Blumenthal To Big Tech: ​“Reform Is Coming”

You can help us fix this mess. Or we’ll do it ourselves.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal sent that message to tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

The Connecticut Democrat has taken on a central role in Washington in the quest to reexamine the special protections that have helped propel those companies to profitable market dominance. He has begun holding hearings as chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law. In that role, he’s overseeing debate and proposals to change Section 230 of the bipartisan 1996 Communications Decency Act, which protects online platforms from legal liability for postings generated by the public.

It’s an unusually bipartisan effort, at least for D.C. Blumenthal has already cosponsored a kids’ online privacy bill with Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn. He and right-wing Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley have sounded similar themes in their public statements on the issue.

“To the tech companies I say, ​‘Reform is coming,’” Blumenthal said in an interview on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven program. “‘We need your cooperation. We don’t want you to lobby and work against us to hire armies of lawyers and lobbyists. We know your power. And if you want to be a constructive partner here, cooperate, we can change the law so as to promote better designs of the platforms, business operations, personalized algorithms. This whole area really deserves more transparency, more public disclosure, so that parents and consumers know why they are getting certain kinds of content.”

The senator noted that platforms like Facebook and Youtube and Google did not exist when Section 230 was passed in 1996. The internet was different. Today’s internet behemoths have become publishers with millions more instantaneous readers than the largest traditional news companies. Yet unlike those companies they can’t be sued or restricted in publishing lies, slander, or libel. They can’t be punished for their algorithms leading people to kill others or harm themselves.

That needs to change, Blumenthal argued.

How to do that? The Supreme Court is mulling that question in two cases before the judges. (Click here to read a previous story about that.)

Blumenthal said he expects the Supreme Court to pass the decision-making about how to fix the law back to the Congress that initially wrote it.

“That’s not a bad thing, because we have a responsibility to enact reform and do it right,” he said.

The changes he envisions include more transparency from companies about their algorithms, more ​“tools and safeguards” parents can tap to protect their children from predators and ​“addictive material.” He also said he’d be open to considering eliminating Section 230’s blanket protections against libel.

Click on the video at the top of the story to watch the full conversation with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven.” Click here to subscribe to ​“Dateline New Haven” and here to subscribe to other WNHH FM podcasts.