A group of Republican Senators, led by Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, is taking aim at the liability shield that big tech companies currently have.
The bill, which was unveiled on Wednesday, would seek to limit the immunity granted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Which would set the stage for how Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and others would moderate its platforms.
It’s being called “Limiting Section 230 Immunity to Good Samaritans Act”, and it would require companies to undertake a “duty of good faith” to be able to receive the protections of Section 230. This would also lay some significant penalties for companies who do not uphold the duty. And in turn, make it easier for users to sue platforms for improper moderation practices.
What platforms would this bill affect?
It would affect most major platforms. There are two requirements for services that this bill affects. Which is having 30 million US monthly users (or 300 million monthly global users) and have more than $1.5 billion in global revenue.
What this means is that most social media platforms would be affected. But most news websites that have comment sections (like yours truly), would not be affected.
When introducing the bill, Senator Hawley framed the bill as stating that it’s a response to concerns of anti-conservative bias. Stating that “for too long, bit tech companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook have used their power to silence political speech from conservatives without any recourse for users.”
The bill is co-sponsored by Senator Rubio of Florida, Senator Braun of Indiana and Senator Cotton or Arkansas. This likely means that there is signficant support within the Republican party – which still holds a majority in the Senate.
This is what President Trump wanted
President Trump said last month that the Senate needs to look at Section 230 again. This came after Twitter supposedly tried to “censor” what he says on the platform. When really all Twitter did was put a fact check link on his tweets that were spreading misinformation.
What Trump said was true though, platforms (mostly Facebook) don’t have a real reason to police what users are saying on them. Facebook, for instance, has said that they will not alter the President’s posts in any way. Or block any political ads, particularly ones that are fake and spread fake news.
This bill, while unpopular within the Democratic caucus right now, is actually a step in the right direction. And it’s no surprise that Senator Hawley is the one heading it up.