The government is trying to destroy privacy, yet again — and you can help!

Speaking of privacy, if you’re a U.S. citizen, call your Senator and Representative, and urge them to kill the “EARN IT” bill. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is what allows most of your favorite things about the Internet to exist — it’s the clause that says that companies who build tools are not responsible for what their users do with those tools. Without it, every time someone on Twitter wrote something libelous, Twitter could be sued. Without this section, most of the tools we use daily, and actually think of as “the Internet” would not exist — or at least they wouldn’t have been built in the U.S. But, arguably more importantly, the removal of this clause would destroy end-to-end encryption — nothing would ever be private again. The bill is called “EARN IT”, because it would implement a system whereby companies would have to earn section 230 protection. This would kill innovation (maybe Google and Facebook could afford it, but how many startups could), and, again, destroy privacy. Call your representatives.

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