News » Liability a Bigger Threat to Big Tech Than Anti-Trust

Liability a Bigger Threat to Big Tech Than Anti-Trust

June 17, 2019

House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff of California has recently joined others in Congress who are calling for recalibration of a law that shields platforms like Facebook and Google from liability for user’s posts. Social media companies are coming under increasing criticism for allowing hate speech, false information and fake video on their sites under the umbrella of free speech, but they do so confident that they’re in the clear no matter how odious the content because Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects companies that carry user-generated content from bearing legal liability for what their users post. Lawmakers have been threatening broad changes to the immunity law for over a year. So far they haven’t advanced any legislative proposals, but Schiff sounded pretty fed up when he talked to reporters about the topic after a hearing on the national security implications of AI-manipulated videos. “If the social media companies can’t exercise a proper standard of care when it comes to a whole variety of fraudulent or illicit content, then we have to think about whether immunity still makes sense,” he said. Danielle Citron, a University of Maryland law professor who has written extensively about deepfakes and was a witness at the hearing told the committee that immunity should be conditioned on reasonable content moderation practices. “It shouldn’t be a free pass,” he said.

Read full article at:

Daily Updates

Sign up for our free daily newsletter for the latest news and business legal developments.

Scroll to Top