How to conduct content moderation on social media platforms has become a more and more important and controversial issue which is worth further exploration. The United States of America had Section 230 which was originally a part of the Communication Decency Act, providing a safe harbor for social media platforms to be considered as interactive computer service providers rather than publisher or speaker of any information which was created and disseminated through the platforms by another information content provider. Therefore, social media companies would not be held liable for the content spreading on their platforms. On the other hand, Section 230 waives the legal responsibilities of these platforms to take actions to restrict the access or availability to certain content for good faith. In other words, social media companies are not held liable for the user-generated information and content spreading on their platforms, and they are not legally responsible for conducting content moderation on the information and content on their platforms for good faith. In addition, First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America protects the freedom of speech, while the political speech which is “defined as speech about political matters or delivered in the political sphere for public deliberation” was emphasized to be worth higher protection, because it is considered as the core of democratic society (Ahn et al., 2022, p. 3; Killion, 2024). However, social media platforms and internet technology have developed rapidly since the legislation of Section 230, while the United States Congress hasn’t made significant progress on legislation for further governance on social media platforms, due to the deep disagreements on how to conduct content moderation on the social media platforms between democrats and republicans. Therefore, social media content moderation plays an important role in preventing the fake news information, misinformation and some harmful content from disseminating.

​

​