Senate Orders Big Tech CEOs To Testify On “Liability Shield” Before Election Day

The Senate Commerce Committee has just voted to subpoena a group of Big Tech CEOs to appear for another round of Congressional testimony, possibly before Election Day.

But while the most recent ‘Big Tech’ hearing back in July, which compelled the CEOs of Apple, Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon – including Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg – was held by the House and organized to discuss anti-trust issues pertaining to the Silicon Valley giants, it looks like the GOP-controlled Senate is going to investigate – what else? – anti-conservative bias on the biggest’ social media platforms, as the subpeona targeted the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google-owner Alphabet.

Specifically, the CEOs will be called upon to discuss Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which is typically referred to as the tech platform “shield law”, or “the 26 words that created the Internet”. In essence, the law gives companies like Facebook immunity for anything posted on its platform, from political opinions to live feeds of mass shootings.

Both President Trump and Joe Biden have called for amending Section 230, though the two have different reasons for doing so. Trump has filed an executive order laying out the administration’s line of attack on Section 230, though the “liability shield” for social media platforms remains intact – at least for now.