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In July of 2013, Attorneys General of 47 states petitioned Congress to do away with the immunity offered by Section 230. The ACLU reacted to the petition, arguing that because of Section 230, “[a] website can provide a platform for all speech without worrying that if one of its online users posts something stupid, critical, defamatory, or unlawful, the website itself can be held responsible.” The ACLU further stated that if Section 230 were removed that “it wouldn't take long for the vibrant culture of free speech to disappear from the web.”

The Attorneys General were back at it again in 2015, when 40 Attorneys General signed in support of an Amici Curiae (friend of the court) brief in favor of Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood’s case against Google. The case, Google, Inc. v. Jim Hood, is a suit filed against Hood by Google for issuing a subpoena based on allegations that Google is responsible for the ability to find copyrighted materials through their internet search engine. Google stated, “The Attorney General may prefer a pre-filtered Internet—but the Constitution and Congress have denied him the authority to mandate it.” A federal judge blocked the subpoena, an action which eventually led to a dismissal agreement between Hood and Google.

In 2016, Yelp fought a court ruling in California that required the company to remove negative reviews after a law firm sued the company. Critics of the ruling worried that it would set a precedent of holding internet review services liable for customer reviews. Others worried that it would result in businesses pursuing legal action against the reviewers themselves.

Section 230 was directly contradicted last year when the case known as Jane Doe No.14 v. Internet Brands, Inc. was decided in favor of the plaintiff. In the case, Jane Doe, a model on the site Model Mayhem, alleged that Internet Brands, Inc. (the parent company) had knowledge that users were engaging in criminal activity on the site. Specifically, two users on the site were targeting women and sexually violating them. In the court’s decision, it was determined that the website could, in fact, be held responsible for not warning a user of any potential harm. While in this specific case, it was discovered that Internet Brands had direct knowledge of a long history (5 years) of criminal activity by these users, there is concern that the ruling potentially sets a precedent of holding website owners responsible for communication between third-party users on its servers. Free speech advocates and civil liberties groups will be watching developments in this case very closely.