Assembly committee hears experts on online violence against women, Section 230 limits and AI threats

The California State Assembly Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection convened an informational hearing to examine technology-facilitated violence against women and girls, including nonconsensual intimate-image distribution, platform liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and emerging risks from generative AI and the manosphere.

Experts told the committee that the harms are longstanding but now amplified by the speed, scale and monetization of online platforms. "Violence against women online, particularly by men, is a strategy to silence and erase women and girls from their fullest potential and possibilities," Professor Noble, a MacArthur Fellow and professor of Gender Studies, African American Studies, and Information Studies at UCLA, said in opening testimony. Moira Donegan, writer in residence at Stanford’s Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research and an opinion columnist at The Guardian, said the Internet makes older forms of image-based abuse far more durable and widespread: "What is new is that the Internet and its technologies enable a greatly expanded impact for this abuse."

Attorney Carrie Goldberg, founder of a victim-rights law firm that litigates technology-facilitated sexual violence cases, described the litigation challenges that victims face because of courts' broad readings of Section 230. Goldberg told the committee she sued platforms using product‑liability and other theories in cases including Herrick…