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One afternoon in July, Ted Cruz banged a gavel on the
dais, calling to order a hearing of the U.S. Senate Judiciary
Subcommittee on the Constitution. The day’s first witness
was Karan Bhatia, a top policy adviser for Google. He gazed
up at the panel of senators, alarm creeping into his expres-
sion, like a 10-point buck hearing the sudden crack of gunfire.
When elected officials start appending the prefix “big” to
the name of an industry, it’s never a good omen. Big Tobacco.
Big Oil. Big Pharma. Big Soda. “Sometimes tech companies
talk about their products and the effects of those products
as though they are forces outside of Big Tech’s control,” Cruz
said. “As we’ve heard time and time again, Big Tech’s favorite
defense is, ‘It wasn’t me. The algorithm did it.’”
For the next couple hours, the senators took turns wal-
loping the most despised industry of the moment. They
knocked its carelessness with consumer data, its viola-
tions of individual privacy, its tolerance of harassment and
misinformation, its censorship of political dissent, and
its hospitality toward extremists. “It seems like the prob-
lems around Big Tech, as it has become a mature industry,
are just mushrooming,” said Senator Marsha Blackburn, a
Tennessee Republican. Perhaps it was time, Cruz rejoined,
for Congress to revisit Section 230 of the Communications
Decency Act—a slim and powerful law, cherished in Silicon
Valley, that shields internet companies from liability for
most of the material their users post.
Back in 1995, when the CDA was conceived, Section 230
enjoyed bipartisan support from members of Congress, who
believed that tech companies would do a better job at moder-
ating the internet than federal regulators. But a growing num-
ber of hostile lawmakers are now criticizing Big Tech’s safe
harbor. Cruz, a Texas Republican, and other conservatives
have accused major internet platforms of suppressing their
viewpoints, arguing that the spirit of Section 230 is predicated
on the companies remaining politically neutral. Democrats
call that nonsense; still, liberals have found reasons to dis-
like the law, namely their belief that tech businesses have too
often used it to ignore the collateral damage of their users’
bad behavior.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said
during the hearing that patience with the industry’s careless
approach to user safety had run out. “You can’t simply unleash
the monster and say it’s too big to control,” he said. “You have
a moral responsibility even if you have that legal protection.”
Silicon Valley is unlikely to give up its shield without a
fight. Supporters credit Section 230 with helping transform
the primordial net into a trillion-dollar industry and secur-
ing today’s vibrant culture of free expression. The most
important piece of the law is just 26 words long, and yet it’s
profoundly shaped American life. It’s no hyperbole to call
Section 230 the foundation on which the modern internetwas built, from social media to search engines to open source
reference guides to the sharing economy. Getting rid of it,
Big Tech warns, could jeopardize many of the things on the
web we take for granted, from reading and writing product
reviews to watching amateur how-to videos on YouTube.
Take it away, and the whole thing could come
crumbling down.The internet’s right to self-governance wasn’t always
universally recognized in Washington. It had to be wrested
from lawmakers. In early 1995, Todd Lappin, a top editor at
Wiredmagazine, set out on a mission to liberate the newly
born net from the scaremongers in Congress. At the time, the
Senate had just started considering the CDA, sponsored by
Senator James Exon, a socially conservative Democrat from
Nebraska. Under the bill’s provisions, knowingly making inde-
cent material available to minors could lead to hefty fines
and even prison time for a net operator. The editors atWired
believed Exon’s law would result in widespread censorship,
stunting the web in its early days.
Only two years old then,Wiredwas already an essential
publication for anyone hoping to make sense of the incip-
ient dot-com boom. Its thick monthly issues were jammed
with profiles of digital visionaries, reviews of new-wave gad-
gets, and ads for computers, CD-ROMs, blank 3.5-inch disks,
and bottles of cologne and tequila. Lappin got to work, com-
missioning influential writers to hammer technophobes on
Capitol Hill, organizing protests, and working closely with the
“netroots,” a decentralized community of activists united by
their love of the unfettered web. Few lawmakers were using
email yet, so the netizens targeted lawmakers’ offices with
“fax bombs,” jamming their machines with mass outpourings
of umbrage. They argued in the press that democracy, free
speech, and education would suffer with the CDA. “Welcome
to digital Singapore,” a critic told theWashington Post.
On June 9, 1995, Exon took to the Senate floor to rallyBloomberg Businessweek TECHLASH August 12, 2019CLINTON: RON EDMONDS/AP PHOTO; WYDEN&COX: DOUGLAS GRAHAM/CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY/GETTY IMAGES