Partisan bickering could doom efforts to regulate social media companies

WASHINGTON — Industry representatives are accusing Republicans and Democrats of attempting to intimidate social media companies ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

That comes as a brief period of bipartisan momentum behind legislative efforts to regulate companies like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter appears to have passed, with Republicans and Democrats reverting to partisan differences and bickering.

After the disclosure this fall of tens of thousands of internal documents by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, including those that showed the company knew its products were harming the mental and physical health of teenage users, lawmakers from both parties said the time had come for federal regulation.

Many of the proposals that lawmakers considered took aim at Section 230, a provision of a 1996 law that protects social media companies from being sued for content posted on their platforms by third parties. The companies and the algorithms that power them had become too powerful to benefit from a liability shield like Section 230, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle argued.

But even trying to protect children online may not be enough for Democrats and Republicans to build a bipartisan bridge to amending the law.

At a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing last week, Republicans balked at Democratic bills that would carve out exceptions to Section 230’s protections for civil rights violations or cases in which algorithms suggest content that causes emotional or physical harm.

“I’m deeply troubled by the path before us,” said Washington Rep. Cathy Mcmorris Rodgers, the top Republican on the full committee. “It’s calling for more censorship.”

Mcmorris Rodgers said the bill in question would force social media companies into an impossible choice between risking a lawsuit or avoiding litigation by removing content that might violate the law.