U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley is hoping jury verdicts in California and New Mexico against social media companies provokes Congress to revisit federal lawsuit protections.
Meta and YouTube recently lost high-profile civil cases in those two states. The New Mexico case revolved around whether Meta was doing enough to protect kids on their platforms. And the California jury ordered Meta and YouTube to pay roughly $6 million to a woman who accused social media companies of producing addictive products.
"Twenty-four different jurors found… they just were not going to allow these companies that have ripped off kids, destroyed their lives, lied to them and make billions of dollars of profit on it – they weren't going to let them get by with it," Hawley said.
While Meta and YouTube plan to appeal the ruling, Hawley told St. Louis Public Radio that the case should prompt Congress to revisit what's known as Section 230 protections – which, in general, protect social media companies from liability for user-created content.
"It is time to declare independence from the big tech companies and actually get to work protecting the American people," Hawley said. "And I hope that these verdicts will be watersheds."
Asked Thursday if it would be worthwhile to pursue legislation cancelling federal contracts for companies who have social media products that don't allow users to turn off infinite scrolling and algorithm recommendations, Hawley called that idea "tremendous." Major technology companies like Meta, X, Google and Amazon that use either of those features all have federal contracts, mainly around artificial intelligence.
"I hope that'll be a wake up call to the United States Congress, because the United States Congress has sat around and done nothing except keep their hand out to have cash put into it so that they would do nothing against these corporate executives," Hawley said.
Hawley has been a major critic of large technology companies since entering national politics. And while both Democrats and Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have largely shied away from aggressively going after those companies – Hawley is part of a bipartisan contingent of legislators who have sought to scale back or completely rescind Section 230 protections.
Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin said in a statement Wednesday that the California jury award and a separate case out of New Mexico show that "Big Tech has become Big Tobacco."
"Now, it's time for Congress to sunset Section 230 once and for all," said Durbin, referring to legislation he co-sponsored with South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham to phase out Section 230 over a two-year period.
Going after Section 230 protections as a way to force social media companies to alter their platforms is likely to provoke opposition from tech companies. Opponents of that idea contend it will lead to widespread censorship of content and stifle innovation.
Hawley said there's consensus around changing the federal law, pointing to legislation he sponsored with Durbin to make it easier for victims of child exploitation to sue technology companies that passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously.
But he added, however, that "social media companies spend more money than anybody else in Washington in order to make sure no bills that they dislike ever make it to the floor of the United States Senate."
He said the bill he sponsored with Durbin still hasn't received a vote on the Senate floor.
"When senators have to vote, they know what the right thing to do is," Hawley said. "They're just getting so much money from these social media companies that they don't want to do the right thing. So, you have to force them, and the way you force them is that you put it up for a vote."
Hawley decries DHS shutdown
Hawley joined other Republicans in calling for an end to a partial government shutdown for the Department of Homeland Security.
For more than a month, Congress has been struggling to pass legislation funding parts of DHS. Democrats want to include guardrails on immigration enforcement agencies, a demand that occurred after the now-scuttled operation in Minnesota.
Republicans have, for the most part, not wanted any restrictions. And Trump complicated matters when he said publicly he wouldn't sign any DHS funding bill without passing the Save America Act – which, among other things, severely restricts absentee voting and requires proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.
Asked if it was a mistake for Trump to connect the DHS funding bill to the Save America Act, which has no pathway to pass out of the Senate, Hawley said "he wouldn't give him any advice, but I would just say to the senators, to my colleagues, it's time to open up DHS, and it is absolutely time to get TSA reopened and working."
"The Democrats are the ones who shut it down a month and a half ago, but I think they regret that decision now," Hawley said.
Durbin earlier this month said Democrats offered to pass legislation that funded other DHS agencies such as the Transportation Security Administration, only to be rebuked by Republicans.
"These are fundamental questions that relate to the Constitution, to the Bill of Rights, and to the laws of this land. We want to make sure that they're followed, and that's why we're negotiating the future of ICE and Border Patrol," Durbin said in a recent Senate floor speech. "The men and women of TSA should not be held hostage to our negotiation."
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