Sen. Graham Wants to Avoid CDA Section 230 Amendment Over Content Issues
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., wants to avoid altering Communications Decency Act Section 230, he told us. Several key lawmakers are discussing the possibility of amending tech industry immunity from third-party content liability.
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Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner, D-Va., and Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, told us they’re doing separate Section 230 examinations. House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., told us he plans a hearing to re-examine Section 230 and other issues, repeating previous statements. The House Intelligence Committee is also scrutinizing the issue (see 1906130048).
Graham said he wants to address privacy, content moderation and platform manipulation concerns, “short of” altering 230, which allowed the internet to “thrive.” Judiciary should look at “neutral platform protections in light of where it’s evolved. I don’t want to destroy startups. I want to keep this area of our lives growing and flourishing, but there comes a point where nobody envisioned how invasive it could be and how these platforms could be manipulated.” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., dismissed the suggestion platforms must be neutral to claim immunity, calling such conservative claims “factually wrong.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee will offer a “series of recommendations” on Section 230, Warner said, noting he’s considering legislation separately. Warner hasn’t decided whether he supports immunity, but he noted the section had been altered for crimes like sex trafficking, child pornography and bomb-making. Further amendments are worth debating, he said, noting he’s not taking 230-specific legislation “off the table.” Industry says it wants to address other related problems, “but their willingness to sit down and kind of get to the heart of some of these issues has been a challenge,” he said. Warner is working through introducing a series of bills based on his white paper (see 1904090084). One could deal with identity and content issues, he said: “If people had to own their speech, you might not have the amount of hate speech you have.”
Schatz said he’ll have “something to announce” in the next couple of months on the section, though it’s unclear if that means legislation: “This is a serious question, and I frankly haven’t decided what the best approach is.” He called it a “hard look” at 230, saying he wants to “measure twice, cut once. We have to really get this right. It may be that we should hold 230 harmless, but all federal law ought to be re-evaluated periodically, and this is no exception.”
Further weakening this portion could have repercussions for startups, Wyden said, without directly saying immunity should be protected. “A variety of people on the far right say that 230 requires neutrality. That’s factually wrong. You can have conservative sites saying what they wish. You can have progressive sites saying what they wish.” Wyden is focused on “getting the facts out there.”
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., took aim at Section 230 in March (see 1903010062), citing conservative “viewpoint discrimination.” Hawley said Wednesday he has raised the issue with Graham: “I know the chairman’s interested in these broad set of issues, which I think is good.” Ranking member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., meanwhile, said she’s not familiar with Section 230.
“I’ve said over the years we ought to consider whether changes should be made,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “I’m open to considering what should be done to make the tech companies more accountable to the public.” Tech companies have no responsibility for content now, he said: “They should have more.”