The United States Department of Justice Wants to Limit the Protection of Social Media

The United States Department of Justice has launched a list of proposals aimed at reforming the Telecommunications Act and limiting the protection of social media and websites from litigation.

The suggestions come after President Donald Trump signed a decree in late May asking for reform of the law. That decree came after Twitter had provided one of his posts with a ‘fact check’.

However, the current report is based on a study that Justice has conducted for years into the way social media works, and the influence that large tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook and Google have on the messages that are posted and distributed.

The U.S. Telecommunications Act, in full The Communications Decency Act, has been in existence since 1996 and is one of the founding principles of the Internet.

Meanwhile, the notorious article 230 of this law protects websites and apps from lawsuits over content posted by users. Among other things, the law means that Twitter or Facebook cannot be charged with, for example, inflammatory or discriminatory posts that one of their users publishes.

Current law also does not impose rules on what content should be allowed, and it gives websites control over how they moderate all of that.

The law is not only about social networks but is also invoked to protect filtering software, such as security apps, against lawsuits from companies that do not like to see themselves filtered.