It aims to amend Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, which allows operators of websites to remove user-posted content that they deem inappropriate, and provides them with immunity from civil lawsuits related to such posting.

[1][2] The intent of Section 230 was to provide the same metaphor that ISPs were simply distributors of materials like booksellers, rather than publishers, and thus should not be responsible for the content they distribute for fear of creating a chilling effect on free speech.

In the wake of various allegations, the U.S. government, then with a Republican leadership, started questioning the role of the Big Tech companies—Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook—as well as other social media sites like Twitter in moderating content.

[7] Social media sites took steps to moderate content[8] and, under their Section 230 allowance, blocked accounts they had deemed to violate their terms of service, most of which had come out of alt- and far-right groups.

[23] On the same day, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, an anti-pornography organization, praised the act as "the best piece of accountability in the tech space since the passage of FOSTA-SESTA in 2018, which makes it illegal for interactive computer services to knowingly facilitate sex trafficking".

[24] A coalition of 25 organizations, including FreedomWorks and the Wikimedia Foundation, published an open letter on March 6, 2020, expressing "strong opposition" to the EARN IT Act, citing perceived conflicts with the First and Fourth Amendments.

[31][32] Opponents of the EARN IT Act argued that some of the "best practices" would most likely include a backdoor for law enforcement into any encryption used on the site, in addition to the dismantling of Section 230's approach, based on commentary made by members of the federal agencies that would be placed on this commission.

[36] Kir Nuthi, former Public Affairs Manager for NetChoice, explained in Slate that compelling all internet services to proactively monitor for child sexual abuse material could make it inadmissible as evidence under the Fourth Amendment due to the Exclusionary rule, as it was not collected voluntarily.

[37] In a statement following the Senate Judiciary Committee's unanimous passage of the bill, Graham praised the bipartisanship against the "scourge of child sexual abuse material and the exploitation of children on the internet.

"[38][non-primary source needed] Wyden was critical of the bill, calling it "a transparent and deeply cynical effort by a few well-connected corporations and the Trump administration to use child sexual abuse to their political advantage, the impact to free speech and the security and privacy of every single American be damned.