Technology keeps on delivering. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos showed up at a robotics conference on Monday walking a robotic dog.

But tech appeared to be in a dark kind of retrograde for much of this week.  

An autonomous car was involved in a fatal accident. The cybercurrency bitcoin was found to have illegal content hidden in the folds of the blockchain – the decentralized database – that distributes it. Facebook had its high-profile travails.

What’s to keep us from living in a real-life “Westworld,” a place of power without responsibility? Lawmakers on Wednesday passed legislation, now headed to the president, that would weaken a legal shield that has kept online platforms from being sued for something a user posted.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act dates to 1996. It’s the legal backbone of the modern internet. Without it, none of your favorite social media sites could exist. Exposure to the risk of devastating legal backlash would simply be too great.

It also has made it easier for child-sex traffickers, who have flourished online, to operate. But many critics see a Pandora’s box amid the good intention of congressional tinkering. Some cite censorship – or say it will only drive traffickers deeper underground.

This week, we’ve again been shown a window on the complications of slipping a leash on an industry that’s on the dead run.

Now to our five stories for your Friday, looking beneath the headlines to highlight resolution, reinvention, and a proud episode of cultural reclamation.