Don’t trust Silicon Valley to censor rabble-rousers like Trump

Why section 230 must go

In the aftermath of a Trumpist mob storming the Capitol, there is much to be said about the state of American democracy. I will save that for cooler times. Instead I’d like to focus on the responsibility of social media platforms in an uprising.

Both the potus and the potus elect took to social media as the ugly scenes of January 6 unfolded. Joe Biden carefully weighed his words, calling the attack on Congress an “insurrection” (thereby giving his tacit approval of invoking the Insurrection Act, calling in the National Guard) and “bordering on sedition” (which is kind of like saying Nebraska is bordering on the United States of America; he later upped the ante with “domestic terrorists”). Donald Trump, meanwhile, failed to condemn the assault, serving up more of his false allegations of election fraud, while assuring the rioters:

“We love you. You are very special.”

Twitter and Facebook had been restricting the president’s posts through the day, to avoid fanning the flames. Finally they lost patience and locked his accounts, citing public safety concerns. These moves came after intense pressure from the public, civil rights groups and activist investors alike. Youtube has not been as widely used by Trump himself, but Google’s video platform also reported having taken down several streams of people storming the Capitol, some of them armed.

The fact that social media companies are censoring the US president in the name of public safety is, on the face of it, mindboggling. In the context of the Trump presidency, however, it makes perfect sense. Trump has spent much of his presidency tweeting lies, conspiracy theories and defamatory accusations against opponents, playing into pet fantasies among his supporters, that the deep state is corrupt, that American politics is run by a sinister elite and that Trump is the one hero who can save the nation.

Twitter, Trump’s favorite megaphone, has been the most proactive in censoring the president’s missives, disabling retweets, labeling tweets as contested, even hiding them. Facebook has appeared to be following Twitter’s lead with similar measures. Still, critics have accused the social media platforms of not doing enough as Trump has spread lies that seemed at best ignorant of the dangers of his rhetoric and at worst designed to incite violence.

In hind-sight, it is clear that the wrist-slaps against the president’s accounts were not sufficient to stop the spread of incendiary disinformation. He still reached his base, and the result is now part of American history. What we do not know what the result would have been if Trump had been left entirely uncensored, or if he had been kicked off the platforms.

To be fair, the social media corps have been in a pickle. In 2016, the US electorate chose as their president a belligerent, vindictive man widely known to be a liar, a bully, a bigot and a narcissist. Censoring every lie and misrepresentation he excretes amounts to refusing him a platform. Strip Donald Trump of his lies and there is nothing left. But refusing the president of the United States a platform would amount to private companies reproving the American people.

Meanwhile, every move toward censoring the president has met with counter-fire. Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to abolish section 230 in the Communications Decency Act. This section stipulates that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider”; in plain text it means that Twitter, Facebook and Youtube are not legally responsible for content published by their users. (With a few exceptions.)

In other words, section 230 means that Twitter is not legally accountable for Donald Trump’s tweets. If 230 was abolished, publishing his tweets would carry a greater legal risk. But Trump’s threats over 230 are not intended to force social media platforms to shut his accounts down. They are leverage, a way for the president to let social media platforms know that if they censor him, they will pay a price.

The Communications Decency Act was signed by Bill Clinton in 1996, and section 230 was written to protect ISP:s as well as owners of websites, forums and online services from liability for the content of their users. In 1996, most of what we know as the internet today didn’t exist. The Netscape web browser had an 86% market share; Jeff Bezos was selling books out of his garage in Seattle; Google wasn’t even founded yet. As the embryonic web was growing, section 230 was widely regarded as a great thing for innovators and web users alike. Everyone seemed to love it except the incumbents – old-school publishers and copyright holders who were afraid to be left in the dust while nimble tech entrepreneurs disrupted the industry, creating new, democratic arenas of communication.

At that point in time, the web promised to become a vibrant, diverse place – as long as intrepid innovators were left to their own devices. The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls section 230 “one of the most valuable tools for protecting freedom of expression and innovation on the Internet”. It is a statement that has not aged well. Section 230 shielded companies like Youtube, Facebook and Twitter from liability as they amassed users and grew into Silicon Valley oligarchy. As immensely powerful as these corporations are today, section 230 is clearly outdated.

These platforms now have billions of users all over the world, they are major sources of news and political debate. While they profit massively from false, polarizing, hateful and incendiary content, they shoulder no responsibility for it – thanks to section 230. This state of affairs hardly contributes to a thriving internet, nor to healthy democracies.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that if Trump hates section 230, it must be good. As noted above, Trump has been using its abolition as a stick to bully the tech giants. This does not mean he cares about the stick. In fact, the president elect, Joe Biden, wants to repeal 230 and replace it with new legislation. What the new legislation would be is unclear, but that’s a conversation worth having.

In my view, too, it is time for 230 (and similar legislation around the world) to go. We cannot rely on social media megacorps to make calls about free speech, sedition, defamation and incitement at their leisure. They are unfit to act as moderators of our political discourse; even though they shroud their arguments in the language of democracy, public safety and civil rights they will, in the end, make the calls that benefit their shareholders.

It may look like these corporations took a courageous stand during the attack on the Capitol, locking down the accounts of the president. But for four years they paved the way for January 6 by publishing incendiary lies and conspiracy theories. Profiting from Trumpism all these years, only to take a stand after the damage is done and Trump is a lame duck, makes them no better than the career republicans who waited until the last days of Trump’s presidency to renounce him.

That’s not courage, that’s opportunism.