Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images )

A trio of Democratic Senators has taken this administration's first stab at Section 230 reform with a new bill that would make platforms, including giants such as Facebook and Twitter, liable for certain limited categories of dangerous content. Unfortunately, although the bill's authors try to thread a tricky needle carefully, critics warn that bad-faith actors could nonetheless easily weaponize the bill as written against both platforms and other users.

The bill ( PDF ), dubbed the SAFE TECH Act, seeks not to repeal Section 230 (as some Republicans have proposed ) but instead to amend it with new definitions of speakers and new exceptions from the law's infamous liability shield.

"A law meant to encourage service providers to develop tools and policies to support effective moderation has instead conferred sweeping immunity on online providers even when they do nothing to address foreseeable, obvious and repeated misuse of their products and services to cause harm," said Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), who introduced the bill. "This bill doesn’t interfere with free speech—it’s about allowing these platforms to finally be held accountable for harmful, often criminal behavior enabled by their platforms to which they have turned a blind eye for too long."

Enlarge / Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), during a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing on Jan. 21, 2021. (credit: Stefani Reynolds - pool | Getty Images )

With a new session of Congress underway and a new administration in the White House, Big Tech is once again in lawmakers' crosshairs. Not only are major firms such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google under investigation for allegedly breaking existing antitrust law, but a newly proposed bill in the Senate would make it harder for these and other firms to become so troublingly large in the first place.

The bill ( PDF ), called the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act (CALERA for short, which is still awkward) would become the largest overhaul to US antitrust regulation in at least 45 years if it became law.

"While the United States once had some of the most effective antitrust laws in the world, our economy today faces a massive competition problem," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) when she introduced the bill on Thursday. "We can no longer sweep this issue under the rug and hope our existing laws are adequate," Klobuchar added, calling the bill "the first step to overhauling and modernizing our laws" to protect competition in the current era.

Enlarge / The Washington, DC skyline, including the US Capitol, Washington Monument, and Lincoln Memorial, as seen from the Arlington, VA, side of the Potomac at night. Which is the time of day Congress is apparently going to be working until. (credit: Melodie Yvonne | Getty Images )

As was threatened, so has it come to pass: President Donald Trump has vetoed funding for the US military because the massive defense spending bill did not include a provision to repeal Section 230.

The National Defense Authorization Act authorizes $740 billion in defense spending for the upcoming government fiscal year. The NDAA usually moves through Congress with broad bipartisan support, and this year's is no exception. Both chambers supported the bill by wide, veto-proof margins—the House approved by a vote of 335 to 78, and the Senate approved it 84 to 13.

Trump, however, said in early December he would veto the bill if it did not include an outright repeal of Section 230, and today, with the bill on his desk, he followed through on that threat.