The Justice Department on Wednesday urged Congress to adopt new legislation that could punish Facebook, Google and Twitter for a wide array of harmful content posted online, threatening to erode a long-cherished legal immunity that Silicon Valley says is critical to the future of the Internet.
The new legislation would target Section 230, a decades-old portion of law that spares social media sites from being held liable for the posts, photos and videos uploaded to their sites by their users. The proposal would pave the way for steep sanctions on major online platforms if they don’t act to remove a range of illicit content, from child exploitation to terrorism, according to Justice Department officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity Wednesday.
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