The push has bipartisan support. Again.

Summary

Lawmakers are once again pushing to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields online platforms from legal liability for user-generated content.

Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) are collaborating on a bipartisan bill to sunset the law in two years.

Repealing Section 230 aims to force Congress to renegotiate platform liability standards.

The proposal reflects growing frustration over tech giants’ power and content moderation practices, but past efforts have faced political gridlock despite bipartisan support.

  • ofcourse@lemmy.ml
    330·
    1 day ago

    Sounds like talking points of someone paid off by social media to sow division about the bill.

    1. I don’t see why it’s an issue that this would apply to moderation of all user generated content on very large online platforms. That’s the point. The platforms are pushing false and controversial content to drive engagement and have not implemented the necessary guardrails to verify correctness and minimize harm (like, when a post/blog is inciting violence).
    2. That’s a definite possibility in the current regime that the bill will be used to silence dissent. But from what it looks, the White House doesn’t need bills to silence dissent. Everything in the country is being done by and fought between the executive and the judiciary with 0 public involvement. At least with a bill, there are >500 people involved in passing/blocking it so a larger surface for people to influence the decision.

    I would be more concerned about this bill never seeing the light of day because I don’t think the US Congress of this decade is capable of passing any major laws.

    • Aphelion@lemm.ee
      20·
      1 day ago

      Wow, you are either a complete troll/shill, or horribly lacking in critical thinking skills.

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
      18·
      1 day ago

      The platforms are pushing false and controversial content to drive engagement and have not implemented the necessary guardrails to verify correctness and minimize harm (like, when a post/blog is inciting violence).

      In the current climate I very much doubt that this is how the bill would be used if it became law. It will be used to silence political dissenters and prevent the organization of resistance. Right-wing disinformation will get a pass. Left-wing content will be censored. LGBTQ+ content will be censored. Health advice for trans people will be censored. Black history content will be censored. Women’s health and feminist content will be censored. Tech companies are not about to risk the wrath of Trump and huge financial penalties to stand up for these people’s right to speak.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
      9·
      1 day ago

      Yeah it would be great to change 230 so that at the very least tech companies are liable for the content their algorithms recommend to people. Seems akin to publishing something so should have the same liability.

      But that’s not what’s happening here. They want to repeal it entirely, this will create problems, which will give leeway for Trump to use EOs to resolve it, regardless of whether that’s legal. This will likely end up with Trump deciding what’s allowed on social media.

      The point of section 230 was to allow sites to do moderation without that resulting in liability. Without it the lemmy instances couldn’t operate in the US without being sued into oblivion. What’s lacking from the CDA is anything about sites using recommendation algorithms to push content. Because that kind of thing didn’t exist in 1995, when the law was written.