MAGA Lawmakers Hatch Plan to Murder Online Speech – And Democrats Are Helping

Section 230 is once again facing the chopping block and it is gaining support not just from MAGA Republican’s, but also Democrats.

These days, it seems that Democrats and Republican’s cannot be any further apart. Democrats, for instance, believe in science while Republican’s think science is a conspiracy to crack down on civil liberties. However, just because they are far apart on a variety of issues doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t agree on anything. In this instance, they do agree on one thing: free speech and innovation on the internet, and the wider open internet for that matter, has got to go. It’s something that they agree on and it is very obviously bad news for almost anyone who uses the internet (the exception being Big Tech who are salivating at the idea that they will be a permanent monopoly).

How do they plan on doing this? Through legislation that would see the sunsetting of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). Famously known as Section 230, the snippet of law is known as the 26 words that made the internet. It’s also not that hard to really understand. Below is the text of the law:

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.

So, in other words, if a user goes onto a website and posts something, say, defamatory, then the owner of the website is not automatically liable for that speech. In fact, it is the user that posted that speech that is liable for such content. That’s… it. That’s really all this law does for the most part.

The problem is that in recent years, politician’s and mainstream media have undergone a project to basically redefine what the law is and does. Obviously, they can’t change the law, but the sales job that they are promoting involves completely re-writing what the law does and doesn’t do.

For example, some sources falsely claim that Section 230 makes it impossible to hold large platforms accountable for the actions that they take. This is simply false because platforms can still be sued even for the content that is posted on their platforms. For instance, if someone posts an unauthorized copy of a movie onto a platform, then the platform must abide by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). As such, if they receive a notice to take down that content, then they must comply with that DMCA notice and take it down or face liability for copyright infringement.

We could go on about other examples on how platforms still face liability, but to say that Section 230 removes all liability from platforms is simply false.

Another false talking point is that Section 230 only serves to protect the large platforms and, as a result, has become outdated. This is false on a variety of fronts. For one, Section 230 protects all websites and services, not just the largest platforms. For another, Section 230 is actually far more relevant today because of the large platforms simply because it allows competitors to crop up and flourish. If anything, the removal of Section 230 would likely mean that only the largest platforms survive since they can absorb the financial hits while smaller websites would get wiped out virtually overnight, ensuring no one can challenge the dominance of the likes of Google or Facebook. In the process, this also eviscerates the argument that sunsetting Section 230 would somehow “rein in Big Tech” because the effect would be precisely the opposite.

Generally speaking, the push to sunset Section 230 is based on lies and disinformation. What’s more, sunsetting Section 230 would completely eviscerate free speech online because it would put huge amounts of costly legal liability on innovators trying to build a business online. So, the stakes are quite high here.

Now that the US general election is over, it seems that MAGA Republican’s and Democrats have gotten straight back to work pushing to kill Section 230. From GizModo:

Section 230, the linchpin law that has dictated how online platforms have been regulated for decades, appears destined to come to an end. According to The Information, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin and Republican Lindsey Graham are planning to introduce a new bill that will set an expiration date for the law and encourage tech companies to offer alternatives as to what should replace it.

Per The Information, the bill could be introduced as early as Monday, March 24, and is expected to have bipartisan support from Republicans Josh Hawley and Marsha Blackburn and Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse and Amy Klobuchar, who are reportedly ready to co-sponsor the bill. It’s also a modified version of a proposal made last year in the House by Republican Cathy Rodgers and Democrat Frank Pallone, Jr., so there is some juice for this thing throughout Congress. The proposal would effectively sunset Section 230, setting January 1, 2027, as a drop-dead date for the law that so many tech companies have leaned on to duck legal challenges.

The gambit that Durbin and Graham appear to be attempting is to force tech companies to the table and talk about Section 230 alternatives. By setting a deadline, the message is basically, “Come help us write the replacement law or lose this protection in its entirety.” The latter should be basically an intolerable outcome for tech firms, as it would leave them extremely exposed to legal challenges.

While the report at least offers some information about the plan to kill Section 230, not to mention offering a timeline, it is also extremely confused as to what Section 230 does. After all, as I pointed out, Section 230 is not exclusively about “Big Tech” as it still serves to protect smaller websites from endless frivolous and expensive litigation.

Techdirt offers some good commentary on this whole thing:

To understand just how dangerous this move is, consider a law that Senator Amy Klobuchar — one of the supporters of this new bill — pushed just a few years ago. In 2021, she introduced legislation to amend Section 230 in a way that would allow the Health & Human Services Secretary to designate certain online content as “health misinformation,” requiring websites to remove it.

Consider what that would mean in practice: Today’s Health & Human Services Secretary is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a man who believes the solution to measles is to have more children die of measles. Under Klobuchar’s proposal, he would literally have the power to declare pro-vaccine information as “misinformation” and force it off the internet. We warned Klobuchar about this, but apparently the lesson didn’t stick.

And that was just one narrow carve-out to Section 230. Now these Senators want to remove all protections entirely.

Last year, Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Frank Pallone introduced a similar bill in the House. Like that one, this new plan is essentially legislative extortion: put a sunset date on Section 230 to magically “force big tech to come to the table” to negotiate “something better.”

The timing here is what makes this move particularly baffling — and dangerous. At the exact moment when Trump and his allies are systematically dismantling democratic institutions and attempting to silence critics, these Democratic Senators want to hand them an incredibly powerful censorship tool.

Here’s what repealing Section 230 would actually do: remove the law that explicitly protects websites when they resist government pressure to censor speech. Without those protections, the Trump administration would have far more leverage to force platforms to remove content they don’t like — whether that’s criticism of Trump, exposure of corruption, or information about voting rights. It can also allow them to pressure websites to host pro-MAGA or pro-Nazi content that sites might not wish to associate with.

Think that’s hyperbole? Consider what’s already happening with all of the various attacks on the media and even law firms that have supported Democratic causes.

Repealing Section 230 entirely would simply give the administration even more power to control online speech. It would give the Trump administration incredible latitude to censor any kind of content they dislike, even if that content would nominally be protected under the First Amendment. I explained why in a thread on Bluesky, that details how the removal of Section 230 would make it way, way more expensive for any website to defend decisions to leave certain content up, even if they’d win on First Amendment grounds.

With Section 230, if a website (or a user!) wants to defend its right to keep content up (or take it down), winning such a case typically costs around $100,000. Without those protections, even if you’d ultimately win on First Amendment grounds, you’re looking at about $2 million in legal fees. For Meta or Google, that’s a rounding error. For a small news site or blog, it’s potentially fatal. And this includes users who simply forward an email or retweet something they saw. Section 230 protects them as well, but without it, they’re at the whims of legal threats.

That is ultimately the reality of the situation. If you are a huge fan of platforms like Facebook being one of maybe three places to communicate online, along with all the enshittification that goes along with something like that, then this news is great news for you. For everyone else including people who support the idea of people starting small businesses online or think that freedom of expression should not be under further threat, however, this is absolutely terrible news.

Even worse, as Masnick noted, this is all happening at a time when Trump is trying to implement a system that targets thought crimes where anyone criticizing him or his administration is going to face the full extent of the law. After all, it was only the other day I was reporting on Trump ordering a crackdown on judges that dare to rule against him for any reason at all. This, of course, goes all the way down to the weaponization of government law enforcement departments to target online speech that criticizes the government and punish those who dare post such things.

It’s dangerous enough that Trump wants to crack down on anyone who he feels hurt is precious fee-fees, but it’s even more dangerous that Democrats are assisting Republican’s to make a Trump internet censorship machine a reality. At this point, the hope is that there are some procedural delays that push this insane attack on the internet back. After all, there are already very few guardrails still functionally intact to put a stop to all of this insanity going on in the US.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.