(ETH) – The CEOs of major tech companies are scheduled to be in the hot seat today as Republican senators are accusing their internet platforms of censoring conservative opinions and viewpoints and demand that changes be made to the federal law that protects them from lawsuits.
There have been concerns among Republicans for quite some time now that Big Tech companies have been biased against conservative viewpoints, but Twitter’s recent efforts to shut down the spread of the New York Post’s reporting on emails allegedly from Hunter Biden’s laptop was apparently the final straw for Conservatives.
As a result of this, lawmakers have summoned Google, Facebook, and Twitter CEOs to testify before the election. According to Fox News, the main objective of Wednesday’s hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee is whether or not social media giants should still be afforded liability protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
Many Republican critics now believe that Twitter, Facebook, and Google should no longer be shielded as a neutral platform when they operate more like a publisher, but not all Democrats — including the Section 230 co-author Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., — agree with this assessment.
“Section 230 gave content providers protection from liability to remove and moderate content that they or their users consider to be ‘obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable,'” Wicker is expected to say in his opening statement Wednesday provided to Fox News. “This liability shield has been pivotal in protecting online platforms from endless and potentially ruinous lawsuits. But it has also given these internet platforms the ability to control, stifle, and even censor content in whatever manner meets their respective ‘standards.’ The time has come for that free pass to end.”
