Think about it’s 1996. You go surfing to your desktop pc (which took a number of minutes to begin up), listening to the rhythmic screech and hiss of the modem connecting you to the World Huge Internet. You navigate to a clunky message board—like AOL or Prodigy—to debate your favourite hobbies, from Beanie Infants to the latest mixtapes.
On the time, a little-known legislation referred to as Part 230 of the Communications Security Act had simply been handed. The legislation—then only a 26-word doc—created the trendy web. It was meant to guard “good samaritans” who reasonable web sites from regulation, putting the accountability for content material on particular person customers reasonably than the host firm.
At present, the legislation stays largely the identical regardless of evolutionary leaps in web expertise and pushback from critics, now amongst them Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
In a dialog on the World Financial Discussion board in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, titled “The place Can New Progress Come From?” Benioff railed in opposition to Part 230, saying the legislation prevents tech giants from being held accountable for the risks AI and social media pose.
“Issues like Part 230 in the US should be reshaped as a result of these tech firms is not going to be held accountable for the harm that they’re mainly doing to our households,” Benioff stated within the panel dialog which additionally included Axa CEO Thomas Buberl, Alphabet President Ruth Porat, Emirati authorities official Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak, and Bloomberg journalist Francine Lacqua.
As a rising variety of youngsters within the U.S. log onto AI and social media platforms, Benioff stated the laws threatens the protection of children and households. The billionaire requested, “What’s extra necessary to us, progress or our youngsters? What’s extra necessary to us, progress or our households? Or, what’s extra necessary, progress or the basic values of our society?”
Part 230 as a defend for tech companies
Tech firms have invoked Part 230 as a authorized protection when coping with problems with person hurt, together with within the 2019 case Pressure v. Fb, the place the courtroom dominated the platform wasn’t chargeable for algorithms that linked members of Hamas after the terrorist group used the platform to encourage homicide in Israel. The legislation might defend tech firms from legal responsibility for hurt AI platforms pose, together with the manufacturing of deepfakes and AI-Generated sexual abuse materials.
Benioff has been a vocal critic of Part 230 since 2019 and has repeatedly referred to as for the laws to be abolished.
Lately, Part 230 has come underneath rising public scrutiny as each Democrats and Republicans have grown skeptical of the laws. In 2019 the Division of Justice underneath President Donald Trump pursued a broad evaluate of Part 230. In Might 2020, President Trump signed an Govt Order limiting tech platforms’ immunity after Twitter added fact-checks to his tweets. And in 2023, the U.S. Supreme Courtroom heard Gonzalez v. Google, although, determined it on different grounds, leaving Part 230 intact.
In an interview with Fortune in December 2025, Dartmouth enterprise faculty professor Scott Anthony voiced concern over the “guardrails” that have been—and weren’t—occurring with AI. When automobiles have been first invented, he identified, it took time for velocity limits and driver’s licenses to comply with. Now with AI, “we’ve acquired the expertise, we’re determining the norms, however the concept of, ‘Hey, let’s simply maintain our arms off,’ I believe it’s simply actually unhealthy.”
The choice to exempt platforms from legal responsibility, Anthony added, “I simply suppose that it’s not been good for the world. And I believe we’re, sadly, making the error once more with AI.”
For Benioff, the struggle to repeal Part 230 is greater than a push to manage tech firms, however a reallocation of priorities towards security and away from unfettered progress. “Within the period of this unbelievable progress, we’re drunk on the expansion,” Benioff stated. “Let’s guarantee that we use this second additionally to do not forget that we’re additionally about values as nicely.”
