Quo vadis? On the abolition of that infamous "Section 230"

Mark Zuckerberg with a champion of free speech

As of this writing, Senate Majority Leader / pig excrement Mitch McConnell is putting forth a bill in which, yay, Americans will get $2,000 in COVID payments, but it's tied to a revocation of Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, debasing himself to attack one of Donald Trump's favorite targets: Twitter, which has slapped warnings on nearly all of his tweets which promote the discredited, ludicrous, and false claim that he is the true winner of the general election, stolen from him by cheating.

This article from the deep state organ the Council on Foreign Relations is a good primer on what Section 230 is and what it does. Its repeal appeals to both sides of the political divide:

But there is opposition to the law from across the political spectrum: both Trump and President-Elect Joe Biden have called for the repeal of Section 230. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has called the law a “gift” to the tech industry that could be taken away. Wyden, now a senator, has said that tech companies have not done enough to get rid of “slime” online.

To many Democrats, the law allows tech companies to avoid doing more to combat hate speech and disinformation online. To Trump and some other Republicans, it shields them from consequences for censoring conservative voices.

In essence, what Section 230 does is to insulate tech companies—i.e., Facebook, Twitter, et. al.—from anything published on its platforms. You can call for government officials to be executed, and, if your statements don't violate the terms of service, while you may get a visit from the FBI, social media apps aren't legally liable for your utterances. Tech giants receive the protections of the First Amendment, with none of the responsibilities. If a newspaper were to publish a similar statement in a letter to the editor, not only would it be liable, as it controls what gets published in its pages, but would face an outcry from readers. The internet, although tamed, is still essentially the Wild West of myth and lore.

Online activists grow apoplectic at any talk of rescinding Section 230. They claim it would be a strike against freedom of speech. The heavens will boil, the seas will dry up, and our precious bodily fluids would be contaminated.

However, these are crocodile tears, for the most part. Again from the CFR piece:

Going forward, Congress could move to repeal Section 230 entirely, says Jeff Kosseff, the author of The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet. If that happens, it’s not clear what would come next, he says; companies could move to restrict or eliminate user content to avoid liability, or stop moderating altogether. Other countries, including those in the European Union, have stricter rules for online content, leading tech companies to push to export Section 230 via U.S. trade deals.

Yes, the EU has stricter rules for online content. For example, glorification of the Nazi regime ist verboten in Germany. As far as I know, Germany isn't an oppressive regime where free speech is non-existent. Just like Germany has a right to protect its society from expressions of fascist fancy, the US would be within its rights to assert that sites such as Facebook and Twitter remove conspiracy theories which, for example, promote sedition against a fairly-elected government.

The problem for titans such as Twitter and especially Facebook is that their business plan is based on them performing the most minimal of moderation, and, indeed, ignoring harmful rhetoric. Every user they ban is another tick down in their ad revenue. No wonder they want Section 230 to go global, so that they can tell the likes of Angela Merkel to go pound sand. Indeed, Facebook has gone out of its way to allow the most pernicious lies from the right, while cracking down on factual posts from liberals and the left. It's gone from a service which lets you stay in touch with Aunt Gladys to a service which tells Aunt Gladys that her beloved nephew is a Trotskyite who will send her to the gas chambers on the orders of (((George Soros))).

There's a difference between freedom and license. Freedom also posits individual and societal responsibility. You don't yell "fire" in a crowded theater if there is not, in fact, a fire. Users on Facebook and Twitter do so every day, twenty-four hours a day. Were they to do that in real life, they would be prosecuted. But online, it's just part of "free speech".

If Section 230 is repealed, tech giants would have to rethink their business models, based on clicks and engagement. Of course, the question is: How much of their current business model is a chimera? Bots don't buy soap. And the people pushing lies and conspiracy are probably not the people advertisers want to reach. Also, of course, Trump and his ilk might wish to rethink the jihad against Section 230: if it goes by the wayside, even Parler wouldn't want the liability of their presence.

A brave new world might be dawning upon the internet. It's called "responsibility".