Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law passed during the Clinton administration, is under attack from both the left and the right. President Trump wants to revise Section 230 because of what he believes is unfair throttling of conservative news by liberal tech platforms. And liberal legislators want to revise Section 230 to make it more difficult to post “hate speech” on these same platforms.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have been blamed for everything wrong about these leading social media platforms. We could debate whether they deserve the blame, but we can’t deny that they are caught between a rock and a hard place. One one hand, they love Section 230 because it removes corporate responsibility for content published on their platforms by users. On the other hand, they worry about the future of a platform that could becomes a free-for-all without any ability to control the most poisonous content. They want to be free to limit obscene pornography, dangerous speech, libel, and other content not protected by the 1st Amendment, but they don’t want to be responsible for damage that might be caused by speech that comes close, without crossing, the line. According to the Recode website…
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced that his agency would “move forward with a rulemaking to clarify” the meaning of Section 230, which gives internet platforms like Facebook and Twitter immunity from lawsuits over content their users provide. That is to say, if someone defames you in a tweet, you can sue the Twitter user but not Twitter itself. This 25-year-old law is what allows websites that rely on third-party content to exist at all. It also allows those sites to moderate that content as they see fit, which has been a source of ire for conservatives who believe they are being censored when Facebook bans them, YouTube demonetizes them, or Twitter appends fact-checks to their tweets.
The most recent fuss over Section 230 involves Hunter Biden’s laptop that was left with a computer repair shop. The shop owner turned the contents of the hard drive over to an attorney with connections to former NYC major Rudy Giuliani, who turned the information over the the New York Post, a tabloid newspaper with a less-than-sterling reputation. The last-minute release of Hillary Clinton’s emails by Wikileaks, (amplified by James Comey and the FBI), just days before the 2016 election is believed to have been a factor leading to the election of President Donald Trump, and social media platforms don’t want to facilitate a repeat of that outcome. Twitter prevented sharing of the New York Post’s stories based on the idea that the data was obtained by hacking, (not technically accurate), but a few days later apologized for not communicating more clearly and then reversed their policy. Facebook continues to restrict sharing on their platform because they claim that they are unable to verify the accuracy of the claims alleged by the NY Post.
As you can see, there is no easy solution to this dilemma…and many other current debates. Facebook just recently announced they will take a tougher stance on holocaust denialism, anti-vaccine posts, and QAnon conspiracy pages. But this is a slippery slope for platforms. Once you begin deciding what is true and appropriate and permissible, you open yourself to criticism from all sides.
