Tech Targeted on Antitrust, Liability After Facebook’s Trump Ban

Lawmakers seized on Facebook’s latest political clash this week to renew a push to regulate large technology platforms, brandishing legislative threats to update antitrust statutes and limit a coveted liability shield to curtail the companies’ power.

The Facebook Oversight Board’s decision to uphold the ban on former president Donald Trump spurred Republicans to call for antitrust reform to break up big tech platforms such as Facebook Inc. that they say censor conservative speech, while Democrats pressed for solutions to stop the spread of misinformation and hate speech online.

“The latest decision by Facebook was essentially a Rorschach Test for both ...