New bill to kill Section 230, defederation report and Mohan clarifies Covid-19 rules
Hello and welcome to Everything in Moderation's Week in Review, your need-to-know news and analysis about platform policy, content moderation and internet regulation. It's written by me, Ben Whitelaw and supported by members like you.
A big thanks to EiM readers and supporters who attended the second Marked As Urgent event in London last night. It was a lot of fun and the conversations were predictably high-quality and nerdy. We're hoping to do another in the summer, although I won't be involved for this one as I'm becoming a dad for the first time.
Mark and Georgia will take the reins and will do an amazing job. I'll be back for the autumn edition, where I hope to meet some of EiM's newest subscribers from Soundcloud, Right To Be, Wikimedia, Score Warrior, X, University of Alberta and elsewhere. Get in touch if you're interested in partnering.
I'm excited to be joining forces again with the All Things in Moderation conference, which takes place online 15-16 May. The speakers and sessions are always so thoughtful so if you haven't been before, I highly recommend it. More information about early bird tickets in today's edition.
Here's your Week in Review — BW
Today's edition is in partnership with All Things in Moderation, the annual conference for humans who moderate
Early bird tickets for All Things in Moderation 2025 are now on sale! This year, the global conference is diving into a critical challenge: "Restoring Third Spaces."
- Where do we truly belong online?
- How do we rebuild spaces for connection, trust, and resilience?
- What role do platforms, policies, and communities play in this transformation?
Join global leaders in community management, trust and safety, and governance for in-depth discussions, expert insights, and hands-on strategies to help shape the future of digital spaces.
Policies
New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation
Section 230’s “usefulness has long since passed” and it should be repealed; that’s according to one of the US Senators behind the latest — and first bipartisan — bill to get rid of it. The Information reported last Friday that Dick Durbin (Dem) and Lindsey Graham (Rep) would soon introduce a bill that would set a date of January 1 2027 for Section 230 to expire. The self-described goal is to force the large platforms “to the table” around regulation. It’s not the first time either Durbin or Graham have given this a go.
Dumb-ocrat?: Legal experts are agog, particularly at the Democrats. Jess Miers writes for Techdirt that the party is “handing the Trump Administration a powerful tool to execute its long-standing goal: total control over online discourse. The EFF put it even more bluntly: this bill “guts the law” and jeopardises speech protections for users and small publishers alike. Gulp.
Ofcom has handed down a £1.05m fine to OnlyFans for failing to supply accurate information about how it prevent underage users from accessing explicit content. The company had told the UK regulator that the “challenge age” of its facial estimation tech was 23 years old, only to find out that it was actually 20. Not great.
More to it: What’s interesting about this story is the timing of its release. Despite coming a week after the Online Safety Act was introduced (EiM #286), this enforcement has nothing to do with the UK’s shiny new safety law and, as the press release notes, was “under regulations that pre-date the Online Safety Act”. Not that your average reader would know that — The Guardian, the FT and others didn’t go into that level of detail so many readers will think this is the OSA working as it should. Sneaky.