A weakened version of the EARN IT Act advances out of committee
On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve a bill that would weaken Section 230 protections to ensure social media companies remove child abuse imagery from their platforms.
Introduced in March by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), the EARN IT Act is intended to curb the spread of child abuse images on social media, but has undergone a number of significant changes on its way to a full Senate vote. The version that emerged from the committee today follows the legislative framework of FOSTA, or the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, from 2018. While FOSTA created a carve-out in Section 230 for online conduct that “promotes or facilitates prostitution,” EARN IT would create a similar carve-out for...