Don’t leave developers behind in the Section 230 debate

Last week marked the first time the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. In oral arguments in the Gonzalez v. Google case, important questions were raised about platform responsibility and the risk of viral content.

As the court grapples with these questions, it is an opportunity to reflect on why 230 was created in the first place, how it fosters innovation and what we all stand to lose if the protections embedded within 230 are narrowed.

Nicknamed the “26 words that created the internet” by Jeff Kosseff, Section 230 established a liability shield for platforms that host third-party content. In the nascent days of the internet, 230 created favorable legal conditions for startups and entrepreneurs to flourish, cementing the United States as a world leader in software.

While today’s tech landscape is dramatically different from the fledgling internet of the '90s, the reasoning behind Section 230 still holds true today. The architecture of law creates conditions for innovation and can also chill it.

Seemingly lost in arguments taking aim at the outsized influence of large social media platforms is an appreciation of how Section 230 supports the broader online ecosystem, especially software developers. Developers are at the heart of our online world and at the forefront of creating solutions for global challenges, working to make the software that underpins our digital infrastructure more secure, reliable and safe.

Developers rely on 230 to collaborate on platforms like GitHub and to build and operate new platforms rethinking social media. Narrowing 230 protections could have far-reaching implications, introducing legal uncertainty into the important work of software developers, startups and platforms that provide them the tools to realize their vision. As policymakers consider how to address new frontiers of intermediary liability, it’s essential to center developers in decisions that will shape the future of the internet.

Software developers contribute significantly to the United States’ economic competitiveness and innovation and are important stakeholders in platform policy. GitHub counts 17 million American developers on our platform — more than any other country. Their open source activity alone contributes more than $100 billion to the U.S. economy annually.

These developers maintain the invisible but essential software infrastructure that powers our daily lives. Nearly all software — 97% — contains open source components, which are often developed and maintained on GitHub.

As the chief legal officer at GitHub, a global community of over 100 million software developers collaborating on code, I know firsthand the importance of keeping 230 intact. While GitHub is a far cry from a general-purpose social media platform, GitHub depends on 230 protections to both host third-party content and engage in good-faith content moderation.

That’s especially important when a platform has over 330 million software repositories. GitHub has been able to grow while maintaining platform health thanks to intermediary liability protections. GitHub has a robust, developer-first approach to content moderation to keep our platform safe, healthy and inclusive while tailoring our approach to the unique environment of code collaboration, where the takedown of a single project can have significant downstream effects for thousands or more software projects.