GOP seeks to change regulations for big tech companies

Yahoo Finasnce's Dan Howley breaks down how GOP is seeking to alter regulations for big tech companies

Video transcript

SEANA SMITH: House Republicans releasing a legislative outline, I guess you can say, to overhaul big tech regulations. Dan Howley is looking into this for us. And Dan, just taking a glimpse of it, Section 230 is the focus of this plan.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, this is really what the Republicans wanted to do in the Energy and Commerce Committee. This is out of the House. And essentially, what they're calling for is a repeal, more or less, of Section 230 for specific companies. We're talking about the likes of Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, any of those companies would not have the protections that 230 offers. Now, there's kind of this weird misunderstanding about what Section 230 is. Section 230 provides a liability shield against being forced to defend yourself in court for moderating content that a third party puts on your website.

Essentially, you would still be able to moderate that content because of free speech. Facebook is exercising its free speech by not letting someone post something just as much as it is letting someone post something. Section 230 is just a shortcut so that Facebook doesn't have to stay in court for a huge amount of time and be bled dry. Now you may want Facebook to be bled dry, but the issue here is smaller companies. They don't have the kind of money that Facebook has to spend tons of time in court. And they rely on this part of Section 230 or Section 230 to ensure that they can defend themselves in cases where they do moderate content.

So, essentially, what these legislative goals are from the conservative members of the Energy and Commerce Committee is to take away those protections from companies that make a certain amount of money. They also want to take it away from companies that engage in targeted advertising, as well as companies that do anything as far as discriminate based on political affiliations or viewpoints. Now, that's something that conservatives have been pointing to for some time. There's supposedly some big bogeyman that exists within social media at large, specifically targeting conservatives. There's been no real evidence of that brought forward at all.

In fact, if you look at Facebook, some of the most trafficked stories are from conservative sites and have conservative viewpoints. The issue, though, with saying that you would take away 230 based on political affiliations is that anything can be political, really. If you want to say that I think that dogs are better than cats, you could say, well, that's my political opinion. Or it's part of my political party stance now.

And so, it's really an untenable position. The experts that we spoke to don't seem to think that this is going to get anywhere, especially since it wouldn't have any support. Republicans are obviously in the minority in the House, as well as the Senate. There would be nothing for Democrats to really want to latch on to here, as far as Section 230, except for portions about protecting children online.

And that is something that seems to be where conservatives had started to gain steam I have pointed to as a means for kind of working on 230. They say that some of these companies go after children for targeting for them, advertising. They especially went after Facebook during a recent hearing and Mark Zuckerberg for the idea that they may be working on an Instagram for kids under 13. They also, by the way, already offer Facebook Messenger for children under 13. And YouTube has YouTube Kids. So there are apps out there already for some children. They are kind of getting hit here, especially Facebook.