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Effort to crack Big Tech’s legal shield gains bipartisan momentum

Silicon Valley is opposed to both pieces of legislation. NetChoice, an industry group representing Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has described Graham’s proposal as a threat to the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches and seizures, and says Thune’s would only make it more difficult for companies to keep harmful content off their sites.

“By forcing online platforms to reveal details on how they moderate content, the bill gives bad actors a cheat sheet for gaming the very systems designed to protect us from their harmful content,” Carl Szabo, NetChoice’s vice president and general counsel, said in a statement. “We should enable platforms to remove harmful content, not weigh them down with unnecessary regulations.”