Hacker Trends › “section 230” trend
“Section 230” was mentioned 4,622 times on Hacker News between 2008 and 2026, peaking in Jan 2021 with 492 that month.
Every month from 2007 to 2026, counting how often “section 230” appears in Hacker News stories and comments. Each point is a live date-histogram over ~45M items, computed with Upstash Redis Search.
Section 230 first appears on Hacker News in 2008 and recurs whenever platform-liability law is in the news. The curve peaks in January 2021 with 492 mentions, and the lifetime total is 4,622 mentions, spread across many smaller bursts rather than one dominant event.
Discussion is largely explanatory and legal: threads correcting common misconceptions about the statute, proposed DOJ legislation, and arguments that repealing it would not achieve what advocates expect. The topic stayed active through 2026 as the legal shield kept being litigated and debated.
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