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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday July 30 2020, @02:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the change-is-in-the-wind dept.

Democrats want a truce with Section 230 supporters:

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which says apps and websites aren't legally liable for third-party content, has inspired a lot of overheated rhetoric in Congress. Republicans like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) have successfully framed the rule as a "gift to Big Tech" that enables social media censorship. While Democrats have very different critiques, some have embraced a similar fire-and-brimstone tone with the bipartisan EARN IT Act. But a Senate subcommittee tried to reset that narrative today with a hearing for the Platform Accountability and Consumer Transparency (PACT) Act, a similarly bipartisan attempt at a more nuanced Section 230 amendment. While the hearing didn't address all of the PACT Act's very real flaws, it presented the bill as an option for Section 230 defenders who still want a say in potential reforms.

[...] Still, Section 230 has been at the forefront of US politics for years, and some kind of change looks increasingly likely. If that's true, then particularly after today's hearing, a revised version of the PACT Act looks like the clearest existing option to preserve important parts of the law without dismissing calls for reform. And hashing out those specifics may prove more important than focusing on the policy's most hyperbolic critics.


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  • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday July 31 2020, @10:23PM

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Friday July 31 2020, @10:23PM (#1029506)

    A new party today could almost adopt it wholesale and win.

    Too bad TR had not swept into power with such a mandate in 1912. The task would be more difficult today. The forces of the "invisible government" are even more entrenched, with more money at stake, so efforts to eliminate it would have to be monumental. Instead we get things like the Tea Party or Trump, which speak vaguely in terms like that, but in reality work to even further entrench those interests.

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