POLITICO

By Anthony Adragna and Aaron Mak

Sen. Amy Klobuchar said Congress must enact laws curtailing the spread of hate speech on social media to stop the spread of violence around the country, pointing to last week’s killing of Charlie Kirk as an example.

“I've got an obligation to the people of this country to find some way to put some rules in place when it comes to these platforms,” the Minnesota Democrat said Tuesday at POLITICO’s AI & Tech Summit. “It's very clear, if we just keep letting this go, it's going to get worse and worse.”

“I'm not for censorship, but I do think that more has to be done online," she said.

She noted the “through line” among high-profile shootings across the country is the use of social media “to perform for postings.” She also called for lawmakers to enact legislation limiting access to guns to prevent online postings from turning into real-life violence, though this is a tall order given the Republican-dominated makeup of Congress.

Kirk, the founder of the influential conservative group Turning Point USA, was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University during his “American Comeback Tour.” The suspect reportedly admitted to the shooting to friends on Discord, an online messaging platform popular with gamers, though the company has said that there’s no evidence of him promoting violence or planning an attack on the platform.

Klobuchar has worked to pass laws to regulate content online, such as the NO FAKES Act and Kids Online Safety Act, and is part of a bipartisan effort to strip away protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields online platforms from liability for content posted by users. Renewing her calls to repeal Section 230, she said, “You have liability when a washing machine blows up, you do not have liability if fentanyl is sold on social media platforms.”

Klobuchar said she does not believe the Constitution protects deepfake imagery created by artificial intelligence, like the viral clip of her purportedly addressing a Sydney Sweeney jeans ad campaign or digitally manipulated images of her attending a rally to defund the police.

Klobuchar warned that “shit that's out there” has so far been relatively innocuous but would become “more and more sophisticated as this goes on. And we cannot have this in a democracy.”

Klobuchar indicated she will reintroduce legislation with Majority Leader John Thune to establish transparency requirements for artificial intelligence technologies while continuing to foster innovation in the emerging sector. She said that such federal laws could be compatible with those in the states, avoiding the need to preempt them.

“Do I think that a number of AI companies legitimately want to see some rules of the road?” she said. “Yes, I do.”

On antitrust, Klobuchar said a recent court decision not to break up Google's online search empire was disappointing, as it did not resolve the main competition issues at the heart of the case. The senator then re-upped legislation she introduced with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that “would, at its core, say you can't self-reference your own products at the top of your search engine.”

“We need to pass some bills so that we can make sure there's this balance in terms of allowing new businesses to get in and be the next Google or the next Facebook — and not have gigantic monopolies dominating these areas,” Klobuchar said.