No. 13-5946 Jones v. Dirty World Entm’t Recordings, et al. Page 16 Roommates required information about protected characteristics and engineered its search and email systems to limit access to housing listings based on those protected characteristics, the court held that the website materially contributed to the alleged illegality of hiding certain listings. See id. at 1166−69, 1172. The court also gave specific examples of the application of the material contribution test for a website that solicits, edits, and displays content originating from third parties (i.e., a website akin to www.TheDirty.com). For example: A website operator who edits user-created content—such as by correcting spelling, removing obscenity or trimming for length—retains his immunity for any illegality in the user-created content, provided that the edits are unrelated to the illegality. However, a website operator who edits in a manner that contributes to the alleged illegality—such as by removing the word “not” from a user’s message reading “[Name] did not steal the artwork” in order to transform an innocent message into a libelous one—is directly involved in the alleged illegality and thus not immune. Id. at 1169 (alteration in original); see also Batzel, 333 F.3d at 1035 (holding that an editor of an email newsletter who received and published allegedly actionable information, adding a short headnote, was immune under § 230 because an editor’s changes to the length and spelling of third-party content do not contribute to the libelousness of the message). The Roommates court further explained: And any activity that can be boiled down to deciding whether to exclude material that third parties seek to post online is perforce immune under section 230. But if the editor publishes material that he does not believe was tendered to him for posting online, then he is the one making the affirmative decision to publish, and so he contributes materially to its allegedly unlawful dissemination. He is thus properly deemed a developer and not entitled to CDA immunity. 521 F.3d at 1170−71 (internal citations omitted). Accordingly, the Roommates court held that § 230 barred the fair housing councils’ claims grounded on the allegedly discriminatory statements displayed through Roommate’s operation of the “additional comments” section of its website. Id. at 1173. The court explained: Roommate publishes these comments as written. It does not provide any specific guidance as to what the essay should contain, nor does it urge subscribers to input discriminatory preferences. Roommate is not responsible, in whole or in part, for