As written, this bill would gut Section 230, a catastrophe for human rights and freedom of expression.

We get it — the internet needs a lot of fixing. But instead of meaningful reform, three Senators have introduced misguided legislation which will have enormous unintended consequences for the internet we know, love, and are communicating on right now. Just because we need to “do something”, does not mean we should “do anything”!

Essentially, the SAFE Tech Act removes 230 protections — liability from lawsuits challenging what’s posted on platforms by users like you and me — for any website that processes financial transactions. The intention behind this is to reduce harmful paid advertisements. However, the act makes no effort to separate ads from all other types of paid content. Have you used platforms like Etsy, Bandcamp, Substack, or Patreon? These are sites that allow for (and in some cases require) payments and financial transactions in order to be used. Do you use premium versions of websites where you can pay to remove ads? If this bill becomes law, you won’t be able to use any of these sites as they currently exist.

And what happens when businesses face additional, unnecessary liability for the services they provide? They become too expensive to operate, or start taking down everything that is posted on their websites, because they fear liability. The organizations that can actually afford to accept payments are the ones with large teams of lawyers and armies of content moderators - namely, Facebook, Google, and Twitter. At a time when we need more antitrust scrutiny and more accountability for these platforms, they will get a lifeline to maintain monopolistic behavior, free from competition.

Another so-called section 230 reform, FOSTA-SESTA, a law which was intended to prevent websites from profiting off sex trafficking, instead pushed legitimate sex workers, who are already marginalized and policed in traditional spaces, to dark corners of the internet where they could no longer negotiate prices or boundaries safely without exposing themselves to risk.

Instead of backing bad legislation, we urge lawmakers to focus on antitrust reform, algorithmic accountability, or expanding existing civil rights protections. Notably, we urge lawmakers to pass Congressman Ro Khanna’s (D-CA) legislation first to study the effects of FOSTA-SESTA before passing any additional laws to change Section 230.

Petition

To Lawmakers:

I am calling on you to not pass the SAFE Tech Act, proposed reform to Section 230, which if passed will ultimately hurt marginalized groups, startups and smaller upstart internet companies - and generally leave the internet a poorer place for expression and exchange of ideas.

While attempting to create a carveout within 230 for harmful paid advertising content, the bill makes no effort to distinguish or clarify the distinction between paid advertising and other types of paid online speech: content that sits behind a paywall, websites that pay for hosting from providers, or the comment section of a newspaper only available to subscribers. This will impact smaller, more beloved websites like Patreon, Substack, Yelp, or GoDaddy, and compel them to shut down - in the process, empowering bigger platforms like Google and Facebook that can afford to deal with complicated lawsuits.

Companies that do choose to stay afloat will have to either moderate content ruthlessly (in order to avoid lawsuits) or move to other business models that might require users to share more of their personal information, thus compromising privacy. The bill also fails to acknowledge the modern but growing forms of online business and commerce, including the rise of individual social media influencers who make money off promoting products as a legitimate “intermediary”.

Instead of this misguided legislation that will have vast unintended consequences, I call on you to address the legitimate harms of big technology platforms in the following ways:

-- Pass strong federal data legislation, which will reduce and remove business incentives for platforms to continue surveillance-based data collection and targeting, in the process protecting users from hate speech and online harassment.

-- Update antitrust law to reflect market power in the digital age more broadly, rather than pass legislation like this which makes it very expensive for the smaller companies to operate and ultimately helps maintain the power of the big companies.

-- Pass Congressman Ro Khanna’s (D-CA) legislation first to study the effects of FOSTA-SESTA before passing any additional laws to change Section 230.

Signed,