Section 230 Reform Requires Citizen Participation, Says Sen. Amy Klobuchar

In the conversation to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which governs liability for internet intermediaries, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn, said Tuesday the public must get involved.

“We can’t fight Google and other million-dollar companies with duct tape and Band-Aids,” Klobuchar said, speaking during a live event hosted by the tech publication The Verge on Tuesday.

“People will say dumb stuff,” she said, but “internet users need to lift their voices, actively participate in contacting their senators” to better inform them about what they think about reform.

The reasoning is that these voices are the ones who will be impacted the most.

The reform discussions — egged on by former President Donald Trump — reached a fever pitch when some of Trump’s misleading tweets were labelled by Twitter with accompanying factual information about the issue he tweeted about. Other platforms followed suit.

Early last month, Klobuchar was joined by other senate democrats in proposing their own changes to Section 230, called the SAFE TECH Act.

The proposal would generally keep internet companies free from liability on content their users post, except for paid content, such as advertising that they financially benefit from.