Social media sites, like 8chan, are protected legally by the First Amendment

The Social Media Forum 8chan has come under scrutiny for a suggested relationship between the forum and the El Paso shooter according to its own site’s data, but the messaging board is protected according to Section 2-30 of the Communication Decency Act (CDA).

People can type whatever they want on social media platforms in the United States, it’s a first amendment freedom of speech protection.

One of the only restrictions to the speech clause being hate speech that incites an act of violence, according to the U.S Supreme Court.

But inciting an act of violence is pretty hard to prove says past lawyer and current Executive Director of the First Amendment Center, Lata Nott.

“You have to say something to a specific crowd of people to incite them to an immediate act of lawlessness and you have to have a reasonable expectation that this would happen when you do so, so the truth is that is a really narrow exception,” Nott said.

Either way that law would apply to the person inciting, not the media platform they use to do it, according to the CDA.

“Things like Facebook and Twitter they are not publishers so they are protected by a clause which basically says you are not liable for what other people post on your site,” Nott said. “But if you start moderating the comments, and editing them, if you start acting like a publisher would you could lose that protection.”

This protection keeps media platforms from regulating users post. If they are a private company they can control content on their site by blocking users and deleting profiles.

8chan in particular is a messaging board that deletes its messages routinely and their users have no profiles but 8chan is considered social media due to their sole purpose being social commentary. Since post are not saved to be regenerated and names are not used the only regulation can come from ownership, according to a previous owner.

8chan has currently been knocked offline due to recent security breaches, according to 8chan’s current co-manager, Ron Watkins. Its sister site 4chan is still active.