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US President Donald Trump turned his attention to his most important personal concerns in the last few days of his presidency. He launched a final grab at legislation that would allow him revenge against social media companies as attempting to censor or undermine his posts. The legislation has been irritating the president since the first infamous instance of Twitter adding labels to the president’s tweets, is Section 230. President tweeted on 29^th December and said, “Weak and tired Republican ‘leadership’ will allow the bad Defense Bill to pass. Say goodbye to VITAL Section 230 termination. Twitter is doing nothing about all of the lies & propaganda being put out by China or the Radical Left Democrat Party. They have targeted Republicans, Conservatives & the President of the United States. Section 230 should be revoked by Congress. Until then, it will be regulated!”

In brief, Section 230 protects any website or service that hosts content from the world’s largest companies such as Facebook and Twitter, and news outlets’ comment sections, to cooking forums from being legally liable for content posted by its users. The libelous posts are thus not the responsibility of the forum that hosts them, but the person who posts them. Section 230 has been a political battlefield for some years, partly due to misrepresentation of the law conflated with the separate issue of perceived social media bias against those on the political right. Senator Lindsey Graham has levied attacks on the law in an attempt to control what tech companies can moderate. Mitch McConnell is currently in the process of tying stimulus payment bills to the full repeal of Section 230.

President Trump may be leaving the White House, but these issues will still remain on the Republican’s agenda. Joe Biden said before the 2020 elections and decried Facebook’s ability to spread misinformation. He was referring to Mark Zuckerberg and said, “I’ve been in the view that not only should we be worried about the concentration of power, but we should also be worried about the lack of privacy and them being exempt, which you’re not exempt. The Times can’t write something you know to be false and be exempt from being sued. But he can”. Biden added that Section 230 should be revoked because Facebook is propagating falsehoods they know to be false. There is no editorial impact at all on Facebook. Biden said it is debatable and has been left to journalists, tech companies, and lawmakers divine what actions may be taken.