Change, and Terry Keleher, of Applied Research Center at UC Berkeley, structural racism is defined as the following:

Structural Racism in the U.S. is the normalization and legitimization of an array of dynamics – historical, cultural, institutional and interpersonal – that routinely advantage whites while producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color. It is a system of hierarchy and inequity, primarily characterized by white supremacy – the preferential treatment, privilege and power for white people at the expense of Black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Arab and other racially oppressed people.

The paper goes on to state that some of the key indicators of structural racism are inequalities in “power, access, opportunities, treatment”, including policy impacts and outcomes, that are “intentional or not.” Structural racism is difficult to identify in institutions because it “involves the reinforcing effects of multiple institutions and cultural norms, past and present, continually producing new, and re-producing old forms of racism.”

How is Structural Racism Evident in Our Schools?

School segregation is one example of structural racism. My grandparents were not able to attend high school because they were not allowed to attend their all-white neighborhood schools. They, like other blacks at the time, were presented with the false “choice” of all black schools that were often too far away to attend. For example, my grandmother on my father’s side would have had to travel seven miles in order to attend the all-black high school in central St. Louis, MO.

Even when blacks did make the extra effort to attend segregated schools, the education they received was inferior to that of their white peers. My father was lucky enough to be one of the only “negroes” to attend John Dewey Elementary in Evanston, IL. He received an excellent education there. On the contrary, his cousin Charles, who was at the same grade level, attended an all black school in St. Louis. My father told me that he sometimes went to school with his cousins when he would visit them. When he did, he recalled feeling embarrassed for being singled out by teachers for being the “smartest kid in class.”

My father was a bright young man. But he was definitely no brighter than all his cousins and their peers. On these visits, he realized how lucky he was that his parents had not only moved north from Missouri to Illinois, they had moved just across the dividing line between Evanston, IL’s poorer quality black school and the higher quality (white) school.

These examples show how the “choice” argument totally fails. My grandparents were given a “choice” to attend a black high school, that was extremely difficult to get to each day. My father had the “choice” to attend a superior elementary school, only because his parents knew and were able to move across a district dividing line. It’s not a choice for all families if all families don’t have the means to make the choice, let alone know the choice exists.

The More Things Change the More they Stay the Same…

After the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954 schools were ordered to desegregate. But anyone who has ever worked in public schools knows segregation and discrimination didn’t end that day. In an article by the New Republic, author Arit John explains why schools may be more ethnically diverse than they were sixty years ago, but differential treatment is still alive and kicking.

Even Well-Integrated Schools Treat Black Students Differently, Sixty years after Brown v. Board from the New Republic

America’s classrooms may not be separate, but they’re still not equal

By Arit John

A 2012 study from the American Sociological Association found, “Substantial scholarly evidence indicates that teachers—especially white teachers—evaluate black students’ behavior and academic potential more negatively than those of white students.” The study analyzed the results from the Education Longitudinal Study, a national survey of 15,362 high school sophomores, as well as their parents and teachers. Again, the evidence showed a bias among white teachers that favored white students.

Ironically, it was Brown that led to massive decline in the number of African American teachers. Segregated counties often operated two school districts—one for blacks and one for whites. When the school districts integrated thousands of African American teachers were fired or laid off. Today’s teacher force reflects that decline in diversity. A new report from the Center for American Progress found that 80 percent of public school teachers are white, while nearly 50 percent of students are minorities.Read more here.

So, What’s Happening in SFUSD?

In San Francisco, our schools are even more ethnically diverse. The teacher pool may be as well, though I’m quite confident it does not reflect the ethnic makeup of the population it serves. (SFUSD recently launched a concerted effort to increase hiring of African-American teachers, so hopefully this will continue to improve.)

Follow along with me on this…

• IF systemic racism is defined as “preferential treatment, privilege and power for white people” and…
• IF the key indicators for systemic racism are the evidence of inequalities in “power, access, opportunities, treatment” … intentional or NOT,
• THEN we should be able to identify systemic racism in our district, by identifying areas of racial inequality.

Let’s take a look at our own data on district participation in GATE by race to see how we are doing…

SFUSD GATE Percent Participation by Race

| Create infographics

 

Clicking on the circle graph representing SFUSD demographics above you can see that Asians are the largest ethnic group of students in our district at 44% of the population. If you click on the GATE graph, you see they represent 66% of the GATE population. While Black students make up 9% of the general population, yet only 4% of the GATE population.

How do these numbers square up? Why are Asians and whites overrepressented in GATE programs while black and Latino (and Samoan) students are woefully under-represented? Should we chalk this all up to poverty? Parent education levels? Cultural predispositions? I don’t think so…

Going back to proponents arguments that honors classes are not discriminatory, we see their argument is not only flawed, it expresses racial bias.

• IF any student can participate in the program if they so wish, and…
• IF selection of students is based solely on grades and test scores, and…
• IF black and Latino students are underrepresented in higher performing classes, and…
• IF structural racism is NOT the cause…
• THEN IT ONLY FOLLOWS that the lack of representation of blacks and Latinos in higher performing classes must be due to the students themselves.

Another Round of the Blame Game

The argument presented above is a very difficult one to listen to. It denies the very real impacts of structural racism in our system and then tells students and families (either implicitly, or overtly) that if they are not able to successfully navigate a flawed system, it is their own fault.

Let’s see what Mychal Denzel Smith of the Nation has to say about this:

Americans Insist on Being Delusional About Racism

Mychal Denzel Smith on July 3, 2014 – 1:54 PM ET

The headline to this ThinkProgress story reads “A Black College Student Has The Same Chances Of Getting A Job As A White High School Dropout.” At the same time, this Pew Research Center study shows that 63 percent of Americans believe “Blacks who can’t get ahead are mostly responsible for own condition.”

How do these two things square with each other?

They don’t. But that doesn’t actually matter. Americans aren’t swayed by facts or statistics but by narratives. The narrative we have internalized with regards to racism is one of unimpeached progress. We’ve gone from slavery to Jim Crow to civil rights to a black president without a hitch.

Meanwhile, the thing that black parents across the country have told their children for generations about having to work twice as hard to get the same things that are handed to white people, remains true. Yet 63 percent of Americans choose to believe black people are unambitious, or lazy or incompetent. Racism, the kind that limited opportunities for black Americans, is a thing of the past, we would like to believe.

Read more here.

Whether they are aware of it or not, the message Iproponents of a two-track system are sending (folks who have in many cases, benefitted from systems of structural racism in the past) is “Our kids deserve better! Other people’s kids are not my concern (and are in many cases part of the problem). If getting a quality education for my child means other people’s children don’t get served, or are actually held back .. Then so be it, it’s not my concern.”

Where Do We Go From Here?

I don’t have all the answers, but I do know tracking in honors is NOT the solution. Parents of all backgrounds feel angry and frustrated when they express concern for their children and their pleas go unanswered, or worse yet are dismissed. GATE parents know their children deserve more from our education system and are demanding the district’s attention to meet the very real needs of their kids.

And let’s be fair, the district could do a better job to involve and inform families in the ways it plans to support GATE students. Unfortunately, in the absence of that communication some parents have grown tired of waiting and are now connecting the dots, sometimes incorrectly.

What we need is more services and structures to support students who excel. These new services can’t come at the cost of our most underserved children and families. These new services should not rebuild structures that deny children access to upward mobility because of their race, language or ethnic background, or their families prior success in a notoriously biased education system of our parents and grandparents day.

Here are a few of my recommendations about what we SHOULD DO to make our education system better for ALL students (not just those who come from families that already have assets, not just those whose parents know how to navigate the system.)

What we SHOULD do:

1. Redesign GATE – The new program should align with gifted research, brain-based learning and the new standards, curriculum, and assessments. This redesign should answer questions like: Which students are identified to receive services? How are services best delivered? etc.
2. Increase systemic supports for teachers in meeting the growing demand to educate diverse student learners – This can be achieved in various ways, including (but not limited to): class size reduction, team teaching, curriculum, technology, training and site-based coaching.
3. Support parents in advocating for the needs of their children – Engagement is a critical factor of successful instruction–if students are “bored” it is our job as educators and community members to come together to find new ways to challenge and support them.
4. Explicitly incorporate GATE into the district’s student support framework – Ultimately, I believe GATE student support should be explicitly incorporated into the Response to Intervention (RTI) educational model that the district is using to provide specific supports to focal groups of students with specific learning needs.

What we SHOULD NOT do:

1. Re-create a two-track system – It’s high time we stopped separating students into “smart” vs. “lazy” and figured out how to support all students. In my experience in schools (roughly 20 years!) any two track system is a formula for a segregated and unequal education system. Students are placed in a track early on in their academic career (sometimes as early as the fourth grade!) and can never gain access to college and career-going courses and opportunities. Research shows that even the label of “underperforming” hinders students performance leads to lower achievement over time.
2. Reinforce the “us” vs. “them” mentality when dialoguing about solutions for our schools. – Education will always be a hot topic. Parents and teachers are passionate about our children and schools. It is inevitable that there will be differing viewpoints about how to best serve our kids. That said, name-calling and disrespectful language and behavior toward teachers, district staff, students or families only widens the gaps between us and prevents us for working together for the best of all our kids. Calling teachers “incompetent” or parents “entitled” or students “lazy” (and I have heard both of these words uttered) does nothing to solve the problem of educating all our students. Where do we agree? Where can we find common ground? How can we listen better to one another’s very real concerns? How can we help each other help our kids?

The Last Word…

We need to TALK ABOUT RACE. OK, this is a hard one, but if looking at the history of bussing has taught me anything, I’ve learned that you can’t just administrate change and think that’s going to do the trick. The predicament we find ourselves in now is a great illustration that if we don’t investigate our assumptions and own internalized bias (we ALL have it people!) we will continue to recreate systems of social inequity in new ways.

Teachers, parents and students need to talk more about race and the impact of bias in our society. Those of us who have benefited from racially biased systems of the past (or just “got lucky” like my parents) need to be especially aware of how our actions impact others. We cannot right all the wrongs of society, but we had better not unwittingly contribute to keeping systems of structural racism in place.

Our district has recently adopted an Ethnic Studies curriculum, we need to ensure it is robust and well supported in its implementation. Additionally, we need highly skilled leadership to ensure this conversation is going on at every level in the district and among families, educators and community partners. We need to have these conversations in our churches, homes and in our schools. We have a new generation counting on us to do right by them and we are well positioned to make changes we have not been able to make in years. Let’s make it happen!

A prophecy coming true

https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/city_of_brass.html

In a land that the sand overlays – the ways to her gates are untrod –

A multitude ended their days whose gates were made splendid by God,

Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall,

And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all!

When the wine stirred in their heart their bosoms dilated.

They rose to suppose themselves kings over all things created –

To decree a new earth at a birth without labour or sorrow –

To declare: “We prepare it to-day and inherit to-morrow.”

They chose themselves prophets and priests of minute understanding,

Men swift to see done, and outrun, their extremest commanding –

Of the tribe which describe with a jibe the perversions of Justice –

Panders avowed to the crowd whatsoever its lust is.

Swiftly these pulled down the walls that their fathers had made them –

The impregnable ramparts of old, they razed and relaid them

As playgrounds of pleasure and leisure, with limitless entries, 

And havens of rest for the wastrels where once walked the sentries;

And because there was need of more pay for the shouters and marchers,

They disbanded in face of their foemen their yeomen and archers.

They replied to their well-wishers’ fears – to their enemies laughter,

Saying: “Peace! We have fashioned a God Which shall save us hereafter.

We ascribe all dominion to man in his factions conferring,

And have given to numbers the Name of the Wisdom unerring.”

They said: “Who has hate in his soul? Who has envied his neighbour?

Let him arise and control both that man and his labour.”

They said: “Who is eaten by sloth? Whose unthrift has destroyed him?

He shall levy a tribute from all because none have employed him.”

They said: “Who hath toiled, who hath striven, and gathered possession?

Let him be spoiled. He hath given full proof of transgression.”

They said: “Who is irked by the Law? Though we may not remove it.

If he lend us his aid in this raid, we will set him above it!

So the robber did judgment again upon such as displeased him,

The slayer, too, boasted his slain, and the judges released him.

As for their kinsmen far off, on the skirts of the nation,

They harried all earth to make sure none escaped reprobation.

They awakened unrest for a jest in their newly-won borders,

And jeered at the blood of their brethren betrayed by their orders.

They instructed the ruled to rebel, their rulers to aid them;

And, since such as obeyed them not fell, their Viceroys obeyed them.

When the riotous set them at naught they said: “Praise the upheaval!

For the show and the world and the thought of Dominion is evil!”

They unwound and flung from them with rage, as a rag that defied them,

The imperial gains of the age which their forefathers piled them.

They ran panting in haste to lay waste and embitter for ever 

The wellsprings of Wisdom and Strengths which are Faith and Endeavour.

They nosed out and digged up and dragged forth and exposed to derision

All doctrine of purpose and worth and restraint and prevision:

And it ceased, and God granted them all things for which they had striven,

And the heart of a beast in the place of a man’s heart was given. . . .

               .          .        .          .          .           .          .          .           

When they were fullest of wine and most flagrant in error,

Out of the sea rose a sign – out of Heaven a terror.

Then they saw, then they heard, then they knew – for none troubled to hide it,

A host had prepared their destruction, but still they denied it.

They denied what they dared not abide if it came to the trail;

But the Sword that was forged while they lied did not heed their denial.

It drove home, and no time was allowed to the crowd that was driven.

The preposterous-minded were cowed – they thought time would be given.

There was no need of a steed nor a lance to pursue them;

It was decreed their own deed, and not a chance, should undo them.  

The tares they had laughingly sown were ripe to the reaping.

The trust they had leagued to disown was removed from their keeping.

The eaters of other men’s bread, the exempted from hardship,

The excusers of impotence fled, abdicating their wardship,

For the hate they had taught through the State brought the State no defender,

And it passed from the roll of the Nations in headlong surrender!

The issue of mootness

Wouldn't it be nice if courts would apply this kind of logic to election fraud?

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5fe3a907e6fcce0d7d64a7d7/t/604fd43e0ffb29276a56ea9a/1615844416282/Temporary+Restraining+Order+Ruling+March+15.PDF

the State Defendants more specifically argue that "the extraordinary relief Plaintiffs seek should be denied because their schools will be able to reopen on Wednesday." (State Defendants' Supplemental Opposition, p. 5, 11. 7-8.) 

From this, the State Defendants conclude that emergency relief is not warranted. The issue of mootness, however, already has been rejected by courts faced with challenges to orders promulgated purportedly to attempt to stem the spread of COVID-19.

As courts have explained, applications to enjoin orders are not rendered moot where the plaintiffs remain subject to the real possibility that evolving circumstances may lead to the resurrection/imposition of the same restrictive orders in the future. (See County of Los Angeles Department of Public Health v. Sup. Ct. (2021) 2021 DJDAR 1969, 1971 citing Roman Catholic Diocese v. Cuomo (2020) 592 U.S._,_ [141 S.Ct. 63, 68,208 L.Ed.2d 206, 210].) 

In this case, the State Defendants do not confirm or otherwise guarantee that once the County moves into the Red Tier, students may be free from concerns about future distance learning mandates. This case presents the classic example of a "substantial and continuing public interest" that is capable of repetition yet could evade review, a conclusion supported by the State Defendants' acknowledgment that the existing framework is "continually adjusted to account for evolving scientific understanding and changing conditions ... "

Demographics of crime

Bureau of Justice Statistics victimization study from 2018. 

Look at table 14 (victim/offender by race). Replace the percentages with actual numbers. You will see that which cannot be said.

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv18.pdf

Bartholomew Chiaroscuro on the 2020 Election

"Many might wonder why I’m still talking so often about the US election. It was in November, I’m British, it’s a done deal. Biden is serving as President. Why keep on about it? 

The reason I’ve become so obsessed with it is not just because I liked Trump and admired his policies. It’s not even because I have US friends who are more directly impacted by it all than me. It’s not even the loathsomeness, fraud and corruption involved, and the outright evil of many of the policies pushed by the Democrats in the US. I consider them the most extreme party to get into power in a major western nation since the Second World War, but that’s not the primary reason I still talk about this. 

It is because this is the first time in my life that reality itself has been torn apart by ideological bias. It is the first time that something blindingly, obviously true that happened and that involved millions of people has been universally condemned, in a West with a heritage of logic and reason, as utterly false. It is the distortion of reality on this scale, the obviousness of that distortion, that is terrifying. 

Because if a lie this big and this obvious can be engaged in without comment and without consequence, anything is possible, no matter how hideous. It sets the precedent that no future election may be trusted, and that there is no democracy in the West. Worse, it establishes that facts do not matter in any way, and that the media can decide who is elected, who is not, who governs, who makes rulings that affect the entire globe, in direct contradiction of the voices of the people. 

We have seen propaganda before. We have seen bias. We have seen years of hate masquerade as equality, or progress, or enlightenment. We have seen cancel culture and mainstream figures supporting terrorists. But we have never seen, in supposedly free societies, the media seize hold of reality, grab an entire nation and its political fate, and wrench it physically, boldly, with chillingly uniform intent, into the realm of delusion. 

We have never seen before, since the end of WWII, a major nation cast into the abyss where anything goes, by the combined efforts of crooked politicians, crooked journalists, and crooked judges. This was no small, marginal fraud in an insignificant nation. This was a massive, coordinated, logically impossible to dispute fraud in the most powerful nation on Earth. 

It is even a fraud that its supporters now openly boast about in the pages of Time magazine. And it ushers in the most radical, destructive, suicidal agenda embarked on by any major nation in almost a century. 

The murder of JFK in 1963 was more dramatic, but less seismic than this. Because you don’t have to believe that everyone was in on that, even if you think there was a wider conspiracy than just the madness of a single gunman. But with this we have quite plain evidence now that the FBI was in on it, the Department of Justice was in on it, the Supreme Court refuses to look at the evidence about it, senior Republican figures were in on it, Big Tech billionaires were in on it, social media giants were in on it, other world leaders rushed to endorse it, even the bloody American Chamber of Commerce was in on it. 

The sole reason the lie has triumphed is that the Swamp is far bigger, and far more real, than even the most cynical of us supposed. It is a lie that is just too big to be allowed to fail, like a bank that has to be propped up with quantitative easing. Only this thing is supported with the currency of lies, printed endlessly in every newspaper in the world and cashed in on every TV show news report. The world was horrified when a President was murdered. It should be just as horrified when a winning President doesn’t have to be murdered to be removed, and silenced, and rendered powerless. 

The latest cowardly absurdity of Supreme Court judgement confirms all of the above. They are more terrified of the consequences of exposing the theft than they are of the consequences of continuing the lie. They would rather see millions disenfranchised, voting rendered meaningless, and an extreme radical agenda that helps the enemies of the West rolled out, than face the embarrassment of admitting the truth. 

So they flee from their judicial and constitutional duty, squealing in terror, diving into shadows to avoid the light of truth. It is a revolting spectacle, but another one that will be presented as ‘evidence’ that up is down, evil is good, and stolen is earned. What a lesson for the world that is."

section 230

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/section-230-good-actually

Section 230 only shields an intermediary from liability that already exists. If speech is protected by the First Amendment, there can be no liability either for publishing it or republishing it, regardless of Section 230. As the Supreme Court recognized in the Reno v. ACLU case, the First Amendment’s robust speech protections fully apply to online speech. 

Section 230 was included in the CDA to ensure that online services could decide what types of content they wanted to host. Without Section 230, sites that removed sexual content could be held legally responsible for that action, a result that would have made services leery of moderating their users’ content, even if they wanted to create online spaces free of sexual content. The point of 230 was to encourage active moderation to remove sexual content, allowing services to compete with one another based on the types of user content they wanted to host. 

Moreover, the First Amendment also protects the right of online platforms to curate the speech on their sites—to decide what user speech will and will not appear on their sites. 

So Section 230’s immunity for removing user speech is perfectly consistent with the First Amendment. This is apparent given that prior to the Internet, the First Amendment gave non-digital media, such as newspapers, the right to decide what stories and opinions it would publish.

No, online platforms are not “neutral public forums.”

Nor should they be. Section 230 does not say anything like this. And trying to legislate such a “neutrality” requirement for online platforms—besides being unworkable—would violate the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has confirmed the fundamental right of publishers to have editorial viewpoints. 

It’s also foolish to suggest that web platforms should lose their Section 230 protections for failing to align their moderation policies to an imaginary standard of political neutrality. One of the reasons why Congress first passed Section 230 was to enable online platforms to engage in good-faith community moderation without fear of taking on undue liability for their users’ posts. 

In two important early cases over Internet speech, courts allowed civil defamation claims against Prodigy but not against Compuserve; since Prodigy deleted some messages for “offensiveness” and “bad taste,” a court reasoned, it could be treated as a publisher and held liable for its users’ posts. 

Former Rep. Chris Cox recalls reading about the Prodigy opinion on an airplane and thinking that it was “surpassingly stupid.” That revelation led to Cox and then Rep. Ron Wyden introducing the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act, which would later become Section 230. 

In practice, creating additional hoops for platforms to jump through in order to maintain their Section 230 protections would almost certainly result in fewer opportunities to share controversial opinions online, not more: under Section 230, platforms devoted to niche interests and minority views can thrive. 

Print publishers and online services are very different, and are treated differently under the law–and should be.

It’s true that online services do not have the same liability for their content that print media does. Unlike publications like newspapers that are legally responsible for the content they print, online publications are relieved of this liability by Section 230. The major distinction the law creates is between online and offline publication, a recognition of the inherent differences in scale between the two modes of publication. (Despite claims otherwise, there is no legal significance to labeling an online service a “platform” as opposed to a “publisher.”) 

But an additional purpose of Section 230 was to eliminate any distinction between those who actively select, curate, and edit the speech before distributing it and those who are merely passive conduits for it. Before Section 230, courts effectively disincentivized platforms from engaging in any speech moderation. Section 230 provides immunity to any “provider or user of an interactive computer service” when that “provider or user” republishes content created by someone or something else, protecting both decisions to moderate it and those to transmit it without moderation. 

The misconception that platforms can somehow lose Section 230 protections for moderating users’ posts has gotten a lot of airtime. This is false.

Section 230 allows sites to moderate content how they see fit.

And that’s what we want: a variety of sites with a plethora of moderation practices keeps the online ecosystem workable for everyone. The Internet is a better place when multiple moderation philosophies can coexist, some more restrictive and some more permissive.