Does the Constitution require Americans to accept Big Tech censorship? The claim is counterintuitive but the logic is clear: If you submit a letter to this newspaper, the editors have no legal obligation to publish it, and a statute requiring them to do so would be struck down as a violation of the Journal’s First Amendment rights. Facebook and Twitter, the argument goes, have the same right not to provide a platform to views they find objectionable.

Partisanship is at an all time high in Washington. But one issue policymakers on both sides seem to agree on is that something should be done to rein in the power of Big Tech. The American people also seem to agree, with a recent Gallup poll revealing a majority of both Republicans and Democrats favor increased regulation of the tech sector. Prominent conservatives are even abandoning their traditional rhetoric about limited government to join forces with progressives in calling for structural separation and expansive new regulations.

President Biden on Friday signed an executive order revoking two measures issued by former President Trump over the summer in response to protests against racial injustice that targeted monuments of controversial Americans.

Biden's order revokes multiple Trump actions, including one that prioritized punishment for those caught vandalizing statues or monuments, as well as an order that established a "National Garden of American Heroes" that called for erecting statues of hundreds of prominent Americans.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) editorial board came out this week to express support for curtailing broad legal protections for technology companies after one of the newspaper’s opinion articles was fact-checked by Facebook.

“We’ve been leery of proposals in Congress to modify Section 230 protections that shield internet platforms from liability. But social-media giants are increasingly adding phony fact checks and removing articles flagged by left-leaning users without explanation,” the board wrote in an op-ed title “Fact-Checking Facebook’s Fact-Checkers.”

Experts are skeptical of calls from both Republicans and Democrats to modify Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

Section 230 delineates internet content hosts and providers, like social media sites and search engines, from internet content producers, like their users. It ensures that the hosts are not held legally responsible for the posts of their users, and allows the hosts to “voluntarily take [actions] in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider… considers to be … objectionable.”

On February 8th, 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Communications Decency Act, a sweeping regulatory framework for the internet. Almost all of the CDA was found unconstitutional, but what remained allowed the nascent web to flourish. It’s called Section 230 — and for the past quarter-century, it’s shaped the internet for better and worse.

Sen. Mark R. Warner is set to introduce a bill that could hold Facebook, Google and other tech giants more directly accountable when viral posts and videos result in real-world harm.

The measure is dubbed the Safe Tech Act, and it marks the latest salvo from congressional lawmakers against Section 230. The decades-old federal rules help facilitate free expression online, but Democrats including Warner (Va.) say they also allow the most profitable tech companies to skirt responsibility for hate speech, election disinformation and other dangerous content spreading across the Web.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which was passed in 1996, says an “interactive computer service” can’t be treated as the publisher or speaker of third-party content. This protects websites from lawsuits if a user posts something illegal, although there are exceptions for copyright violations, sex work-related material, and violations of federal criminal law.

A new lawsuit is inflaming tensions on the right between the powerful, business-friendly Koch political network and a rising coalition of populist conservatives pushing for a crackdown on Silicon Valley.

The lawsuit seeks emails and other communications between staffers at a Commerce Department tech agency and outside policy gurus who support the Trump administration's campaign to reign in social media behemoths like Facebook. Some of those targeted even include Koch allies who say the well-heeled and influential network is trying to scare partners into silence.