Radical cultural authoritarian and Salon contributor Arthur Chu has called for the repeal of a key legal foundation of free and open discourse in the U.S, which protects web hosts from legal liability for third-party comments on their sites. In an article for TechCrunch, Chu called for the end of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which allows website owners to be treated as platforms rather than publishers. Whereas publishers like newspapers can be sued if they publish slanderous articles about other individuals, Facebook or Twitter cannot be sued for hosting slanderous comments. Section 230, in other words, is what allows website owners to take a hands-off approach to the speech of ordinary web users. Online news sites like Breitbart have legal responsibility for their published articles, but not for anything that’s said on the Disqus commenting platform that appears below our articles. Without Section 230, speech on the internet would be tightly managed by web hosts keen to avoid lawsuits. But Jeopardy! champion and occasional cupid Arthur Chu wants that to end. Writing in TechCrunch, Chu says it is “past time” for Section 230 to be repealed, complaining that digital publishers can’t be sued for “harassment” on their platforms. According to Chu,