Bipartisan lawmakers want to strip Big Tech's legal immunity that can shield social media companies

It was the mid-1990s. And the world was online.No doomscrolling for hours through Instagram and X.But people were plowing through GeoCities. There were Hotbot searches – before the days of Google and AI. There was even Ask Jeeves, long before Grok.Congress was on the precipice of adopting a landmark telecommunications law which would dictate the digital landscape for decades.When signing the Telecommunications Act of 1996 into law, former President Clinton declared how the measure would plow “a superhighway to serve both the private sector and the public interest.”RAND PAUL SAYS PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH YOUTUBE AND GOOGLE CHANGED HIS MIND ABOUT PLATFORM LIABILITYYup. Back then, some still referred to the internet as “The Information Superhighway.”The 1990s were heady. Full of optimism and possibility. The. U.S. won the Cold War. The economy boomed and was “new.” The internet linked the world.But there was a serious debate about free speech. Who should regulate what was online? Should the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) address what was proper to post, the same way it oversaw the TV and radio airwaves?In the early ‘90s, the National Security Agency (NSA) used a cryptographic backdoor to intercept phone calls called the “clipper chip.” That raised questions about government surveillance. Would that carry over to what the government “watched” when people posted content online?Congress ultimately decided to give the internet a lot of leeway – in the interest of free speech. Telecommunications firms persuaded lawmakers to grant them a legal shelter. “Carriers” weren’t responsible if  “customers” posted questionable or…

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