The would-be censors’ direction of travel is clear: a two-pronged assault on freedom of online speech.
The censors are up and about. The other day, John Kerry was grumbling about the First Amendment and arguing that it was unhealthy that people have so many sources of information to go to:
The dislike of and anguish over social media is just growing and growing. It is part of our problem, particularly in democracies, in terms of building consensus around any issue. It’s really hard to govern today. You can’t — the referees we used to have to determine what is a fact and what isn’t a fact have kind of been eviscerated, to a certain degree. And people go and self select where they go for their news, for their information. And then you get into a vicious cycle.
How irritating for Kerry that it is hard to “govern” (in the right way) these days, and that it is difficult to build the (right sort of) consensus. And how shocking that “the referees we used to have to determine what is a fact and what isn’t a fact” (who checked their biases?) no longer have the sway they once did.
Now here’s Hillary Clinton talking on CNN about children. When Clinton talks about “the children” her real target, all too often, is adults, or, more precisely, their freedom. And so it is on this occasion. She frets about “our kids” being “disconnected”, spending “too much time behind closed doors on devices.” And there are other threats to children online, too (she is referring to the social consequences of spending too much time online, but other perils as well, such as child pornography), but the remedy she proposes suggests that it’s adults she really wants to police:
We should be, in my view, repealing something called Section 230, which gave, you know, platforms on the internet immunity because they were thought to be just pass-throughs. That they shouldn’t be judged for the content that is posted.
But we now know that that was an overly simple view. That if the platforms, whether it’s Facebook, or Twitter, X, or Instagram, or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don’t moderate and monitor the content we lose total control….
We need to remove the immunity from liability and we need to have guardrails. We need regulation.
“Total control”, eh? And who are “we”?
Section 230 is what has made possible the extraordinary diversity of opinion now available online.
I wrote about it recently in a piece for NR:
By giving online intermediaries a sizeable degree of immunity from liability for user content, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 combined a characteristically American defense of free expression with a determination to ensure that this promising new sector was not stifled by another American tradition, predatory litigation. The outcome, through blogs, social media, and countless other outlets, has been to open the public square to voices that once would never have been heard.
And that’s what Clinton is really worried about. Child porn can be policed and shut down under existing law and practice, but it is more difficult to shut out those new voices (some of them even, horrors, conservative) from the public square. To do that would take eliminating section 230, something that would, incidentally, get rid of that pesky X.
Discussing Clinton’s ideas in the Wall Street Journal, James Freeman recalled writing about comments she had made about her time as a young congressional aide during the Watergate inquiry:
Back in Nixon days there were just three commercial broadcast television networks, plus dominant newspapers. Now, she says, “I think it’s a lot harder for Americans to know what they’re supposed to believe.”
She tells the story of dealing with questions from reporter Sam Donaldson in the 1970s, rather than today’s myriad online media competitors. “It was a much more controllable environment,” she laments.
“Supposed to believe.” “Controllable environment.”
In my NR article I also noted how Clinton had thrown her support behind the EU passing its sinister social-media-policing Digital Services Act: “For too long, tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability. The EU is poised to do something about it.”
And then were the earlier comments made by Governor Walz before he became Kamala Harris’ running mate, that there is “no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech.”
Well, for the most part, there is.
And, writing on NRO, David Inserra & Jennifer Huddleston:
While policy-makers and individuals may think they are protecting the public from potential harm or propaganda, laws that would allow the government to regulate misinformation would quickly risk trampling on the ability to discuss a wide array of political and social issues. The consensus about what is true regarding sensitive topics such as abortion, the Middle East, and the Covid-19 pandemic can change rapidly. In terms of misinformation, so much of what is called “misinformation” is simply information that individuals may disagree about or that may not be fully understood.
The fight against misinformation is, all too often, a fight to have an opinion turned into an orthodoxy.
The would-be censors’ direction of travel is clear: a two-pronged assault on freedom of online speech. The first (supported by some short-sighted conservatives) is to sweep away the protections provided by Section 230, and the second is to abuse the concept of misinformation.