CRS Legal Sidebar via LC – Section 230 and the Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship – June 3, 2020: “On May 28, 2020, President Trump issued the Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship (EO), expressing the executive branch’s views on Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act. As discussed in this Legal Sidebar, Section 230, under certain circumstances,immunizes online content providers from liability for merely hosting others’ content.The EO stakes out a position in existing interpretive disputes about the law’s meaning and instructs federal agencies, including the Department of Commerce, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the Department of Justice, to take certain actions to implement this understanding. This Legal Sidebar explores the legal implications of the EO. It first briefly describes how courts have interpreted Section 230 before explaining what the EO says. Next, the Sidebar discusses the FCC and FTC’s authority to enforce Section 230, focusing on the EO’s instructions to these agencies, before concluding with a discussion of how international trade obligations affect the United States’ ability to modify Section 230…”