Attorney General Barr is among those seeking to strip social media platforms of some legal protection from comments made by subscribers

Bear in mind that this is not a partisan issue as lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have called for Congress to remove the Section 230 protection which would lead to more lawsuits against tech companies and raise their operating costs. Republicans are upset that Section 230 prevents them from going after Google and other platforms that they feel are biased against conservatives. Democrats say that the law allows these platforms to post misinformation written by subscribers without any repercussions.

Some of the speakers at the meeting had other ideas with some suggesting that larger platforms should have less protection than smaller ones. However, it might not be that easy to determine whether a social media site is large or small. For example, some platforms like Reddit and Wikipedia have a large number of users, but the actual size of these companies is small. David Chavern of the News Media Alliance was talking about giants like Facebook and Google when he said today, “With great scale comes great responsibility.”

Not everyone showing up at the event is ready to spring into action right away. Kate Klonick, a law professor at New York’s St. John’s University noted that changing some of the protections afforded to online platforms could lead to things down the road that no one can foresee. Professor Klonick says, “This is a massive norm-setting period. It’s hard to know exactly what the ramifications might be.”

Another issue discussed at the meeting was end-to-end encryption. This is a hot button issue among politicians and law enforcement officials. Facebook, which also owns Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, has been talking about adding encryption on all of its messaging apps (WhatsApp already offers it). Attorney General Barr has said in the recent past that when it comes to encryption, the tech companies need to allow law enforcement to have access under certain conditions.

The tech companies have responded. Matt Schruers, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, stated that eliminating the protection afforded to its members like Facebook and Google by Section 230 would result in 50 different laws that these firms would have to follow regarding the content of subscribers’ posts.