While Congress questioned some Big Tech CEOs this week, Democratic leaders were busy behind the scenes, working on proposals to change the way Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is drafted. Unfortunately, there are many people on both sides of the ideological divide who have been so irritated by the actions of Twitter and Facebook, along with other social media heavyweights, that support for this type of action seems to be growing. But what the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Frank Pallone (DN.J.) and his cronies are planning to do will not prevent some of the worst abuses by Jack Dorsey and company. Instead, it will open the door to unofficial censorship of anyone with insufficiently animated views and can lead to endless lawsuits, not just against social media platforms, but against all online content publishers. (Axios)
The question is not technology companies should be regulated, but how, said the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Frank Pallone (DN.J.), Margaret Harding McGill of Axios.
Why does it matter: Democrats, with powers in Congress and furious about vaccine misinformation and the election, agree that it is time to legislate on technology policy, including updating the key law that protects them from liability for user-generated content. The path to passing a bill is a little clearer and there are signs that the biggest technology platforms are ready to embrace some changes.
Driving the news: Pallone said he wants to target the financial incentives of online platforms to amplify misinformation and extreme content.
Pallone is skillfully framing the discussion by talking about “more outrageous and extremist” content (his words) and how Facebook and Twitter are “profiting” from it, because this is the type of content that generates a lot of clicks. It is a given that flashy and inflammatory headlines attract eyes, and if Democrats make it look like the only people being punished are billionaires like Zuckerberg and Dorsey, it’s easy to get people to agree to open lawsuits and regulations.
We need to keep two things in mind here. First, the Communications Decency Act does not only apply to social media platforms. In fact, the original legislation was written long before these platforms were even shining in the eyes of their creators. These rules apply to any media where news and opinions are published and, more precisely, to any website that allows public comment.
The biggest problem, however, is that opening the door to lawsuits and restrictions involves a system in which someone will have to decide what qualifies as “outrageous and extremist” content. Even labeling something like “disinformation” opens the door to rampant abuse. We have seen many examples of Facebook and Twitter blocking content or suspending / banning users (almost entirely conservative voices) for posting comments considered “harmful”. This is often done under the guise of supposedly giving out bad information about the pandemic, but these patterns of behavior are carried over to discussions of racism, social inequality and almost every other controversial topic you would like to name.
People have been suspended from Twitter for suggesting that the new coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, although the former head of the CDC said recently that he believes this is the case as well. Twitter suspended the New York Post account for weeks because they linked to one of their own stories about Hunter Biden that turned out to be 100% justified. (Dorsey told Congress this week that the decision was “a mistake”, but did not say who made the decision or what process was used to evaluate the content.) There are plenty of other examples.
The point is that there will be no clear definitions of what is allowed to speak and what is “extreme and dangerous disinformation” other than those generated by the editors. And with section 230 amended in the way Democrats are proposing, liberals will soon be sifting through the comment sections of sites like the one you’re reading now. As soon as they find someone citing the medical study in Denmark saying tissue masks are ineffective in protecting uninfected people from contracting the virus, they can file a lawsuit against our company for allowing “dangerous misinformation” to appear on our website. (Despite the fact that the results of this study have never been refuted.)
These lawsuits will (or at least they should) eventually fail under the First Amendment, but many of these frivolous attacks will result in huge bills that will put some smaller publishers out of business. So don’t rush to support Pallone’s proposal just because you think it will punish Facebook and Twitter. There is a Trojan horse hidden in this plan and the Democrats are fully aware of that. It is not a bug. It is a resource.