Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke on Friday proposed new rules allowing lawsuits against social media companies that fail to remove hateful content from their websites, The Hill reports.
O’Rourke, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, announced his plan in a message titled, “Combating Hate and Violence in America,” which addresses gun violence.
"We must connect the dots between this president locking children in cages, calling Latinx community members an 'infestation,' and a white supremacist killer using the same language in an act of domestic terrorism taking 22 lives in El Paso," O’Rourke says. "We must connect the dots between a president who sought to ban Muslims from entering the United States and a mosque burning to the ground the very next day. We must connect the dots between internet communities providing a platform for online radicalization and white supremacy, as propaganda outlets like Fox News fuel that fire, and the fact that hate crimes against Black and LGBTQ+ Americans are on the rise."
O’Rourke’s plan targets Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which grants social media companies immunity from liability for what their users post. It would force "large internet platforms to adopt terms of service to ban hateful activities, defined as those that incite or engage in violence, intimidation, harassment, threats, or defamation targeting an individual or group based on their actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or disability."
The former congressman would also establish domestic terrorism offices in the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to move the government to "combat white supremacy, racism and domestic terrorism."
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