Joel Reidenberg, founding academic director of the Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham Law School, was quoted by Vocativ on why a Senate inquiry into how Facebook provides news content to its users won’t accomplish much.
“I think it’s grandstanding. I guess they theoretically could issue a subpoena if Facebook declines to respond,” Joel Reidenberg, Director of the Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham Law School, told Vocativ. If that happened, though, “I would find it very surprising if it would withstand any court challenge,” he said.
Facebook’s relative immunity is due in part to a 1996 law, the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 of the CDA clearly lays out that online publishers aren’t responsible for the third party content held on their sites.
“It essentially give service providers immunity from liability associated with the contented hosted on their site,” Reidenberg said. “So if they’re hosting content of other parties, if that content is defamatory, if that content is provoking the violation of various laws, they’re not liable as the hosting service.”
