Democratic Senators Team Up With MAGA To Hand Trump A Censorship Machine
from the not-meant-for-this-moment dept
At the exact moment when Donald Trump and his MAGA allies are actively dismantling democratic institutions and working to silence critics, a group of Democratic Senators have decided to collaborate with Trump’s supporters to make it easier to censor speech online.
As reported in The Information (paywalled), several Democratic Senators are teaming up with some of Trump’s strongest Senate allies to repeal Section 230 — the law that both enables content moderation and protects websites from being sued into oblivion for hosting user speech.
They appear to be doing this out of a deep misunderstanding of how the law works combined with an astounding naiveté about how this process will be used by the MAGA faithful.
As early as next week, Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican, plan to introduce a bill that would set an expiration date of Jan. 1, 2027, for Section 230, according to a congressional aide familiar with the bill’s development. The senators have wide-ranging support from their respective parties: Republicans Josh Hawley and Marsha Blackburn and Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse and Amy Klobuchar have agreed to co-sponsor the bill. And two more Democrats, Richard Blumenthal and Peter Welch, have discussed joining as co-sponsors.
If all goes according to plan, Durbin and Graham’s proposal would be the first bipartisan bill introduced in Congress that could repeal what’s often lauded as the 26 words that created the internet.
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.”
Or, as law professor Eric Goldman’s meme made clear last year, it’s taking the internet hostage:
The fundamental problem here is that these Senators don’t understand what Section 230 actually does — or how its repeal would make their stated goals harder to achieve. Take the lead Democrat on this bill, Senator Dick Durbin, who has long demonstrated his confusion about the law. Just this week, in an interview with Capitol Fax (an Illinois political newsletter whose design is even more outdated than Techdirt’s!) Durbin doubled down on his misunderstanding, revealing exactly how his confusion could lead to disaster:
Isabel Miller: A first amendment lawyer said your plan to sunset Section 230 would stifle free speech. A reporter said that it would destroy the open internet. And my boss said that if 230 was repealed, it would put his website out of business. Why do you want to do this?
Sen. Durbin: Because of the sexual exploitation on the internet.
Isabel: Aren’t there rules in place to stop that already?
Sen. Durbin: Section 230 says the following: If your teenage daughter is exploited with images which I can’t even describe here, on the internet, and she discovers it to her horror and goes to that internet, social media source and said, ‘take them down,’ there is no legal obligation for them to do so. Why? Because Section 230 says they can’t be held liable for continuing to broadcast this filth at the expense of this poor girl and her family. That’s why 230 has to be revisited. 20 years ago, it might have made sense. It doesn’t make sense now. There is no reason why the people on the internet should get away with this, and what we say is, if they want to do that, then they’re subject to being sued. I think that will slow down the trafficking in this terrible sexploitation.
Durbin’s response perfectly encapsulates how dangerous this misunderstanding is. He claims Section 230 prevents websites from being held accountable for “exploitation,” when in reality:
- Every major platform already has robust policies for removing non-consensual intimate imagery, supported by industry-wide programs like NCMEC’s Take It Down system and StopNCII‘s hashing database.
- These removal systems exist because of Section 230, which explicitly protects platforms when they take down harmful content, making it reasonable for sites to make use of these efforts. Without 230’s protections, platforms would face increased liability risks for any moderation attempts.
- Most critically, Durbin confuses the actual criminals (who can and should be prosecuted) with the tools they misuse. It’s like blaming the phone company for criminal conspiracies plotted over phone lines.
This isn’t just academic confusion — it’s the kind of fundamental misunderstanding that could give the Trump administration unprecedented power to control online speech.
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.
And that’s exactly the point. When the cost of defending your editorial choices becomes existential, you don’t defend them at all. You take down whatever the powerful want taken down. You host whatever they insist you host. The First Amendment might technically protect you, but that protection becomes meaningless if you can’t afford to prove it in court.
The dumbest part of this is that while these Senators will likely claim they are doing this to punish “big tech,” this would actually strengthen Meta and Google’s dominance. While smaller sites shut down rather than risk bankruptcy from legal fees, Meta or Google can easily absorb those same costs. It’s as if these Senators looked at the internet’s consolidation problem and decided the solution was… more consolidation.
Which brings us back to the core question: how could these Democratic Senators support a plan that would simultaneously give Donald Trump unprecedented censorship powers while also consolidating Meta’s control over online speech?
The evidence suggests they simply don’t understand what they’re doing. Each of these Senators has a documented history of fundamental confusion about Section 230 and how the internet works:
- Richard Blumenthal has been getting Section 230 wrong since his days as Connecticut’s AG in the early 2000s.
- Sheldon Whitehouse’s chapter on free speech revealed such profound confusion about Section 230 that it’s hard to believe he’s actually read the law.
- We’ve already covered Durbin and Klobuchar’s dangerous misunderstandings.
This isn’t just about being wrong on tech policy anymore. These Senators are about to hand Trump and his allies exactly what they need to silence opposition and control the online conversation. Whether through ignorance or incompetence, they’re actively undermining the democratic institutions they claim to protect.
The cynical read would be that they’re in league with Trump. The more likely explanation is that they simply don’t care enough to have thought through the implications of what they’re doing. But at this particular moment in history, that level of cluelessness might actually be worse.
If these Democratic Senators truly want to protect democracy from Trump’s authoritarian impulses, they need to wake up fast. Because right now, they’re doing his censorship work for him.
If not, they should get out of the way for others who actually understand both the moment and the law.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, amy klobuchar, content moderation, dick durbin, lindsey graham, richard blumenthal, section 230, sheldon whitehouse, sunset 230
Comments on “Democratic Senators Team Up With MAGA To Hand Trump A Censorship Machine”
is there anyway at all to stop these idiotic bills!? everoyones just sitting around letting censoship take control!! why!! why is there nothing we can do to stop this!! it seems like all we can do is accept the internet is over and so is all freedom of expression
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Almost feels like the case at this point. I don’t see how we’re stopping this anymore either, so I’m doing my best to put faith in those who might be able to stop it.
Were I religious, I’d be praying to God too while I’m at it.
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Is there any democrats that aren’t fucking stupid??? Let me put it this way. Are there any millennials that aren’t fucking stupid? You all o here, bitching and crying about your internet being censored and you’re the fucking reason it is, you pansy asses.
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We can share this article with as many people as possible. We can call our senators every day to demand that they vote against the repeal of 230, and ask other people to do the same. We can contact Durbin, Klobuchar, Whitehouse and Blumenthal too, even if we aren’t their constituents. They might not pay attention, but we can at least try.
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Individual bills may be voted down or run out of time, but they’re like the waves of the ocean. They’ll keep coming until one day one will top the sea defences & get through.
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If it’s inevitable, why bother commenting? The internet would die anyway by that logic.
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There is. You go and call your Congresspeople and tell them you don’t support it. The only way this stops is if they know enough constituents are going to be mad, and mad enough to actually not vote for/support them.
Better yet, go and talk to your friends/family, get them up to speed and calling as well. It’s a numbers game. The reason these come up is that the vast majority of voters have no clue it’s a problem, and so there is no risk of backlash. The reason these bills exist is because they think voters will like “Doing Something”.
Many Democrats would happily dismantle parts of the government as well — how many of them would like to see the Second Amendment burn (I’m pretty okay with that, btw).
The thing is, Democrats have always stuck to process and the current administration has shown that if you ignore process, you can get just about anything done.
So I expect to see more of this in the coming months, whenever extreme liberal and conservative viewpoints overlap. A few fringe Dems will align themselves with the Republican establishment to dismantle something in the government they don’t understand or approve of.
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No, you won’t see more of it. You won’t have an internet to SEE it on.
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If section 230 were actually repealed, it would radically change the internet; it wouldn’t outright destroy it.
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Yes it would, it would destroy comment sections, social media platforms, art sites, forums, video game modding, hell, maybe even multiplayer videogames themselves.
It would destroy everything good there is about the internet and leave us all unable to communicate with each other, forever. And congress wants it, eagerly.
THAT is what I’m hearing, from everywhere, all the time. And it’s driving me into an irrational meltdown of doing stupid shit like this very post
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Such a repeal would effectively destroy the Internet as a two-way communication network, though. I doubt even Google would want to risk being the target of thousands of lawsuits for…well, the entirety of YouTube, for starters.
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Part of me hopes it might motivate Google to actually do something about this instead of just letting it happen.
Otherwise, this will genuinely kill the digital economy in the US, most likely.
It’ll be the end of everything that is the internet and its culture. It’s existentially nightmarish.
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Any competently run website/platform that relies on user generated content is going to fight this. Right up to trying to get Trump to veto it by telling him about the lawsuits that will hit Truth Social when Section 230 ends.
If those attempts fail, the moment this gets signed they will start moving everything to do with user generated content outside of the US. They can’t wait to see if a replacement is good. They can’t even wait to see if the replacement is attempted, nor risk an attempt failing at the last minute.
Once they have moved those data centers out of the US, they aren’t going to be rushing to bring them back if the replacement suits their interests.
Who needs rigged elections when the Democrats are working hard to make sure none of thier voters EVER vote for them again.
Been doing my best to email some orgs like EFF about this. I can’t do much myself but the sooner widespread criticism can be roused, the better.
Like dawg, I don’t wanna lose the web. Where else am I gonna find cool art and cool friends? I’d still have them, sure, but like.
Gaming’s gonna be pretty boring if nobody’s allowed to talk anymore.
Been nice getting to know most of you on this internet thing.
Welp. Hoooow do we stop this one, this time? Courts any bet if opposition doesn’t kill it?
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You don’t let it pass in Congress. Repealing a bill is not something the courts can stop.
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I imagine that, in theory, the courts could eventually come up with some sort of doctrine that looks like 230’s process but there would be frivolous lawsuits in the meanwhile. The best scenario is to stop such a bill from passing.
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The way I see it, it sounds like the majority of congress supports it, no?
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It’s technically possible, but it’d be a hard change. The reason this is an issue is because the normal process around 1st amendment law (and so many other rights) has already gotten so dysfunctional. 230 fixes it for internet service provider stuff, but the issues around expensive discovery etc pops up in other areas a lot (like paper publications facing SLAPP suits, DMCA defense, etc). Legal proceedings being expensive is the accepted norm outside specific bandaids like 230/anti-SLAPP.
It’d require a fundamental rethink (and overturning of precedent) about how the cost of court interacts with defending/exercising rights. As a society we’ve kind of become inured idea that it’s ok that court can be unfeasibly expensive.
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Yes, this needs to be stopped somewhere.
Maybe by convincing enough members of Congress or the Senate to vote against it because of how bad it will be.
If that fails, just remember that Trump owns Truth Social. He will be personally hurt by the removal of 230. Get him to understand that and there is hope for a veto.
The existence of room 641A would suggest to me there’s a reason this didn’t have to happen in the first place. They’re terrified of encryption. MMW, if they find something that works on 230, they’re going to try it on E2EE next.
Yet another exhibit making the case that the Democrats are completely misreading the moment. This whole stunt is a hold-over from their ignorant “protect the children/stand against Big Tech” grandstanding during the Biden administration. It was a dumbass idea then, for obvious reasons. If you want to hold Big Tech accountable, or if you want to bully them to the negotiating table, how about you propose a law that, and follow me carefully here, actually hurts Big Tech? A strong federal all-ages privacy law would hit ’em right in the pocketbook, for example, without stifling smaller players.
But no, instead of doing the right thing last year, or the year before, or the year before that, they fixated on “solutions” that will hurt people — and now they’re bringing that fixation forward into what we can charitably describe as a radically changed environment.
Terminal goddamn Senate brain, I swear.
They know exactly what they're doing
They appear to be doing this out of a deep misunderstanding of how the law works combined with an astounding naiveté about how this process will be used by the MAGA faithful.
…
The fundamental problem here is that these Senators don’t understand what Section 230 actually does — or how its repeal would make their stated goals harder to achieve. Take the lead Democrat on this bill, Senator Dick Durbin, who has long demonstrated his confusion about the law. Just this week, in an interview with Capitol Fax (an Illinois political newsletter whose design is even more outdated than Techdirt’s!) Durbin doubled down on his misunderstanding, revealing exactly how his confusion could lead to disaster:
…
Durbin’s response perfectly encapsulates how dangerous this misunderstanding is.
…
This isn’t just academic confusion — it’s the kind of fundamental misunderstanding that could give the Trump administration unprecedented power to control online speech.
…
The evidence suggests they simply don’t understand what they’re doing. Each of these Senators has a documented history of fundamental confusion about Section 230 and how the internet works:
No.
These are full-grown adults. They are not children who have never heard about 230 before, have never had people explain why they are wrong, and have no way to get experts on the phone any time they want to explain the law to them and how it’s applied in practice.
Stunts like this are not the result of ‘confusion’. They are not built upon a ‘misunderstanding’ of the law in question. To the extent that they might be ‘ignorant’ about 230 and how it’s applied it’s entirely willful ‘ignorance’. They have no valid excuses at this point not to know that what they’re saying isn’t an honest or accurate reflection of the law and how it’s applied and last I checked there’s a word for saying things you know aren’t true:
Lying.
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Paid to be stupid, yeah?
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If they’re willfully lying, how’re we stopping them?
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Lying is a deliberate misstatement of facts known to the individual, and thus all lying is willful, numbnuts.
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You’re evading my question by playing semantics.
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Nice strawman. Best watch it doesn’t spontaneously combust, MAGAt troll.
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Un-fucking-believable that you’d call me that. I’m one of the people in these comments directly calling them what they are; nazis.
This is the consequence of anonymous comments, I suppose.
Both can be true. 230 functions by making it so they can’t be treated as a publisher.
Those ‘robust’ policies doesn’t stop them from choosing not to take down content. (“major” is also doing a lot of work there, plenty of skeazy sites that don’t. ie, Jones v. Dirty World Entertainment Recordings LLC)
Also not sure I’d consider the policies in Barnes v Yahoo , or present day Twitter 2 to be particularly robust.
Depends on how negligent and/or complicit the phone company is (although criminal is a bad word choice. 230 wouldn’t protect the platform from liability for actual criminal conspiracies). 230 doesn’t allow provider of an interactive web service to be treated as a publisher, unless it’s first party speech. They can be complicit and involved as a third party, and it’s covered. It doesn’t just have to be as a tool. This explicitly includes editorial control like choosing to publish or alter content, with direct knowledge.
That’s neglecting any cases they might lose. The overlap between 230 and 1st Amendment is not a circle. (which, ironically, makes this incredibly dangerous for Facebook, especially in the “we’re ok with assholes” phase they’re currently claiming to be in)
That all said, despite overstating the case a bit, this is really bad, and people should be calling those Dem Senators. I hope all the people who insisted Congress’ mind couldn’t possibly be changed in regards to 230 will call anyway. You can find their official contact phone numbers here. You can also use the U.S. Capitol Switchboard. Do not let them get away with just an email.
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While there might be some site out there which is dodgier (I don’t think chasing every single one is practical or feasible), more legitimate ones do care about these issues (even if imperfect, including perhaps being too over-zealous in enforcement).
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I don’t think letting someone determine who is “skeazy” would go well.
Not that long ago, someone was acting as if a smaller player was dodgy simply because they didn’t operate in the same fashion as the larger ones, looking for “signs” of them being bad. This included bashing them over things like privacy settings or having less formal operations.
I’m also wary of acting as if what the big players are doing is what everyone should be doing. Apart from having more resources, the big players also have their own cultural bubble and ideas of how to do things.
Treating someone as culpable because they didn’t do something a big player did only benefits Big Tech.
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Incorrect. Section 230 functions by making it so websites can’t be treated as the publisher of content generated by third parties. Now, for the love of God, will you please stop shilling for the anti-230 crowd?
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Arianity has been corrected on this several times.
Their continued lying about 230 is willful.
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I’ve never claimed 230 protects first party speech (including in that post), nor not made the distinction between third party. Nor was I corrected on it in the past.
Bit rich coming from a liar. Feel free to provide a single time I’ve made that mistake, or been corrected on it.
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You were saying? You do know the implication created by your omission of pertinent information, don’t you, anti-230 liar?
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Yes, as I was saying:
230 doesn’t allow provider of an interactive web service to be treated as a publisher, unless it’s first party speech. It’s literally in the same post. Maybe try reading the entire post? (Or previous posts, which say the exact same thing)
This does not imply liability for first party speech, unless you’re intentionally reading it in bad faith. At best, it would be ambiguous and poorly worded on my part, if you were too stupid to read the rest of the post. (Or past posts. I’m still waiting for these mad up past examples where I made this claim and had this explained to me, by the way. You know, the ones that didn’t happen).
You tried a bad faith gotcha, didn’t read the whole thing, and fucked up. Again. Go back to complaining that posts are too long.
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That is the exact same statement in slightly longer form (and one that is clarified later down in the post, if it was somehow unclear instead of just being an attempted nitpick : 230 doesn’t allow provider of an interactive web service to be treated as a publisher, unless it’s first party speech.). I’m not saying they can’t be treated as the publisher for first party speech.
(And as a side note, being a publisher is different from being the speaker
Pointing out when something is inaccurate isn’t shilling for anti-230. Intentionally trying to paper over those inaccuracies is not helpful in keeping 230.
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Which is why AC, unlike you, could never rightfully be accused of shilling for anti-230 politicians.
So why do you keep on doing that?
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What inaccuracies do you think I’m papering over?
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Short sighted
This is written like the site suggests it is. Tech bro stuff.
Is Durbin clumsy? Yes. Valid point but what this article doesn’t get at iis how repeal of 230 forces platforms hands.
Too many people get death threats, including public officials and judges, because 230 protects the platforms.
That’s why Dems are on board. Sure internet platforms can have more space to do things. But repeal of 230 also makes them liable.
Your article, while valid, is only one half of the problem. It ignores the other half.
In less than 4 years, god willing, there will be another president with different ideas. Section 230 is not about presidential whims. And it doesn’t give a blank check for abuse. It provides tools for – not the Internet companies or the government, but ME (or you) – to sue and say “Hell no, you won’t threaten me or my family”.
Divorce from tech bro thinking. It’s narrow.
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Luckily for you we have Section 230 which allowed TD to have a comment system you could use to post your misconceptions.
Says the man who doesn’t understand Section 230, while relying on the daily.
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Just because reality and logic go over your head doesn’t make it “tech bro,” troll.
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It’s not tech-bro thinking. Most of them don’t think, and plenty are on board with your views.
Deal with death threats the waywe always have. 230 is irrelevant here.
idk if your thinking is merely narrow, it’s probably also willfully ignorant, given themost charitable appraisal.
That Darn Durbin
When will these lame-ass Dems read the room? The base is fed up with the “moderate” Dems that don’t get the Repubs’ only agenda is to give Trump more power.
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They won’t have to listen to their voter base if/when they kill the internet, duh!
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Such idiocy would make them forget that emails aren’t the only way voters can reach out to them. They always have routes like letters, phone calls, and visits to town halls—and those are the peaceful ways of making their voices heard.
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Think it’s going to take physical protests directed at them or successful primaries, at this point. If you just listen to their comments, they’re just completely out of touch with what’s happening right now.
Durbin and Blumenthal need to fucking go.
These old ass senile motherfuckers just won’t stop with this “think of the children” bullshit and won’t til either they die or it finally passes.
Senators from a age where moral panic went crazy (1980s-1990s) with lies and bullshit about how video games, DnD, various other popular entertainment would harm children and lied about how support they had plus used neglectful parents to spread sob stories about how games for example would corrupt and harm children which it didn’t.
Now these old bastards are planning one last fuck you to everyone that enjoys the internet because they are old and petty because most of their “think of the children” bills died over the years and now they want to punish everyone that stood in their way with pushing the “moral crusade” lies and bullshit.
Their “moral crusade” needs to die a permanent death because their way of protecting children doesn’t belong in this era and would harm others for their twisted desire.
I will personally be donating money to any candidate that primaries any democrat that does not support section 230. This is another example of incompetence from the party that should have their shit together. I thought they would have learned their lesson after the clusterfuck that was the TikTok ban.
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Get ready to primary the whole party then.
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I say go for it. The DNC needs that kind of reshuffling if Dems want to be a party worth taking seriously again. Their “we have to respect decorum” pussyfooting isn’t getting them shit; give me some fucking fighters like AOC and Bernie.
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There are plenty of Democrats who havebeen locked out of the party apparatus and elections, so we’re probably good to go.
How likely is this to pass
I’m British, how likely is this to pass as I understand American bills normally don’t pass and was scared about KOSA but that failed?
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I think you need to use govtrack.
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We have the Online Safety Act in the UK to gut the internet for us. What will happen I think is the balkanisation of the internet will finally happen along national & geopolitical lines. In some US states (due to age verification laws) Pornhub is no longer available. More blocking & no small websites, just the tech giants like Facebook, Amazon, etc. All by design.
Am I missing something? Wouldn’t the repeal of S230 leave websites open to defamation actions for material posted by users? If so, it would mean the demise of all social media, and the end of the comments functions which make so many wesites viable.
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Yes, if you moderate the user content at all. And not just defamation, but other types of liability. That’s why this is so bad. You’re not missing anything, it is that bad.
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Does that include piercing the corporate veil if the the wealthy owner of the company personally makes moderation decisions ?
I’ve got two social media companies in mind with this question.
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Yep. A likely similar outcome to the UK’s Online Safety Act. When we’re old, we’ll reminisce about how when we were young you could pretty much say anything online. Like when you could smoke anywhere.
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This is one of the points people have een making since before 230.
It leaves everyone who interacts with such a post open to liability or at least suit, which is just a slightly abridged form of liability as you aren’t getting your time, money, etc., back.
This is exactly the part the half-thinking refuse to get. They are attempting to declare open season on themselves, because they have leopard repellent or some shit, but the certainly don’t have the money and lawyers their supposed enemies do.
EU did have good idea...
EU Did have good idea by having DIFFERENT policies for Big Tech with Digital Markets Act. Why USA can’t go same approach? Smaller resources keep current Section 230 and big ones get more strict threatment.
Yes, there could be issues with federated platforms but it’s another problem and federated platforms usually make it possible for instance admins to express they views by choosing what’s available AND users could go different instance.
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Which opens up another mess if the DMA demands the removal of content, while the Section 230 replacement prevents its removal. Pro-Nazi content seems a ripe area for that mess.
If Section 230 gets killed, the replacement determines if social media dies in the US or has to be kept separate from social media that operates in the EU. If no replacement law is written, social media dies in the US.
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Remove vs not remove is another mess. It’s also mostly …arleady solved in practice.. with goverment censorship request. People from country which says ‘remove’ will get HTTP 451 if it’s possible or no answer if it’s not.
Potential issue here – some countries (I think Canada was reported on this) try to get global block requests.
Also, tech companies could easily say that if global block requests should be done – this meant that requests from ALL countries should be honored globally too or company get serious problems in such countries, even company decide not to have business in such countries – their courts could try to enforce their fines in 3rd countries. This could escalate
(check whole issue with Youtube’s censorship of certain Russian channels. Russian court ordered or astreinte fines be applied. Google said they can’t do this – channel owner is under personal US sanctions. Recent news was that there were attempts to collect that fine in Turkey(?)).
It’s better not to go here.
I went so far as to try and contact AOC to oppose this bill if they got the chance, but I don’t think they ended up actually receiving the email..
Figures, suppose. Not one of her constituents or anything like so, anyway.
More delicious schadenfreude from all the shitwits who keep getting angry when I bring up how the DNC proved they were completely OK with fascist tactics back in 2009.
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Uh, what, and also, what?
Pff.
TikTok ban 2.0
Let’s see…
* Embrace Internet censorship to “protect the children”
* Pretend to be “tough on Big Tech” without passing an actual privacy bill or anything for that matter
* “Striking bipartisan support”
* Arbitrary deadlines that just so happens to be after major elections (in this case the 2026 midterms)
* Turn its targets into President Trump’s plaything
I think all that’s missing is a foreign bogeyman, but it’s not hard to find one.
If I understand Section 230 right, removing it will open up every website to to being sued over whatever users upload there.
That means lawsuits from all over. Especially from groups only looking to make some money, even if that means they arrange for the upload of whatever they sue over.
I can’t see how any website that relies on user generated content could survive in the US without Section 230. Though that’s with the assumption that nothing replaces it. 3 years is plenty of time to write a replacement that could be so much worse.
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It could be someone filing a lawsuit in order to put on a show.
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“Durbin confuses the actual criminals (who can and should be prosecuted) with the tools they misuse.”
Now apply that to firearms, please and thank you.
Love, a fan of both the 1st and 2nd amendment fan.
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You mean the things created for the sole purpose of putting bullets in living things with such speed that it tears parts of their bodies apart (and possibly rips them out of their bodies) so that the living thing is maimed at best and killed at worst? Those firearms?
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Obviously only the police and military can ever be trusted with such dangerous things. They are specially trained to handle them, and they would never abuse such power. Never.
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I didn’t say that and I’ll thank you to not imply that I did.
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That is exactly what your kind means and you know it.
At least you’ll have something to look forward to once this admin starts repealing amendments. Only the “good guys” will have those scary metal things that turn ordinary people into blood-thirsty child serial killers when they touch them in maybe a year or two.
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Holy mother of projecting what the fuck is your problem? “Your kind”?? I’m not even gonna start here, you crazy.
At the end of the day, tech policy is hard and politicians are so short-sighted when they say “just do this” and “this” would lead to various problems.
Assume Malice
If these Democratic senators insist on persisting in their inability to understand Section 230, it’s time to assume malice on their part. They want more censorship. What else should I think?
To quote Ian Fleming: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” Were a bit past that on attempts to repeal Section 230 by politicians who can’t distinguish a CGI script from a Cuisinart.
Here’s an idea: Why not submit potentially defamatory content for publication on governmental websites and see how much Senators hate 230 then?
More clear evidence of the need for a change in the ruling political parties. These people are NOT working for us. They all support the same small segment of our population- the filthy rich. Their “lesser of two evils” game needs to END. Both “sides” are evil, and the game they’re playing leaves us all stuck in the middle while the planet burns.
As David Bowie once wrote, “The Left wing’s broken, the Right is insane.”
Democracy demands more than a virtual coin flip every few years. “Partisan politics” are not a bug but rather a FEATURE. We deserve better. Time to DEMAND it.
"They appear to be doing this out of a deep misunderstanding of how the law works"
How to be in congress and Prove you are an idiot?
If its removed or Adjusted BADLY, which Will happen.
How far up the line do you think Court cases will stop?
Sue who wrote the comment, Sue the Site, Sue the Server company, Sue the Phone corp it appeared on, SUE Every internet service that HAD access to the SITE..
You might as well Kill it now. And kill every Newspaper thats left. Then lets get rid of the Whole News system.
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If you haven’t realized by now it was always malice, not stupidity that motivated almost everyone in DC, you’ll probably never accept it as truth.
Censorship?
Not just government control. Doesn’t 230 also immunize the platform from lawsuits about libel? That would make it open season on any platform where any contributor posts something that offends anyone else.
This is what created the internet. Not immunity from the government, but immunity from the general population seeking to blame the website owner for what others post (Or to simply SLAPP them down). Goodbye to any room for comments on any site. Goodbye ExTwitter and Reddit and Instagram and Facebook and … and…
Prop 230
Strange that the DOGE DEMOCRATS OF DELAWARE are falling all over themselves trying to outdo one another in supporting Trump’s censorship by giving full immunity to Zuckerberg and Musk in disempowering citizens and their Meta and X shareholders. Seems like “230” is a diversion by the two cartel parties while they serve their corporate masters in Delaware.
This will kill Wikipedia
Which might just be the point.
80 year olds
When are the dems going to start dumping these 80 year olds making laws on tech they will NEVER understand.
Sorry, someone has to say it.
Joe should have NEVER sought a 2nd term and Dick Durbin has no business making internet law.
I loved my octogenarian parents, but I would never place my current modern healthcare decisions in their hands. No matter how on the ball or smart they were.
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Unless their name is Wyden, the oldies need to go.
You are all as bat shit, crazy as the demon rats you support. And tell me you’re not tech people, because if you are I wouldn’t be worrying about the internet because you got bigger, fucking problems. Like number one you’re all that shit crazy, number 2, nobody liked you in school. Nobody likes you in adulthood, either. And number three, your children are just as sucky as you are!!! That is I’ll move on demon rats