Platform (Non-)Intervention and the “Marketplace” Paradigm for Speech Regulation

Abstract

This article analyzes grassroots opposition to the website Ripoff Report (RoR). RoR is a user-generated content (UGC) platform for “consumer reviews” about both business entities and, often, individuals. In America, Section 230 of the CDA (1996) empowers RoR to refuse removing even postings that have been judged defamatory. Instead, the site counsels rebuttal (“counterspeech”) or paying for its self-administered arbitration service—audaciously casting itself as a more efficient (for-profit) substitute for the court system. RoR therefore represents the liberal “marketplace” orientation of Section 230 taken to its logical extreme. Grassroots opponents claim that official legal deference to the content policies of sites like RoR creates a unique kind of symbolic and normative harm. Building on the existing practical critiques of Section 230, I argue that they implicitly invoke Donald Downs’ “community security” paradigm in a digital context. They call on both websites and government to increasingly prioritize protecting citizens from the indignity of confronting (what they see as) personally humiliating speech rather than simply counseling “more speech” as the solution. The RoR controversy thus gives us additional insight into the popular objections provoked by Section 230. Overall, studying them helps further our nascent understanding of the consequences and reactions when “platforms intervene” as regulatory forces.