No, Senator Blumenthal, I am not a Big Tech Lobbyist

Now, it is true that many Big Tech lobbyists also oppose EARN IT. The Verge quoted NetChoice’s Carl Szabo as saying that the provisions requiring platforms to report incidences of CSAM to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which the major US platforms already do voluntarily, amount to “turning social media companies into an arm of the government” under the state actor doctrine. More broadly, platforms are naturally going to oppose legislation that increases their liability for what their users do—that’s simple self-interest. But it doesn’t follow that everyone who opposes EARN IT is doing so at the behest of Big Tech, as Senator Blumenthal implied during Thursday’s markup.