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
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/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands in a fast-moving week of Section 230 activity: Sen. Josh Hawley first unveiled a bill letting consumers sue any platform with 30M+ US monthly users over alleged political-speech censorship (his suit-empowerment bill), followed by reporting that he would also make protections contingent on barring advertiser behavioral targeting (the ad-targeting contingency) and a separate DOJ proposal adding its own conditions to the immunity platform. The EFF's argument is the counterweight: both tracks, it says, violate the First Amendment and convert routine platform work — encryption, editing, removing content — into years of legal cost and exposure.
The stakes echo the long-running critique from Reason's 2019 argument that gutting Section 230 would wound online speech and marginalized communities far more than it wounds Big Tech itself — a frame Jess Miers extends by noting the proposals effectively exempt only smaller competitors, creating an incentive for startups to sell out before they scale.
First-order effects
- Google, Facebook, and Twitter immediately face dual exposure: consumer suits over moderation choices under Hawley's threshold-based bill, and new DOJ-imposed conditions layered onto their Section 230 immunity.
- Everyday platform functions named by the EFF — offering encryption and moderating or removing user content — become potential liability events rather than protected editorial acts.
Second-order effects
- Smaller platforms and would-be competitors, stripped of protection once they cross the size threshold, face pressure to sell to incumbents before scaling — concentrating the market the bills claim to target.
- If protections hinge on dropping behavioral ad targeting, advertisers' ability to reach users on major social platforms gets caught up in the same bargaining fight between Congress and the platforms.
Third-order effects
- A pattern of conditioning Section 230 on content or business-model demands would push US online speech policy toward case-by-case litigation as the de facto moderator, with First Amendment challenges deciding what platforms may host.
- The Verge's later observation that every Section 230 or Big Tech regulatory push imperils the First Amendment suggests this week's proposals are one round in a durable legislative cycle rather than a one-off.
The trend: US lawmakers are escalating attempts to make Section 230 immunity conditional on moderation and business practices, with civil-liberties critics reframing each push as a First Amendment threat.