Ken Paxton's new data center plan would make operators criminally liable if the servers they run "empower AI chatbots that undermine children's safety."
Data centers only provide power, space, and cooling. They don't produce the speech. Punishing them for it pushes liability past Section 230 and onto the hardware.
Faced with criminal liability over a term as vague as "undermine children's safety," operators won't defend anyone. They'll drop the customers and platforms hosting lawful speech rather than risk prison over it.
The platforms that survive will hand users digital ID age verification, because checking everyone's papers is the cheapest way to legally prove no child was ever there.
https://reclaimthenet.org/ken-paxton-data-center-criminal-liability-ai-chatbots-child-safety
reclaimthenet / Reclaim The Net
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2026-08-27 15:41:16 UTC
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2026-08-27 15:41:16 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "Ken Paxton's new data center plan would make operators criminally liable if the servers they run \"empower AI chatbots that undermine children's safety.\"\n\nData centers only provide power, space, and cooling. They don't produce the speech. Punishing them for it pushes liability past Section 230 and onto the hardware.\n\nFaced with criminal liability over a term as vague as \"undermine children's safety,\" operators won't defend anyone. They'll drop the customers and platforms hosting lawful speech rather than risk prison over it.\n\nThe platforms that survive will hand users digital ID age verification, because checking everyone's papers is the cheapest way to legally prove no child was ever there.\n\nhttps://reclaimthenet.org/ken-paxton-data-center-criminal-liability-ai-chatbots-child-safety",
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