"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider… No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of— (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or (B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph.”
(47 U.S.C. § 230, a section of the 1996 Telecommunications Act/ Communications & Decency Act, federal statute)
The law provides a presumably safe harbor for big and purportedly neutral internet platforms open to postings from the general public. Social media and search engines for the most part. Effectively, these behemoths are not liable or responsible for what other people post on their platforms. Yet, they are perfect vehicles for foreign disinformation and election interference, unfounded and dangerous conspiracy theorists, outrageous and high-risk unprofessional medical “advisors” and science deniers, violent extremists and out-and-out defamers and liars. Unfortunately, one of the biggest violators of these manipulations, resulting in removal or explanatory notes, is the President himself.
These biggest of the big providers have managed to inflame just about every demographic on the political spectrum. Left, right, center. Even as they have tried, purportedly in “good faith,” to implement obvious filters to stop hate groups and those advocating violence or flatly illegal activities (like child pornography, extortion, murder and sex trafficking)… and insert a notion of not permitting dangerous Conservatives claim that their voice has been muffled if not completely denied, while liberals claim that defamation and mendacity from the right threaten the political integrity of the nation. Republicans and Democrats both believe that Section 230 needs to be revisited for very different reasons.
The conundrum has settled on Congress and the various committees and subcommittees from which corrective legislation is likely to begin. On October 28th, “Three of the biggest names in digital media — Alphabet [Google] Chief Executive Sundar Pichai, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey — spoke before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation about Section 230… in the latest indication of a political environment that’s become increasingly hostile to Big Tech.
“Section 230 established that websites and service providers are not legally responsible for what their users post, while leaving the door open for them to moderate user content as long as they do so ‘in good faith’… It’s this question of moderation that’s prompted some of the most aggressive attacks on the law, which President Trump has moved to weaken and former Vice President Joe Biden once said ‘immediately should be revoked.’” Los Angeles Times, October 29th.
Unfortunately for those who want drastic measures to control content on the Web, there’s this nasty provision in the First Amendment to the Constitution (extended to states under the 14th Amendment), that supersedes any conflicting legislation: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...” While other democracies provide for varying levels of freedom of speech, the US Constitution is the most emphatic. So if a federal statute enables “good faith” moderation by a Web platform, how far can it go before it runs afoul of the First Amendment? How far can Congress go to bring what many perceive as an existential threat to democracy – the ability to lie and mislead on a national stage for political reasons – within the limits of common sense? The testimony before that congressional committee is telling:
“In their opening statements, committee Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and ranking member Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) each took the tech giants to task — albeit for very different reasons… ‘My concern is that these platforms have become powerful arbiters of what is true and what content users can access,’ Wicker said… He invoked a ‘long trail of censorship and suppression of conservative voices on the internet,’ drawing on long-running Republican claims that social media limit the spread of right-wing content.
“Cantwell, meanwhile, highlighted concerns about the role of social media in the decline of local news and Russian election interference… ‘There are actors who have been at this for a long time,’ she said of the latter issue… ‘They wanted to destabilize Eastern Europe, and we became the second act when they tried to destabilize our democracy here by sowing disinformation.’” LA Times. But when it came to the digital purveyors themselves, the response was not exactly uniform: “Dorsey set the tone by arguing that ‘removing Section 230 will remove speech from the internet’ while acknowledging that the ‘good faith’ component of the law means Twitter and its peers still need to earn their users’ trust.
“Pichai labeled the internet ‘a powerful force for good’ and an ‘equalizer,’ while also citing a responsibility on the company’s part to protect users from harmful content — something Google does ‘without political bias,’ he added… ‘Our ability to provide access to a wide range of information is only possible because of existing legal frameworks, like Section 230,’ Pichai said.
“But Zuckerberg split from his peers, calling for the government to rethink the law even while noting that Section 230 protects Facebook from pressure to both overzealously remove and entirely ignore harmful content… ‘Section 230 helped create the internet as we know it … but the internet has also evolved, and I think that Congress should update the law to make sure that it’s working as intended,’ Zuckerberg said, echoing previous calls he’s made for more government regulation of the tech sector. ‘One important place to start would be making content moderation systems more transparent.’” LA Times.
Is a solid statute one that everyone hates, roughly equally? One that simply turns the Web back into a lawless and unregulated wild, wild West? We do not appear to be reaching a meaningful consensus, which makes the Russians very happy. “On the latter point, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) asked Dorsey why tweets by Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei questioning the reality of the Holocaust were not flagged as misinformation, when posts by Trump have been.
“Dorsey responded that Twitter does not have a generic policy against misinformation, but rather, against three categories of misinformation: manipulated media, public health and election integrity. Holocaust denial is “misleading information, but we don’t have a policy against that type of misleading information,” he said. (In fact, Twitter adopted a policy against Holocaust denial two weeks ago, following a similar move by Facebook.)
“Democrats on the committee, meanwhile, focused their questions on cases where they say the tech platforms haven’t moderated user content rigorously enough. Democratic senators touched on such concerns as hate speech, election disinformation (both domestic and foreign in origin), COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and the use of social media as a recruiting platform by extremists, including the suspected would-be kidnappers of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer… ‘The issue is not that the companies before us today are taking too many posts down,” said Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass)… ‘The issue is that they’re leaving too many dangerous posts up. In fact, they’re amplifying harmful content so that it spreads like wildfire.’” LA Times.
Meanwhile, hate groups rally, dodging removal from one Website, popping up in another. Violent extremists continue to prey on individual vulnerabilities and misbeliefs, recruiting new adherents to their militias that are preparing to act. Like Q-Anon which has been suggesting that a civil war is imminent if Trump does not remain in the White House. It has been way too easy for extremists to exercise a democracy-threatening minority viewpoint, rally and manipulate misinformed “believers” to engage in exceptionally dangerous acts, threats to other individuals and to society itself, exhorting others to follow their distorted path. If people did not believe this tsunami of toxic falsehoods… but so many just do. If we do not figure this out, we lose… our freedom, our safety, our livelihoods and our nation.
I’m Peter Dekom, and it never ceases to amaze me how many Americans are willing to blow up our democracy if only they are able to force their will on everyone else.
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