A college professor wants to use Section 230 against Big Tech

Happy Wednesday! We can add Katy Perry’s mom and whoever runs Instagram’s Instagram account to the long list of folks who could use a primer on how to spot deepfakes. Send news tips to: will.oremus@washpost.com 

A college professor’s lawsuit turns Section 230 against Big Tech

Ethan Zuckerman, a longtime technologist and social media scholar, thought he fully understood Section 230, the 1996 statute that contains the famous “26 words that created the internet.” But three years ago, he was reading its full text aloud to his class at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst when suddenly, in his words, “a lightbulb went off in my head.”