The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. But what happens when government officials lean on private platforms to do the censoring for them? That's the free-speech fight of our time, and it should matter to Americans of every political persuasion.
Most Americans now get news and debate public issues on a handful of platforms. When those companies remove posts, suspend accounts or quietly limit reach, they shape what millions of people see.
Private companies can set their own rules. The danger comes when government officials pressure them to remove lawful speech. Internal documents released in the "Twitter Files," evidence uncovered in federal litigation, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's own 2024 letter to Congress all show federal officials repeatedly pressing platforms to take down content.
Zuckerberg wrote that senior Biden administration officials "repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire," and said he regretted that the company didn't push back harder.
Tap or click each event to expand it.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shielded online platforms from liability for what users post, and also protected their decisions to remove content they found "objectionable." It helped the internet grow. It also gave a few giant companies power over speech with very little accountability.
Weeks before the presidential election, Twitter blocked users from sharing a New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop and locked the Post's account. Facebook limited the story's reach. Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey later called the decision a mistake, and major outlets later authenticated material from the laptop.
Platforms removed or labeled posts questioning official positions, including discussion of the lab-leak hypothesis. The FBI and the Department of Energy later assessed a lab-related origin as likely, though U.S. intelligence agencies remain divided.
After Elon Musk bought Twitter, journalists were given internal documents showing extensive communication between the company and government agencies, including the FBI, about content moderation, along with internal "visibility filtering" of disfavored accounts.
In Missouri v. Biden, a federal district judge found evidence of a broad pressure campaign and barred many federal officials from coercing platforms. The Fifth Circuit upheld a narrowed version of the injunction.
The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that the plaintiffs lacked standing and did not decide whether the government's conduct violated the First Amendment. Justice Alito, in dissent, called it potentially "one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years." The core question remains unresolved. That's why Congress needs to act.
Meta's CEO told the House Judiciary Committee that the administration pressured the company for months over COVID content, and that it was wrong to temporarily demote the laptop story based on an FBI warning about possible Russian disinformation.
"No 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."
Section 230(c)(1) means a platform generally can't be sued over what its users post. Section 230(c)(2) protects platforms when they remove content in "good faith" that they consider "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable."
Without it, small websites, comment sections and forums could be sued out of existence over a single user post. That part is worth keeping.
The law was written in 1996, when the internet was a collection of message boards. Today, a few trillion-dollar companies use algorithms to decide what billions of people see, while claiming the protections of a neutral bulletin board.
Critics argue that the vague "otherwise objectionable" language gives platforms nearly unlimited cover to remove lawful political speech, with no transparency and no appeal.
Test your knowledge of the First Amendment. Pick an answer for each scenario.
Prohibit federal employees from pressuring or coordinating with platforms to remove lawful speech, with penalties and public disclosure.
Every request from a government agency to a platform to remove or limit content should be logged and published.
Large platforms must give clear reasons for suspensions and a timely human appeal.
Narrow the "otherwise objectionable" catch-all for the largest platforms, while protecting small sites.
The government shouldn't be in the business of deciding true and false opinions for the public.
These protections apply to every American: left, right and everywhere in between. Rules that silence your opponents today can silence you tomorrow.