SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
US Senators Mark Warner (D-VA), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) on Friday introduced draft legislation to limit the legal protections available to social networks, websites, and anything else that provides an "interactive computer service."
The three politicians proposed a bill they're calling the SAFE TECH Act [PDF], which narrows the liability protection afforded to organizations by Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act.
[...] Section 230 of the CDA is the legal foundation of the modern internet because it provides a way for orgs to host user-generated content while, more or less, avoiding legal liability for that content. And it allows companies to maintain that qualified immunity even when they moderate user-generated content.
[...] "A platform that hosts organizing efforts for armed militia groups making direct calls for violence faces no legal consequences for its actions, even when reported by users hundreds of times in advance of the tragic events," laments Warner, pointing at the lack of consequences for online services that were used to organize the attempted insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The bill proposes to clarify where Section 230 immunity does not apply. It seeks to remove platform protection for:
- Ads and other paid content, so platforms can't profit from unlawful or harmful services.
- Civil rights law and antitrust law violation claims.
- Harassment/cyberstalking claims related to protected classes (e.g. sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, etc).
- Wrongful death claims.
- Alien Tort Claims Act claims (e.g. allowing survivors of the Rohingya genocide to sue Facebook).
Also at Reuters which adds:
There are several other pieces of legislation aimed at changing the law doing the rounds, including one from Republican Senators Roger Wicker and Lindsey Graham. There is another one from Democratic Senator Joe Manchin and a bipartisan bill from Democrat Brian Schatz and Republican John Thune.
What do other countries do?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 08 2021, @05:24PM
You are most likely misunderstanding what the bill says.
The section where it adds the various exceptions are not the normal disclaimers on legalese about not contradicting some other act. Those are exceptions that are being specifically removed from protections for 230. So for instance it removes protections against lawsuits for any act claiming "harassment" under State law. This means sites would now, themselves, be potentially liable for any post which could possibly be interpreted, under any state's set of laws, as possibly being harassing in nature.
The goal is to effectively destroy any sort of possible free speech style competitor to Twitter/Facebook/etc, while also encouraging Facebook/Twitter/etc to become even more aggressive in censorship of everything outside of establishment politics, all while trying to angle shoot around the First Amendment.