Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolution

Floor Speech

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Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Safeguarding Against Fraud, Exploitation, Threats, Extremism and Consumer Harms Act, also known as the SAFE TECH Act. I thank my colleagues, Senator Warner and Senator Klobuchar, for working with me on this important piece of legislation, which fulfills the promise of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act by forcing internet companies to finally address the serious harms their platforms cause--harms like civil rights and human rights violations, stalking and harassment, and wrongful death.

Section 230--often called the law that created the internet--was passed in 1996. For some context, in 1996, Google was two years from being founded. Mark Zuckerberg was in middle school. And, the internet effectively shut down for nineteen hours when a technical glitch took American Online offline.

The law was passed with a noble goal in mind: to encourage operators of then-nascent internet message boards to act as ``Good Samaritans'' and voluntarily police illegal and harmful content posted by third parties. Section 230 accomplished this goal by declaring that ``[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.'' These twenty-six words have effectively shielded internet platforms from liability for any harm caused by content posted by third parties for the past twenty-five years.

Unfortunately, whatever incentive Section 230 was meant to provide to encourage internet platforms to police content has proven to be no incentive at all. The statute's broad immunity applies whether a platform carefully reviews each piece of content posted by a user or performs no content moderation whatsoever. It immunizes platforms that have actual knowledge illegal content has been posted. It even applies if the platform itself encouraged the user to post the content. The result has been internet platforms large and small turning a blind eye to the real-world harms they cause.

Let me tell you about a few of those real-world harms.

Over the course of five months in late 2016 and early 2017, Matthew Herrick was harassed and physically assaulted by men directed to his home and office by the gay dating app Grindr. These men--over 1,100 in total--were responding to a fake profile created by Mr. Herrick's ex- boyfriend. Grindr was on notice of both the fake profile and its harmful effects. Mr. Herrick and his friends filed approximately fifty reports with the company reporting the problem and seeking help. But the company did nothing while Mr. Herrick suffered.

On October 21, 2012, Radcliffe Haughton walked into a Wisconsin spa and shot and killed three women, including his estranged wife, and wounded four others before turning the gun on himself. He had purchased the gun the prior day from a private seller he found on the online gun marketplace Armslist.com. He was able to purchase the gun even though his wife had recently obtained a domestic abuse restraining order that specifically prohibited Mr. Haughton from purchasing a gun. For all intents and purposes, Armslist was designed to facilitate such illegal sales. It precluded users from flagging illegal sales; it allowed people to anonymously purchase guns without a background check; and it enabled prohibited purchasers to search only for sellers that did not check criminal backgrounds or keep records. Mr. Haughton took advantage of these features and, as a result, three people are dead.

On August 25, 2020, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed two people and injured a third on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin during a protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Mr. Rittenhouse was one of many armed, right-wing counter-protesters encouraged to travel to Kenosha by a Facebook page run by a group called ``Kenosha Guard'' that asked if any followers would be willing to ``take up arms and defend [the city] from the evil thugs.'' Despite being flagged to Facebook at least 455 times as a call to violence, the company left the page up.

In none of these cases did Grindr, Armslist, and Facebook act like ``Good Samaritans.'' They did not voluntarily police the content on their platforms. Instead, they either actively encouraged or turned a blind eye to dangerous and illegal content knowing full well Section 230 immunized them for any harm their platforms caused. Any attempt by victims to hold the platforms accountable for their roles would be blocked by Section 230.

Under the SAFE TECH Act, this would no longer be the case. This bill would ensure that internet companies either address the serious problems they are causing or face potential liability. It does so by creating targeted exceptions to Section 230's broad immunity, including exceptions for advertisements and other paid content; claims for injunctive relief; civil rights, stalking, and harassment laws; wrongful death actions; and suits under the Alien Tort Claims Act.

Introducing these exceptions to Section 230 does not guarantee that platforms will be held liable in all--or even most--cases where they cause real-world harm. But it will give victims the opportunity to make their case. By doing so, the SAFE TECH Act will punish those bad actors who are actively encouraging or turning a blind eye to dangerous and illegal content, while allowing true ``Good Samaritans'' to flourish online. That was the promise of Section 230. After twenty-five years, it's about time we realize that promise.

I therefore encourage my colleagues to support the SAFE TECH Act.

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