Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., says Google is committing election interference by suppressing search results for Trump’s botched assassination on “The Big Money Show.”
Thirty years ago, Congress passed Section 230 to help fragile internet startups survive lawsuits on multiple fronts. In 1996, Americans logged on to dial-up modems and gathered on message boards. Lawmakers wanted to protect growing companies from defamation, copyright and other lawsuits over something a random user posted. The Congress aimed to promote innovation, protect freedom of expression and allow a competitive marketplace to flourish.
That might have made sense at the time. Not today.
What Congress portrayed as a narrow shield for free speech became a permanent amnesty program for trillion-dollar Silicon Valley monopolists. Section 230 no longer protects speech. It protects power.
Instead of scrappy start-ups, Americans now answer to online oligarchs. Googling. Facebook. Amazon. Apple. These companies don’t just host content. They control search results, social media, online commerce, app distribution and digital advertising. They determine what Americans see, read, buy and believe. And they invoke Section 230 to protect themselves while censoring, silencing, and canceling their political opponents.
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Congress granted platforms immunity for content users post, and Congress allowed them to moderate content in “good faith.” Lawmakers assumed that competition would discipline abuse. If one platform were to censor too aggressively, users might leave for another.
Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on September 17, 2025. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
That competition never came. Big Tech executives rivals boughtcrushed start-ups and exploited network effects establish dominance. They turned platforms into monopolies. They used scale to entrench power. Even conservatives who distrust these companies should still use their platforms to reach voters, customers and each other.
Meanwhile, the courts expanded Section 230 far beyond its original purpose. Judges expanded the statute to include conduct that Congress had never contemplated. Silicon Valley lawyers aggressively pushed interpretations, and courts accepted them. As a result, trillion-dollar monopolies now decide what Americans can say online, while working with politicians and bureaucrats who demand a crackdown on so-called “misinformation.”
That is not a free market. That is censorship made possible by the government.
Conservatives paid the price. Big tech companies hunted down, censored and canceled voices that challenged the ruling class. She deplatformed doctors and scientists who questioned COVID orthodoxy. She censored Hunter Biden‘s criminal activities under the guise of ‘content moderation’. Americans would prefer to call it viewpoint discrimination. They deplatformed the sitting President of the United States of America.
Hunter Biden arrives at the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building in Wilmington, Delaware on June 6, 2024. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
At the same time, these companies insist that they need blanket immunity to avoid liability for heinous content – human trafficking, terrorism, drug trafficking – content that they monetize through advertising and engagement. They benefit from the system every step of the way. But when harm ensues, they point to Section 230 and deny responsibility.
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That is not neutrality. That is corporate prosperity.
Section 230 does not appear in the Constitution. Congress created it in 1996, and Congress can reform or repeal it. No company has a constitutional right to government-granted immunity. When lawmakers offer special protections to powerful corporations, those corporations use those protections to amass even more power.
Washington has made that choice. Washington can undo it.
If Meta had competed with Instagram instead of acquiring it, Americans would have more choices and less centralized control. If YouTube had competed with Google instead of merging with it, creators wouldn’t have to rely on a single gatekeeper. Consolidation strengthened the power of censorship. Immunity protected consolidation.
For three decades Congress and federal regulators coddled Silicon Valley. They tolerated consolidation. They defended immunity. They ignored warning signs. Now Americans live under digital gatekeepers who are accountable to no one.
Conservatives don’t want bureaucrats monitoring speeches. But we must refuse to let trillion-dollar corporations exercise government-granted immunity while they silence half the country. We must decline permanent amnesty for politically biased monopolists.
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Thirty years is long enough. Congress should do that comic Big Tech of Article 230 thereof immunity. Lawmakers must restore competition, enforce antitrust laws, and hold platforms accountable to the same legal standards that apply to everyone else.
Stop the amnesty. End the love deal. Repeal of Article 230.
