Existing laws protecting free speech online are being questioned from across the political spectrum in the United States. VOA correspondent Matt Dibble takes a look at the positions on the issue from Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump. The two main political parties in the United States have different positions on a number of issues, but they agree that social media companies need to change the way they operate. After the presidential election in November, regardless of who wins it, there may be a change in social media laws.

“If we don’t have freedom of speech, we simply don’t have a free country.”

On his website, Republican Donald Trump claims that the right to freedom of expression, guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, is being violated by some social media companies. After the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Mr. Trump himself was temporarily banned from posting on several social media platforms.

“After my inauguration as president, I will ask Congress to draft a bill to amend Section 230, removing large online platforms from the business of censorship.”

Section 230, which is part of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, was instrumental in creating the Internet that it is today, says Brandie Nonnecke, director of the Center on Technology Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

“In effect, this law empowers platforms so that they are able to monitor and remove content without risking being sued. Now we often hear that the First Amendment is being violated by these platforms. However, the First Amendment is about government restrictions on free speech. “Social media platforms are private entities, protected by the First Amendment,” she says.

Previous attempts to revise Article 230 have failed. After Mr. Trump’s Twitter accounts were suspended in 2021, Florida and Texas, two Republican-majority states, passed laws limiting the ability of social media companies to monitor political posts on their platforms.

But those laws were put on hold this year, when the Supreme Court ruled that social media companies have the right to make editorial decisions without government interference. Politicians from Democratic candidate Kamala Harris often accuse social media companies of allowing too much harmful speech on their platforms. In 2022, Vice President Harris created a White House task force to address this problem.

“Hate has become so commonplace online that it’s becoming normalized for society and for users, some of whom might say it’s become inevitable.”

For now, the right of social media companies to control the content on their sites remains in place, but for many politicians and American citizens, this is still an unresolved issue.