Lindsey Graham Promises To Try To Repeal Section 230 Every Week

It is no secret that Senator Lindsey Graham hates Section 230. It’s also no secret that he has no clue how the internet or Section 230 actually work. He’s pushed bills to repeal 230 directly, and he’s pushed bills to repeal 230 indirectly. He does not like Section 230 in a house, or with a mouse. He does not like 230, Sam I Am.

And now, according to Politico’s Morning Tech, he’s going to do everything he can to repeal it:

GRAHAM EYES SEC. 230 REPEAL — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wants to fully repeal the tech industry’s coveted liability shield, and he plans to release a bill doing just that after next week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with the CEOs from Meta, TikTok, Snap, Discord and X. Graham said he doesn’t believe the self-reform promises he expects tech companies to make at the hearing over their alleged failure to combat child sexual abuse material. “I’d love to have your input, but I’m gonna start with allowing people to sue you,” Graham told reporters on Thursday about his often-repeated threat to eradicate Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It’d mimic a bill he introduced in 2021 as well.

Again, this makes it clear he has no clue what he’s talking about. On multiple levels. Let’s go through this yet again, as it appears Senator Graham refuses to understand this:

1. Child sexual abuse material is already very, very, very illegal (for obviously good reasons). The tech companies already go to great lengths to follow the law and report that content when they become aware of it to NCMEC’s Cybertipline, because if they don’t, they’d be in deep deep shit. According to the last report (for the year 2022), NCMEC received 32 million reports from somewhere close to 250 different websites. That does not sound like companies not taking this issue seriously. It sounds like them obeying the law.
2. The bigger question is what happens with those reports. All evidence suggests that the DOJ is the one falling down on the job in not doing anything with the reports the tech companies send in to NCMEC.
3. None of this has anything to do with Section 230 at all. Indeed, Section 230 already has a clear carveout for violations of federal criminal law, and always has. CSAM absolutely violates federal criminal law. Repealing 230 doesn’t change any of that.
4. As for, as Graham claims, “allowing people to sue you,” the question is “for what?” As soon as the companies discover CSAM, they report it to NCMEC as required by law. What does he think people are going to be able to sue about?
5. Even worse (significantly worse), repealing Section 230 will (if anything) make websites less willing to more proactively police CSAM, because without Section 230, the 1st Amendment will still require that any website must first know about any sort of violative behavior before it could be liable. So, without a 230 to protect them, websites will be much less willing to proactively hunt for any CSAM to report to the authorities.

So, in the end, this misdiagnoses the problem, blames tech companies (which already are fighting the problem) when it appears it’s actually the US government’s failure, and proposes a solution that, inherently, would make the problem worse, not better.

It’s a clusterfuck of stupid.

— Bringing it to the floor: The Senate Judiciary Committee’s ranking member said he’d then go to the Senate floor “once a week” to ask for an expedited unanimous consent vote on the repeal measure, as well as other Senate Judiciary bills focused on allowing other carve-outs to Section 230 over CSAM content, and his Digital Consumer Protection Commission Act to create a federal agency to regulate tech platforms.

So, not only is this a terrible and counterproductive plan, it’s one that Graham intends to make sure everyone has to waste their time on every damn week. If you don’t remember, going for unanimous consent is a way to try to sneak through legislation without a full vote. That means that someone will always need to be ready to jump in and block unanimous consent, every damn week.

This is not legislating. This is grandstanding, performative nonsense from a Senator who should know better.