(Bloomberg) -- Executives from Reddit Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google argue a legal liability shield is essential for internet companies to thrive as lawmakers consider tweaking the law.

Katherine Oyama, Google’s global head of intellectual property policy, and Reddit Chief Executive Officer Steve Huffman said in prepared remarks before a congressional hearing Wednesday that any significant changes to their liability protection would hurt their ability to curb harmful content on the internet and hamper the growth of new companies. Reddit is a news and discussion board owned by Advance Publications Inc.

The executives will face members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee at the hearing, entitled “Fostering a Healthier Internet to Protect Consumers.” The lawmakers are examining whether tech giants should continue to benefit from Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which provides internet platforms liability protection for user-generated content. Besides Oyama and Huffman, experts on law and cyber crime are expected to testify.

The panel had invited U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to testify because a deal with Mexico and Canada to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement includes language about the shield. Committee leaders had suggested the U.S. might not want to “export” a law it may be reconsidering. But Lighthizer declined to appear, which Democratic Representative Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, the committee’s chairman, called “extremely disappointing.”

The hearing comes amid growing skepticism among lawmakers about whether social-media companies should keep the legal exemption as they struggle to stem drug and gun sales and offensive content on their platforms.

Lawsuit Shield

Tech companies value the measure because it saves them from having to review users’ posts before they’re published online and then shields them from lawsuits if that content turns out to be problematic.

But it also protects the companies’ moves to remove violence and misinformation, which they say is needed to police their online spaces. Critics say the measure allows tech companies to avoid taking responsibility for dangerous and illegal content.

Oyama said in her prepared remarks that the legal measure helped digital platforms turn the internet into an open and thriving marketplace that benefits users and businesses. If the immunity were eliminated, companies would face an onlsaught of lawsuits, she said.

“Without 230, platforms could face liability for decisions around removal of content from their platforms,” Oyama said in her prepared remarks. Sites offering consumer reviews such as Yelp Inc. or TripAdvisor Inc. “might be sued for defamation claims brought by a restaurant, hotel, or an electrician trying to suppress their negative reviews,” she said.

Tech industry advocates also say that amending the legal liability shield would only impose onerous burdens on smaller companies while protecting the bigger tech companies from more market competition.

Lacking Resources

“Many of the conversations on revising 230 are premised on companies having the ability to moderate content from the center, in an industrialized model often reliant on armies of tens of thousands of contractors,” Huffman said in his prepared remarks. “Medium, small, and start up-sized companies don’t have the resources for this.”

Both executives said their companies have boosted internal programs and algorithms to address illegal and problematic content on their platforms.

Congress is showing an increasing willingness to pare back the legal exemption. President Donald Trump signed a bill into law last year narrowing the protection for websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking.

More recently, Representative Ed Case, a Hawaii Democrat and former hotel executive, and Representative Peter King, a New York Republican, have introduced a bill to stop tech companies from using the exemption to flout local leasing or rental requirements.Meanwhile, Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri proposed in June that the biggest tech companies should prove they treat content in a politically neutral way before they benefit from the legal shield.

--With assistance from Ben Brody.

To contact the reporter on this story: Naomi Nix in Washington at nnix1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, Mark Niquette

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