Gosar Bill Would Roll Back Big Tech’s Immunity in Moderating Content

WASHINGTON, Feb. 7, 2025 – As President Donald Trump escalates his war on so-called “government censorship,” some Capitol Hill Republicans are reviving efforts to overhaul Section 230, starting with a bill from Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.

On Wednesday, Gosar reintroduced the Stop the Censorship Act, marking another attempt by House Republicans to strip Big Tech of the legal shield the lawmakers say has allowed platforms to suppress conservative viewpoints with impunity.

The bill, co-sponsored by Reps. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo.; Doug Collins, R-Ga.; Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo.; Mary Miller, R-Ill.; Troy Nehls, R-Texas; Ralph Norman, R-S.C.; and Tom Tiffany, R-Wis., would limit tech companies’ ability to moderate content and expose them to more legal liability for their decisions.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 has long been a target for Republicans, who argue that the provision has given platforms like Meta, Google (YouTube), and X (formerly Twitter) unchecked power over public discourse. 

The law, originally designed to protect nascent internet companies from liability over user-generated content, also allows them to remove or restrict “otherwise objectionable” material. But conservatives say this provision has been weaponized to silence dissenting voices, pointing to the suppression of COVID-19 information, the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop story, and election-related content.

“Big Tech, including social media giant Meta, were caught colluding with the Biden Regime to censor free speech… Yet, under current law, they are not held liable for restricting free speech online,” Gosar said in a statement.

The renewed government push to weaken Section 230 might explain Meta’s decision to scale back its content moderation practices just ahead of Trump’s return to office.

Specifically, the Stop the Censorship Act would rewrite Section 230 by removing the broad “otherwise objectionable” standard that allows platforms to take down questionable but lawful content at their discretion. Instead, it would limit moderation protections to cases where content was explicitly “unlawful, promotes violence, or supports terrorism.”

Gosar’s bill arrived as President Trump has made free speech and online censorship a signature issue of his second term. In his Jan. 20, 2025, inaugural address, Trump declared that his administration would “stop all government censorship” and “bring back free speech to America.” 

Days later, he signed an executive order banning what he called ‘federal censorship.’ The order echoed an argument central to multiple Republican-led lawsuits — that the Biden administration pressured social media companies to suppress certain narratives under the guise of combating misinformation.

"Over the last four years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve," the order states. "Under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’ the Federal Government engaged in widespread speech suppression.”

Democrats, meanwhile, have also called for changes to Section 230 — but for entirely different reasons. Instead of focusing on censorship, they argue that tech companies have used the law to avoid responsibility for spreading misinformation, hate speech, and extremist content. President Joe Biden repeatedly called for Section 230 to be "revoked immediately” on the campaign trail in January 2020.

Gosar had introduced similar legislation in previous congressional sessions — including the 116th and 117th Congresses — but those efforts failed to gain traction amid Democratic opposition and concerns from some libertarian-leaning Republicans who worried about government overreach. 

In 2021, the House censured Gosar for posting an animated video depicting himself killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. an incident that, under his own bill’s standards, could arguably fall under “content that promotes violence or terrorism.”