  Internet immunity doctrine is broken. Under Section 230 of the Communications
Decency Act of 1996, online entities are absolutely immune from lawsuits
related to content authored by third parties. The law has been essential to the
internet's development over the last twenty years, but it has not kept pace
with the times and is now deeply flawed. Democrats demand accountability for
online misinformation. Republicans decry politically motivated censorship. And
Congress, President Biden, the Department of Justice, and the Federal
Communications Commission all have their own plans for reform. Absent from the
fray, however -- until now -- has been the Supreme Court, which has never
issued a decision interpreting Section 230. That appears poised to change,
however, following Justice Thomas's statement in Malwarebytes v. Enigma in
which he urges the Court to prune back decades of lower-court precedent to
craft a more limited immunity doctrine. This Essay discusses how courts'
zealous enforcement of the early internet's free-information ethos gave birth
to an expansive immunity doctrine, warns of potential pitfalls to reform, and
explores what a narrower, text-focused doctrine might mean for the tech
industry.
