The Department of Justice has revealed its proposal to modify the Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, part of which gives tech giants that own social platforms the ability to moderate content they deem “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable.” It also protects website owners from lawsuits over that same content.
The move is meant to push Congress to adopt new legislation that could hold companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others liable for a wide variety of harmful user-generated content. Social giants like Facebook argue that it’s not their responsibility to be the arbiters of truth or police content that could otherwise pass as the voice of the less privileged.
The new bill is called “Limiting Section 230 Immunity to Good Samaritans Act,” and it would essentially force companies to exercise a “duty of good faith” if they want to receive the same protections of Section 230 they’ve been enjoying for decades. Failing that, they could be fined more than $5,000 per affected user, which can quickly add up when you have billions of users posting content that routinely goes viral.
Interestingly, the legislation will only apply to services that have more than 30 million monthly users in the US or 300 million monthly users worldwide, as well as more than $1.5 billion in global revenue, which is to say that it won’t apply to smaller companies. The thinking is that small companies don’t have the financial and legal muscle to defend themselves against meritless lawsuits while they’re trying to grow their user base.
Adding to the tensions, Trump signed an executive order this month that could open the door for the U.S. government to assume oversight of political speech on the Web. The president issued the directive days after Twitter took the rare step of labeling one of his tweets as violating its policies.
Lawmakers, conservative advocacy groups, free-speech experts and tech giants blasted Trump for the order, and an organization backed by Facebook and Twitter soon challenged it in federal court as a violation of the First Amendment.
Some Republicans, in contrast, have championed Trump’s action and in recent days have sought to further needle the industry. A new bill sponsored by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., would open the door for Web users to sue Facebook, Google and Twitter for wrongly taking down their content online, the senator announced Wednesday.
