TL;DR:
• Bipartisan Senate bill would sunset Section 230, the 30-year-old law shielding tech companies from liability for user content
• Former House leader says platforms evolved from “dumb pipe” carriers to sophisticated operations using algorithms that potentiate harm to users
• The 1996 law allows companies to host content without being sued, but critics say modern platforms abuse this protection
• Experts warn changes could transform online speech, forcing platforms to either over-censor or abandon moderation entirely
A bipartisan pair of senators is taking aim at the legal shield that has protected internet companies for three decades, arguing that tech giants have transformed from neutral platforms into profit-driven algorithmic powerhouses.
Sens. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, introduced legislation that would sunset Section 230 in two years.
The provision, tucked into the Communications Decency Act of 1996, states that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
That legal phrase shields companies from being sued over content posted by users. If someone posts false information about you on Facebook, you can sue the person who posted it — but not the company.
“To the extent that this protection was ever needed, its usefulness has long since passed,” Mr. Durbin said.
Former Rep. Dick Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat who was House minority leader when the law passed, said he supported Section 230 at the time as tech companies warned America would never have an internet economy without liability protection.
Early social media companies described themselves as “a dumb pipe that carried content produced by others,” Mr. Gephardt said. But modern platforms scrape users’ data and rely on algorithms to promote content “that could brainwash users” to harmful outcomes.
“I do not believe the platforms intend to harm people,” Mr. Gephardt said. “But I do believe they intend to realize incredible monetary profits and the attention-addictive algorithms they employ in pursuit of that profit causes very serious harms to many, many people.”
Mr. Durbin said sunsetting Section 230 in two years, rather than repealing it immediately, could “force Big Tech to the table to negotiate real reform that requires real accountability.”
But experts warn the consequences could reshape the internet. Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University specializing in internet law, said eliminating Section 230 could mean platforms “won’t allow us to talk to each other anymore.”
“The primary thing we do on the internet is we talk to each other,” Mr. Goldman said. “It might be email, it might be social media, might be message boards, but we talk to each other. And a lot of those conversations are enabled by Section 230, which says that whoever’s allowing us to talk to each other isn’t liable for our conversations.”
Without that protection, Mr. Goldman warned, companies hosting those conversations could face legal liability and choose to shut down those communication channels entirely. Platforms also might get more cautious and remove vast amounts of content to avoid liability. Or they could abandon moderation altogether, allowing unmonitored services to be dominated by trolls.
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The Washington Times AI Ethics Newsroom Committee can be reached at aispotlight@washingtontimes.com.
