I think the user darkcalling, in commenting on this story in the current Hexbear news mega thread, had a spot on analysis of this:

Section 230 repeal is game over.

No more VPNs because they’re liable for CSAM, terrorism, death threats, copyright abuse, etc. Even if they’re off-shore and dare to thumb their noses at the US their domestic hosting partners will drop them out of liability concerns themselves. This is a terrifying unraveling of the internet as we knew it. Far more drastic than the death of blogs and forums and the rise of centralized social media. Far more drastic than even AI spam washing over everything and making real content hard to find.

There really are no alternatives waiting in the wings. You’re not going to be able to torrent blurays over L2P or Tor. You’re not going to be able to watch streaming videos with friends. For a while you’ll be able to use Canadian servers, maybe Mexico (don’t know what their laws are like) until they pass similar laws and tier one ISPs start throttling that type of traffic into/out of the US.

The boot is finally here, the death of the open internet will occur if that passes. Total narrative control. Social media companies seized by the throat by the US government, either cooperate in censoring what they want or they actually hold you accountable for everything your users do. Have good users? Here are some fed infiltrators and zionist intelligence companies who are going to spam you with illegal stuff and report it to us so you’ll be done anyways.

The speed at which western governments have been moving recently to erode privacy, and thus a free internet, really has been staggering to me, and I’ve been following this stuff for a while. There’s been a total blitz against 3 pillars of freedom: 1.) destroy our ability to have private conversations (chat control), 2.) know exactly who everyone is online and identify all your online activity (age verification), and 3.) effectively destroy user generated content - at least content which is a threat to power (this attack on Section 230).

Personally, I think this recent all-out attack is due to 2 things. The first is the genocide in Gaza. The ruling classes were caught off guard there. They had previously been operating under the assumption that their control of mainstream tradition media meant they can control whatever narrative they want. Social media was for kids and they’re not politically relevant, so who cares. But having a genocide live-streamed completely destroyed decades of hard work at crafting a pro-Zionist public in the west. They’re not going to let that happen again, so bye-bye TikTok (the other platforms like Instagram were already compromised, TikTok was the only one outside of their grasp).

The second factor though, despite all the bluster and bravado about how “great” the economy is from Trump and the media (and tbf, Biden and the dems before him), I think the ruling classes know damn well just how bad things are. More than that, they know things are gonna get a lot worse. Neoliberalism was the method by which capitalism was able to extend its life. The crises it faced in the late 60s and 70s were really just an extension of the Great Depression. The only way the capitalist world was able to pull itself out of that was through a global war that destroyed so much capital that they got an economic boom for 2-3 decades just from rebuilding the world order. But now neoliberalism has spent itself and they have no answers for what to do next. Thus, they are fully expecting the people to fight back. The internet is maybe the most powerful tool that people have for organizing themselves and fighting back, so that MUST be brought under lockdown by the capitalists before it’s too late.

EDIT: I also wanted to ask, since I’m fairly new to federation… how would repealing Section 230 affect the fediverse specifically?