POLITICS: The Algorithm Accountability Act’s Threat to Free Speech – USSA News

A new push in Congress is taking shape under the banner of “algorithmic accountability,” but its real effect would be to expand the government’s reach into online speech.

Senators John Curtis (R-UT) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ) have introduced the Algorithm Accountability Act, a bill that would rewrite Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to remove liability protections from large, for-profit social media platforms whose recommendation systems are said to cause “harm.”

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The proposal applies to any platform with more than a million users that relies on algorithms to sort or recommend content.

These companies would be required to meet a “duty of care” to prevent foreseeable bodily injury or death.

If a user or family member claims an algorithm contributed to such harm, the platform could be sued, losing the legal shield that has protected online speech for nearly three decades.

Although the bill’s authors describe it as a safety measure, the structure of the law would inevitably pressure platforms to suppress or downrank lawful content that might later be portrayed as dangerous.

Most major social networks already rely heavily on automated recommendation systems to organize and personalize information. Exposing them to lawsuits for what those systems display invites broad, quiet censorship under the guise of caution.

The legislation carves out narrow exemptions for feeds shown in chronological order or for content users search for directly. It also claims to bar enforcement based on political viewpoint.

However, few companies could risk leaving controversial or politically charged material in recommendation streams once legal liability becomes a possibility. The easiest path would be to remove or hide it preemptively.

Section 230 was designed in 1996 to protect platforms from being held responsible for what others say online.

That protection made it possible for open forums, social networks, and comment sections to exist at all. Weakening it for algorithmic recommendations would expose the entire system of user-driven communication to endless litigation.

Senator Curtis has linked his support for the bill to the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah, asserting that “online platforms likely played a major role in radicalizing Kirk’s alleged killer,” and calling the process “driven not by ideology alone but also by algorithms, code written to keep us engaged and enraged.”

He and Senator Kelly introduced the proposal during a CNN town hall, portraying it as a bipartisan effort to reduce political division.

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California already considered this approach when lawmakers advanced SB 771, a measure that tried to impose liability for algorithmic distribution of user speech.

After weeks of public pressure and growing concern over how the bill would function in practice, Governor Gavin Newsom ultimately vetoed it.

His decision signaled that even within a state that frequently experiments with heavy regulatory models, there was recognition that attaching legal penalties to algorithmic delivery of third-party content risked crossing constitutional lines.

In his veto message, Newsom raised concerns about the bill’s reach and the practical consequences of transforming routine algorithmic functions into potential civil rights violations.

Treating automated recommendations as legally distinct actions from the underlying speech would have opened the door to extensive litigation over content that remains fully lawful.

Newsom’s rejection showed that even government officials who express strong interest in regulating technology can recognize when a proposal edges too close to policing expression under another name.

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