Democratic Bill To Target Social Media Giants Over Failure To Police Threats
Democratic Bill To Target Social Media Giants
Over Failure To Police Threats
BY TYLER DURDEN SATURDAY, FEB 06, 2021 - 18:00
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner (VA) is set to introduce a bill
which would make it easier for social media users to sue tech giants for
failing to police posts, photos and videos which threaten abuse, discrimination,
harassment, the loss of life or other irreparable harm,
according to the Washington Post.
Warner's bill is the latest attack on Section 230,
a decades-old federal rule which shields social media companies from liability
over what their users post as long as they don't act as publishers -
angle Republican lawmakers have used to claim no longer applies due to
editorial discrimination and censorship of conservatives.
Democrats, meanwhile, say Section 230 allows
tech companies to skirt responsibility for policing hate speech,
election disinformation and other 'dangerous content' according to the report.
Yet, while Republicans seek to strip tech giants of their
Section 230 protections, Warner's bill maintains its core provisions - and
would instead open an "easier legal pathway" for users to sue over
failures to police content that they claim caused personal harm.
"How can we continue to give this
get-out-of-jail card to these platforms that constantly do
nothing to address the foreseeable, obvious and repeated misuse of their
products and services to cause harm? That was kind of our operating
premise," said Warner.
Ultimately, it would be up to a judge to
decide the merits of these claims; the bill mostly opens the door for Web users
to argue their cases without running as much risk of having them dismissed
early. Facebook, Google, Twitter and other social media sites stand
to lose these highly coveted federal protections under Warner’s bill only in
the case of abusive paid content, such as online advertisements, that seek to
defraud or scam customers.
“You
shouldn’t get immunity from this advertising content that’s providing you
revenue,” said Warner, who is introducing the measure along with
Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Mazie Hirono (Hawaii). -Washington Post
Warner's bill comes after a mob of mostly Trump-supporters
'stormed' the US Capitol on Jan. 6 to protest the counting of the Electoral
College votes for Joe Biden - many of whom coordinated over social media. And
as WaPo frames
it, the ordeal raises questions "about the extent to which Facebook,
Google and Twitter, and a vast web of lesser-known forums, are properly
policing their sites and services."
"I’m going to be very interested to see how the industry
reacts to this," said Warner in an interview this week previewing his
bill. "It’s going to be where the rubber hits the road. Are they going to
pay lip service to reform?"
The incident has injected fresh urgency into familiar calls to
rethink Section 230, which intensified last year amid a flood of proposals from
Democrats and Republicans seeking to overhaul or repeal
the law. In response, the
country’s largest technology companies have sought to tread carefully:
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow executives have signaled an
openness to changing Section 230, but the companies have not endorsed the most
sweeping proposals that would hold them accountable for their missteps.
...
In seeking to sketch out his proposal, Warner said its passage could have
wide-ranging effects: It could allow the survivors in the Rohingya genocide in
Myanmar to sue Facebook, for example, because the social network had been slow
to take
down content that stoked ethnic tensions. -Washington Post
"If there are going to be victims of platform-enabled human
rights violations," said Warner, adding "that should not be thrown
out of court."
According to David Brody, a senior fellow for privacy and
technology at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, "This
bill would make irresponsible big tech companies accountable for the digital
pollution they knowingly and willfully produce, while continuing to protect
free speech online."
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