Pichai, Dorsey Differ from Zuckerberg on Section 230 Changes

By Ryan Tracy

Twitter and Google have indicated they are open to discussing legal changes with Congress, but they have been less specific than Facebook about what Section 230 changes they would support.

That trend continued Thursday when Sundar Pichai and Jack Dorsey pointedly declined to endorse the changes Mark Zuckerberg proposed (https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-zuckerberg-proposes-raising-bar-for-section-230-11616610616).

"We rely on the liability protections to actually take strong action on particularly new types of content," such as a video of a mass shooting, Mr. Pichai told lawmakers.

Mr. Dorsey cautioned against allowing governments to decide content-moderation practices. "Forcing every business to behave the same reduces innovation and individual choice," he said.

He also questioned the idea of differentiating between large and small platforms, which Mr. Zuckerberg floated. "I think it's going to be very hard to determine what is a large platform and a small platform, and it may incentivize the wrong things," he said.

One possible explanation for those comments: Twitter may worry that Facebook, its much larger competitor, will be better able to handle costly regulations.

NOTE: In-line links reference additional content of interest chosen by the WSJ news team.

This item is part of a Wall Street Journal live coverage event. The full stream can be found by searching P/WSJL (WSJ Live Coverage).

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 25, 2021 14:03 ET (18:03 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.