A pouty and vindictive President Trump wants to retaliate against Social Media Companies for preventing him from spreading lies, misinformation, and conspiracy theories. He is advancing a claim that conservatives are being censored and “their” 1st Amendment Rights are being violated. Unfortunately, there is no indication that this is occurring unless we accept that the only thing conservatives have to offer are lies and conspiracies.
Trump wants “Section 230” repealed or altered so that he can sue or intimidate social media platforms into allowing him to continue to lie and spread misinformation. Donald Trump is again misusing the power of the office of the President to issue an Executive Order and try to do an end run around Congress and the Courts. This is wrong. Government officials are not to use taxpayer dollars or government resources to pursue personal vendettas, or for other personal gain.
Section 230(c)(2) provides that interactive computer service providers and users may not be held liable for any voluntary, good faith action 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.
This is what Trump is after. He is not fighting for us, and he is not trying to fix the internet. Section 230 prevents him from attacking the platforms if they are acting in “good faith.” He is not acting on our behalf. This is not to say that Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act is good for America.
First, the social media giants are some of the richest companies in the world and are more than able to defend themselves in court. Facebook is now the largest publisher in the world. Second, social media companies are hiding behind 230 to duck their responsibility to aggressively counter the dissemination of misinformation on their systems. Social media companies should be held accountable for what they do, and what they allow. They should be motivated to do what is right, not just what is profitable. We don’t need a self-serving Executive Order, to fix this problem, we need Congress to do the hard work and figure out how to protect the citizens they were elected to serve. What do you think?
Reading Recommendations:
UPDATE: Section 230 and the Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship
How Broad A Shield? A Brief Overview of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
Ammerman, William. The Invisible Brand: Marketing in the Age of Automation, Big Data, and Machine Learning. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2019.
Pariser, Eli. The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. London: Penguin books, 2012.
Rid, Thomas. Active Measures: the Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.
Sanger, David E. The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age. New York: Broadway Books, 2019.
Singer, Peter Warren, and Emerson T.. Brooking. LikeWar: the Weaponization of Social Media. Boston: Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019.
