US government urges stricter liability for Twitter, Facebook and Co

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The US Department of Justice is targeting Facebbok and other US tech companies

Photo: JOHANNA GERON / REUTERS

The US government has submitted a bill to Congress that is intended to restrict the freedom of action, especially of social networks, when dealing with content on their platforms.

In particular, the Ministry of Justice is targeting a legal regulation from the 1990s that had a major impact on the web: According to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, online services are not held liable for content published by users.

At the same time, it gives the platforms extensive freedom to take action against certain content or users.

(Read more about Section 230 and what it means for the World Wide Web here.)

The law introduced on Wednesday is intended to reformulate the regulations, as the Ministry of Justice announced.

The proposal should deprive companies of the opportunity "to hide behind immunity in order to maliciously censor legal statements," it said.

Specifically, the Ministry of Justice wants to restrict the content against which the platforms can proceed without being held liable for it.

So far, in addition to offensive contributions and violence, this has also included "content that is objectionable for other reasons".

This wording should be drastically narrowed down to "illegal" content and the support of terrorism.

Among other things, President Donald Trump accuses the platforms of restricting the spread of conservative views - which the services deny.

Trump has also sharply criticized Facebook and Twitter after they had posted warnings or removed posts about the corona virus that he had distributed.

The platforms had pointed out that the posts contained false information that could harm people.

The new formulation would make it difficult for them to do this.

Expanded legal action against networks

The Justice Department draft is also a consequence of Trump's May executive order, which he signed after Twitter's initial warning notices on his tweets.

The Ministry of Justice wants to allow civil law suits against online services in cases of terrorism, child abuse and cyberstalking.

Prosecution was already planned in these cases.

Facebook stressed in a reaction on Thursday night, "Section 230" allows the company to take action against harmful content and at the same time to protect freedom of speech.

Facebook has invested billions in personnel and technology and can remove 94 percent of posts with hate speech, 99 percent of content related to terrorism, even before they are reported by users.

For content with child abuse, the rate is 100 percent.

It is unlikely that the bill will win a majority in Congress before the election.

In the European Union, a comparable regulation on limitation of liability is set out in the E-Commerce Directive.

The EU Commission wants to replace this directive with the Digital Services Act.

Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton had made it clear at the beginning of the week that the liability privilege of the online platforms should remain "untouched".

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