Y’all keep an eye out for the Sunset Act. This aims to repeal Section 230, which would greatly aid in ensuring stuff like this doesn’t see the light of day.

Since the text of this bill almost exclusively “strikes” sections of other, preexisting legislation, I can’t quite tell what it really does without trying to locate and read each of the other pieces of legislation. Does anyone have a quick summery of what effect this proposal would have if passed?

Answering my own question, it seems that “Sunset acts” are a common occurrence in legislation that end programs and activities that have more or less run their course or stopped being effective or meaningful.

The reason this Sunset Act is being mentioned is…

Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act was created to protect early internet platforms from lawsuits over user-generated content, a safeguard widely seen as essential to the internet’s development. As social media companies have become some of the nation’s most powerful and influential corporations, critics have questioned whether that protection should remain.

… so my understanding is that this Sunset will remove some outdated protections from social media platforms, effectively forcing them to adapt with better policies and practices or open themselves up to litigation.

“Outdated” is pretty debatable. The fear is that once platforms are legally liable for user posted content it will lead to an environment of censorship. Anything the federal government (or indeed private entities) don’t want talked about, they can simply tell social media companies to take down. Chances are the companies will comply because they don’t want to deal with the potential consequences of litigation.