Posted on 05/30/2020 7:38:48 AM PDT by Kaslin
The debate about whether social media companies should have protection from liability misses a larger question about their role in American society.
There’s nothing like a row between Twitter and President Trump to turn everyone into an expert on 47 U.S. Code § 230, a heretofore obscure section of federal law that deals with liability protections for companies like Twitter.
Go on social media right now and you’re bound to find friends, neighbors, and colleagues opining on federal statutes and citing old Supreme Court cases to bolster their arguments that we have to do this or that right now to save the internet or protect free speech.
So let me just say up front, I am not an expert on Section 230 or on federal liability law generally. I don’t have a strong opinion on exactly how the law should be reformed or what the mechanisms of a successful reform might be, nor do I think there aren’t real trade-offs to consider here.
But I don’t need to be an expert in liability law to know this: social media are corrosive to our civic life, and social media companies like Twitter are largely unaccountable for their actions in that regard. Without question, Twitter and Facebook and YouTube have harmed democratic life in America, eroded our civic values, and exacerbated divisions and distrust between citizens. If they all disappeared tomorrow, the country would be better off.
Consider for a moment the disconnect between what social media promised us and what we actually got. The big idea was that making everyone more connected virtually would bring us closer together in reality, that a digital commons would increase empathy and build real community.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg made this sentiment a kind of mantra. When he took his company public in 2012, he was clear about the social mission behind the enterprise. “We are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships,” he wrote, adding that, “Facebook exists to make the world more open and connected, and not just to build a company.”
It hasn’t worked out that way, or at least not quite in the way Zuckerberg meant. The world is undoubtedly more open and connected thanks to Facebook and Twitter, but it is not more sanguine or tolerant or kind. Connectedness through social media has not made us more empathetic or willing to change our minds, and it has not brought us closer together.
Just the opposite, in fact. Even setting aside the online ugliness of the 2016 election, is there any conflict or tension in American society that isn’t made worse by social media? Sure, there are rare exceptions—sometimes people do nice things for each other, sometimes people use these platforms to reunite with long lost family members or friends. But the dominant emotion of social media is anger, the default tone is caustic, and the overall effect is division.
Obviously, not everyone shares this view. Many people think the advent of the internet and the inventions of mass platforms like Facebook and Twitter meant we had to make concessions in federal law to enable these companies to host third-party content without the fear of defamation lawsuits over what their users might post. (For some background on how we got Section 230, check out Eugene Volokh’s helpful primer at Reason.)
Rolling back or reforming these liability protections isn’t so easy, were told. And besides, such drastic reform might not even be necessary. After all, companies like Twitter have no obligation under federal law to be neutral in how they police content posted on their platforms.
My friend David Harsanyi makes this point at NRO, rightly noting that newspapers and magazines with online comment sections enjoy the same liability protections under Section 230 that Twitter does. An outlet like the New York Times is liable for what it publishes or commissions but not for what online commenters write.
“In the same way,” writes Harsanyi, “if Twitter ‘factchecks’ a user, its opinion should be considered published material that is no longer protected from liability. By offering one opinion, Twitter isn’t suddenly liable for the billions of other tweets that exist on its site, or for the opinion held in the tweet to which it is responding.”
It’s a fair point, but it misses a larger problem. Why should Twitter or Facebook or YouTube be given liability protections at all? Why should it be the case that these companies can host all manner of content, make a fortune, and not be expected to bear responsibility for any of it?
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was passed in 1996, back when Congress was grappling with new technology and trying to make the internet as open as possible. Harsanyi and others worry that if liability protections are taken away, there would be a flood of lawsuits. Media companies might abandon open platforms altogether. Social media as we know it might cease to exist.
Let’s hope so. It wouldn’t be the end of the world—or even of free speech—if we went back to an Internet without comment sections, without Twitter mobs, and without aggressively politicized social media companies.
And anyway, in all likelihood we wouldn’t go backward but forward. New kinds of platforms and new methods of communications would emerge, maybe a more diverse array of companies, too. Somewhere along the way, someone might even devise a social media platform that doesn’t incessantly turn us against one another and stoke division and civic unrest.
The future is uncertain, but the present state of affairs is not. Let’s admit what we all know: Twitter and the other tech giants are a cancer on our body politick. We owe them nothing, certainly not special protection from liability. Let them figure out how to operate like the traditional publishers they have decided to be—and if they can’t, let them die.
Public places that are privately owned have been determined to be subject to the requirements of government to protect First Amendment rights. Such places have usually been malls or areas open to the public. Social media easily meets the test of being a “functional equivalent “ of a public forum that must respect freedom of speech. The argument that ownership is private doesn’t necessarily permit selective censorship.
I don’t buy his argument that a different media form would change the interaction between people to a more positive one.
People are people and when they are behind the curtain of anonymity that social media provides, they will still lash out at each other in negative ways.
Most of my life long conservative friends have only heard of free republic from me, while at the same time they learned about instances where the MSM colluded with liberals to hide or distort the facts on their own from YouTube videos. Without YouTube and Twitter, however bad they are, conservatives would be relegated to echo chambers.
I’ve been involved with YouTube since 2006. My focus has been on spiritual issues. In 2008, there was an unsuccessful drive by an individual to rid YouTube of video content they did not approve. By myself and other video creators, that individual was run off the platform. I have noticed a similar trend in politics occuring for some time. But since 2008, YouTube was acquired by Google, and has undergone many changes, some taken with a pound of salt. Yet, as I examined Twitter and Facebook, and other sites, the ones that had attempted to ruin YouTube, are over there, now. So, I will remain a Tuber.
Social media tech and companies have been creations of our CIA.
Wouldn’t it easier for these social media companies to decouple the political banter into a separate app?
IMHO, social media in general is a waste of time. Never met anybody who would admit their mind was changed on an important topic of the day by reading social media.
As far as I’m concerned, Facebook, Twitter, et al could dry up and blow away and we’d be better off for it.
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