Episode 5: Blowback, and the Dust Settles

Our panel of experts — Charles C.W. Cooke from the National Review, trust and safety expert Dave Willner, Mike Masnick from Techdirt, and CEI’s Jessica Melugin — dissect this podcast’s raison d'être. What have we learned? Where are we now? And where are we going?

The rise of A.I. has ushered in a new era for the internet, right when Section 230 and its protections have never been more threatened. Today’s innovators look to the past for guidance.

The web gets big enough to impact presidential elections. And the rest of the world grapples with speech on the internet.

The first real attempt to regulate the internet goes down in flames. But what remains is a structure to support the new, more interactive world of Web 2.0.

A bill intended to keep smut off the internet threatens to undo everything Representatives Christopher Cox and Ron Wyden have accomplished. How will their compromise play out?

Enter the dotcom era. Dueling lawsuits leave early web companies with a massive question — can they moderate speech without getting sued off the face of the earth? Two tech-savvy Congressman just might have an answer.

We travel back in time to the birth of the world wide web to hear how the earliest forums sparked a war over the future of free speech on the internet.

Pundits and politicians blame an obscure law for everything bad that happens online. What exactly is Section 230, and how did it spark a debate that could change the internet forever?

In 1996, two Congressmen drafted a bill that would give us the internet as we know it. Now Democrats and Republicans want it gone. Follow the true story of the most misunderstood law on the internet starting March 12.