The Senate Commerce Committee has voted unanimously to authorize subpoenas of the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter forcing them to testify in front of the panel about Section 230, a law that protects tech companies from being legally liable for their users’ content. (The Wall Street Journal, CNBC)

Talking point: Republican Senator Roger Wicker, committee chair, said the subpoenas were necessary because the CEOs had “declined” to participate. They will be contacted again to schedule a hearing; subpoenas will be issued only if they do not voluntarily appear in front of the committee in time. The unanimous bipartisan vote was unusual—Democrats were expected to boycott the vote given how vocal Republicans were in August’s House judiciary subcommittee hearing about Big Tech’s alleged conservative bias. But both U.S. President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden support some kind of reform to Section 230. The bill was first introduced in the 1990s to encourage innovation in the tech sector by protecting small tech companies from legal liability for their users’ content, but critics argue the language in the bill in its present form in fact shields Big Tech from taking adequate responsibility for the content on their platforms.