Sponsors (11)
The bill clarifies and narrows safe-harbor protection so platforms can more clearly remove unlawful content and face fewer frivolous suits, but that same narrowing risks chilling removal of non‑unlawful yet harmful or constitutionally protected speech and raises legal uncertainty and costs for smaller services.
Users and platform operators: platforms can more confidently remove unlawful content without fear of losing liability protection, simplifying moderation decisions and reducing users' exposure to illegal material.
Small online services and platform operators: narrower statutory language could reduce frivolous litigation by clarifying moderators' legal safe harbor for removing unlawful content, lowering legal risk and compliance burden.
Parents and families (and children): the bill preserves protections for user-facing tools, allowing platforms to offer filtering or parental-control options for content that may be constitutionally protected.
Users and platform workers: limiting safe-harbor protection to 'unlawful' material could expose platforms that remove constitutionally protected but 'objectionable' content to more lawsuits, creating chilling effects and possible over-removal.
Children, families, and communities: platforms may be less willing to remove non‑unlawful but harmful content (e.g., hate speech), increasing users' exposure to harmful speech if providers fear losing protections.
Small online services and tech workers: narrowing subjective content-moderation protections increases legal uncertainty and compliance costs for smaller platforms, which could raise prices or reduce available services.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Narrows Section 230(c)(2) by replacing subjective content categories with "unlawful material" and preserves immunity for user-facing filtering tools.
Official title: To amend section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934 (commonly referred to as the Communications Decency Act) to stop censorship, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 4, 2025 by Paul Gosar · Last progress February 4, 2025
Changes 47 U.S.C. §230(c)(2) to narrow the types of content online platforms are explicitly allowed to restrict. The bill replaces a long list of subjective categories (e.g., "obscene," "harassing," "otherwise objectionable") with the single term "unlawful material," and it adds a clause preserving platforms' ability to offer users options to restrict access to other material. Overall, it limits statutory safe-harbor language that has been used to justify content-removal decisions while expressly protecting tools that let users opt into filters or restrictions.