Steve DelBianco, the president and CEO of tech lobbying firm NetChoice, appeared at the hearing on Monday to testify against the legislation.
NetChoice members include a wide range of big-name tech companies, such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, and TikTok.
DelBianco disputed the “town square” argument and contended that tech companies’ greater defense against increased regulatory checks on censorship was not with Section 230, but with the First Amendment.
He pointed to a recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in a lawsuit from the conservative non-profit media organization Prager University against YouTube, which concluded that “despite YouTube’s ubiquity and its role as a public facing platform, it remains a private forum, not a public forum subject to judicial scrutiny under the First Amendment.”