Few weeks have better encapsulated the whiplash-inducing discussions playing out around free speech online than the previous one. Last Monday the country was already knee-deep in questions about the internet’s role in spreading hate speech—and whether platforms were doing enough to combat it—after the web forum 8chan played host once again to a hateful manifesto connected to a mass shooting. By the end of the week, however, another narrative emerged—that tech companies were policing speech too much, as reports of the White House drafting an executive order titled "Protecting Americans from Online Censorship" made the rounds.

At the center of all these debates is a bit of legislation that came into being well before Facebook and Twitter, back when the internet was plodding along at dialup speeds: Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.

Section 230, as it’s commonly known, provides “interactive computer services”—that is, anything from web hosts to websites to social media companies—with broad immunity from civil cases over the content users publish on their platforms. (Companies can still be held liable under federal criminal law and for intellectual property violations.) Among other things, this protection allowed social media companies to flourish without worrying about each and every post bringing about some potential, ruinous lawsuit. But it’s also come under increasing scrutiny, with some critics arguing that tech firms need more accountability.

“Something tech companies have really gotten wrong—they’ve proceeded for years basically treating Section 230 like it’s a right that’s enshrined in the Constitution, and I think, frankly, some of the large platforms in particular have gotten incredibly arrogant,” says Jeff Kosseff, who wrote a book about Section 230 called Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet. “And now what you’re seeing is a backlash to that arrogance.”

Nowhere, perhaps, is that backlash bigger or more consequential than in Washington, DC. In Congress, both parties have singled Section 230 out for attack, with some Democrats saying it allows tech companies to get away with not moderating content enough, while some Republicans say it enables them to moderate too much. So far this hyper-partisan divide on the exact nature of Section 230’s shortcomings has precluded any meaningful progress on reform. But lawmakers from both parties keep signaling that they’re serious about changing the status quo.

Just last week, Representatives Frank Pallone (D-New Jersey) and Greg Walden (R-Oregon) publicly criticized the inclusion of a Section 230–like provision in a trade agreement with Mexico and Canada.

“As you may know, the effects of Section 230 and the appropriate role of such a liability shield have become the subject of much debate in recent years,” they wrote, citing a 2017 WIRED story. “While we take no view on that debate in this letter, we find it inappropriate for the United States to export language mirroring Section 230 while such serious policy discussions are ongoing.”

Is Section 230 Safe?

The recent mass shootings added another edge to an already multilayered and contentious debate in the nation’s capital. Congress is now on its month-long August recess, but just before lawmakers headed out of the swamp, WIRED caught up with many of the key players.

“The world has changed,” Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) told WIRED. “The internet has changed, and I think we need to keep pace with change. The dominant, monopoly-sized platforms that exist today didn’t exist then. The business model they employ today wasn’t employed then.”

Hawley, like many of his colleagues in the GOP, has accused social media companies of censoring conservative voices—a charge those companies have repeatedly denied. In June, he introduced a bill in the Senate that would require the FTC to certify that companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google do not “moderate information provided by other information content providers in a politically biased manner” in order for Section 230 immunity to apply. (Republican representative Paul Gosar, of Arizona, announced he was introducing a similarly minded bill in the House a few weeks ago.) But the constitutional questions it raises, along with the lack of support from Democrats, makes it seem unlikely to succeed.