Rand Paul reverses on Section 230, says Big Tech’s ‘lack of decency’ went too far

Published January 20, 2026 1:18pm ET



Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), long one of the Republican Party’s most consistent defenders of Section 230 on free speech grounds, is calling for the law’s protections to be stripped from major technology platforms, marking a sharp break from his libertarian stance on government intervention.

In a New York Post op-ed published Monday evening, Paul argued that companies such as Google and YouTube can no longer be trusted to act responsibly as stewards of online speech and should lose the legal shield that protects them from liability for user content. He framed the shift as a response to what he described as unchecked censorship and selective enforcement by Big Tech, saying platforms wield too much power over public discourse.

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