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The liability protections that online travel businesses such as Airbnb, Google and Tripadvisor enjoy under the Communications Decency Act could be collateral damage in President Trump's effort to go after Twitter and Google for what he views as "censorship" or biased coverage.
While President Trump's executive order Thursday on "preventing online censorship" is widely viewed as targeted toward social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, all of which which were cited in the order, it could also pose an unintended threat to online travel and user review sites that are difficult to sue because of liability protections under a federal decency law.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which became law in 1996 as the internet was in its formative stage, protects companies such as Airbnb, Google, Tripadvisor, and Yelp from being liable for statements that consumers make in user reviews on their platforms, for example.
One repercussion of the president's order would be that certain protections granted to companies, like those online travel giants, would be stripped away.
Airbnb, too, has used the Act in the past to argue that it is merely a neutral platform, connecting hosts and guests, and not responsible for furnishing host information to local auth
