Blumenthal Eyes Bipartisan Bill on Social Media Amplification
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Wednesday he plans a series of hearings on Communications Decency Act Section 230 with hopes of writing bipartisan legislation potentially dealing with platform liability on amplifying content.
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The connection between platform liability and amplification of content received a lot of attention during Supreme Court oral argument last month in Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh (see 2302210062). DOJ’s Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart made some important points differentiating third-party content from platform design, Blumenthal said during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s DOJ oversight hearing Wednesday with Attorney General Merrick Garland. Amplifying or changing content in certain ways goes beyond the statutory limits of Section 230, said Blumenthal.
Blumenthal said he will host the hearing before the Senate Privacy Subcommittee, which he chairs. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is the ranking member. Blumenthal said it’s the first in a series of hearings he hopes will lead to bipartisan legislation. He referenced plans to reintroduce the Earn It Act with Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
“I think Section 230 has become a suicide pact,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., discussing the fentanyl crisis during Wednesday’s hearing. “We have basically said to these companies, ‘You are absolved from liability. Make money.’ And they’re at it in overtime. And deaths result from it, and we have a responsibility on a bipartisan basis.”
Durbin said he spoke with Graham, and they agree Senate Judiciary is the venue to take on Section 230. Durbin said he hopes the committee has support from Garland and President Joe Biden. Garland said: “You certainly have our support with respect to finding a better way to get to social media companies, whether it’s civil or criminal, to take these kinds of things off their platforms, to search for [harmful content], to not use algorithms that recommend them. I totally agree with that.”
Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chair Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said she will continue her bipartisan push to pass antitrust legislation, following 2022 passage of the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act and the State Antitrust Enforcement Venue Act. Garland said he’s always interested in working with Congress to modernize antitrust laws to deal with multisided platforms. He said DOJ supports the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (see 2208010063) and the Open App Markets Act (see 2212200069). Klobuchar noted the Republican support for advancing those bills.