Each week, we review the week’s news, offering analysis about the most important developments in the tech industry.

Hi, I’m Jamie Condliffe. Greetings from London. Here’s a look at this past week’s tech news:

Some lawmakers are scrambling to rethink a law that enabled the internet as we know, love and hate it.

The other week, my colleague Daisuke Wakabayashi explained Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act:

“The First Amendment protects free speech, including hate speech, but Section 230 shields websites from liability for content created by their users. It permits internet companies to moderate their sites without being on the hook legally for everything they host.”

Dai also wrote that lawmakers from both parties were going after it, for different reasons. Some Democrats say it gives social media platforms an excuse to leave up problematic content; some Republicans argue it enables companies to censor conservative voices.

It’s hard to reconcile those viewpoints. So is the case closed?

Nope. If lawmakers can’t agree, the president may step in. Politico reported that the White House was drafting an executive order to deal with alleged anticonservative bias. CNN later claimed to have seen a version of the order, which it said would mandate that the Federal Communications Commission restrict how far the immunity of Section 230 was extended.

The proposal as described by CNN could face problems, according to John Bergmayer, a senior staff lawyer at Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group. It could face statutory and administrative hurdles; it may even run up against free-speech rights by forcing neutrality. Regardless, if it exists, it would make clear that there was desire, and urgency, to change Section 230.

Since the law was signed, in 1996, the tasks of online moderation, and the influence of the internet companies that the law helped become behemoths, have changed drastically. It may well be time for a rethink.