Proposals by Sen. Hawley and the DOJ to amend Section 230 protections would violate the First Amendment and bury tech platforms in legal cost and liability risk
Whether we know it or not, all Internet users rely on multiple online services to connect, engage, and express themselves online. Tweets: @eff , @eff , @jess_miers , and @atrupar Tweets: @eff : If AG Barr or Sen. Hawley gets their way, basic activities like offering encryption, or editing, removing, or otherwise moderating users' content could lead to years of legal costs and liability risk. That's bad for platforms—and for the rest of us. https://www.eff.org/... @eff : If these proposals succeed, basic activities like offering encryption, or editing, removing, or otherwise moderating users' content could lead to years of legal costs and liability risk. That's bad for platforms—and for the rest of us. https://www.eff.org/... Jess Miers / @jess_miers : Jon is right. @HawleyMO's proposal essentially strips 230 from large tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. That creates an excellent incentive for smaller companies and potential competitors to sell-out before they get too big. Who do you think they sell-out to? https://twitter.com/... Aaron Rupar / @atrupar : She's a US senator and she has absolutely no clue what the 1st Amendment says https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands in a three-day burst of Section 230 activity: on June 15, reporting surfaced that Sen. Josh Hawley's bill would make platform protections contingent on not letting advertisers target users by behavioral data ([[a:954687]]), followed two days later by his bill letting consumers sue any platform with 30M+ US monthly users over alleged political censorship ([[a:954752]]). On June 18 the DOJ proposed its own legislation adding conditions to the shield for Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others ([[a:954815]]).
EFF's warning is the civil-liberties counterweight to that sequence, arguing both proposals would violate the First Amendment and impose years of legal costs on ordinary platform functions — encryption, editing, removing, moderating user content. It echoes Reason's earlier framing of Section 230 as the internet's own speech protection, where repeal would hurt online speakers more than Big Tech ([[a:944481]]).
First-order effects
- Facebook, Google, and Twitter immediately face the prospect of consumer lawsuits under Hawley's 30M-user threshold, with every moderation decision becoming potential evidence in court.
- Platforms offering encryption or routine content editing lose legal cover under the DOJ's conditioned version of Section 230, turning basic product features into liability exposure.
Second-order effects
- Smaller platforms under the 30M-user line gain a structural advantage over Facebook and Twitter, since Hawley's suit-by-size design exempts them from the same censorship claims.
- Advertisers and platform product teams face pressure to rethink behavioral targeting, because Hawley's reported draft ties the liability shield directly to how ads are targeted.
Third-order effects
- If conditioning Section 230 on speech or ad-targeting behavior becomes the template, courts become the venue where platform speech policy is effectively set — the outcome EFF argues is itself a First Amendment problem, a pattern The Verge later identified as inherent to most Big Tech regulation talk ([[a:984476]]).
- The split between a size-based approach (Hawley) and a conditions-based approach (DOJ) signals that future reform fights will center on what platforms must give up to keep the shield, not whether the shield exists.
The trend: Section 230 is moving from a settled legal backstop to an annually contested bargaining chip, with lawmakers trading its protections for concessions on moderation, ad targeting, and platform size.