Social Media Regulation (US Law Section 230)

US law Section 230 (1996)

A media platform is not held responsible for the publicly generated content on its site. Section 230 allows platforms to moderate content without losing their immunity.

Andrew Tate, a former professional kickboxer who frequently made misogynistic comments about women online, has been banned from the largest media platforms including Facebook, YouTube and TikTok after concerns about his influence on his millions of followers escalated. Andrew Tate’s disgusting comments, include saying women who are raped are partially responsible for the attacks, described in detail how he might attack women and criticized people who seek mental health treatment. In a YouTube video posted on Tuesday, Mr. Tate addressed the social media bans and said clips of his comments had been taken out of context.

The nature of this situation can be considered as hate speech which caused these large media companies to regulate the content. The platform's content moderation decision was instant as they removed all of his accounts not allowing him to upload anything that went against the platform's ToS, previously they provided Tate with a warning but he didn't remove or change the content he was uploading. 

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, removed his official accounts on Friday and said they were in violation of its policies.YouTube took down several channels affiliated with Mr. Tate “for multiple violations of our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service, including our hate speech policy,” said Ivy Choi, a spokeswoman for the company.  

With 6 million followers on Instagram and more than 740,000 followers on YouTube, and his videos on TikTok having millions of views, consumers on these platforms range from adults all the way to young children, if young people kept being constantly exposed to Tate's content they could grow up to think that things like misogyny and rape are tolerable. This case implies that freedom of speech is limited and action can be taken if people cross certain lines set by media companies.