ACLU Counsel Warns of 'Unchecked Power' of Twitter, Facebook

Referencing a bunch of random academic sources doesn’t make your argument any stronger.

The attitude of the media and the Democratic Party in general has absolutely been “You’re dumb and wrong.” As my initial comment said, this accomplishes the exact opposite thing. People feeling lost and ripped off aren’t going to suddenly change their mind because talking heads on CNN assured them everything was legit. Especially when these sources spent the last four years becoming highly partisan. It’s difficult to even recognize The NY Times anymore, they’ve fallen so far. Skepticism seems like a rational move to me.

‘Courts dismissing cases’ is not equivalent to an investigation. As I said before, my primary concern is reducing polarization. I really don’t care how much it costs. Any price is worth avoiding serious civil unrest.

Parties come to agreements on the extent of investigations all the time and there is zero reason a similar compromise couldn’t be worked out for the sake of the country. Of course, no one will do this, because it doesn’t benefit them personally.

Why are you compering him to Trump? Why do you need to defend such person. Road to the hell is paved with good intentions.

This ban was long overdue. Are some people more equal than others?

I may be downvoted here for this statement but that is just some site on the internet. I may be banned from Twitter that is also just another site. Actually was banned from r/Conservative, so what?

Facebook/Twitter are problems because many things, but banning someone for roaring the masses is not one of them.

And arguments like: 'But who is deciding what is hate speech?' seems to me just like fallacy here. Because we have concrete example of spreading misinformation and roaring people in order to undermine civic society. This has already led to violence. 'What if' is just taking away attention from what has already been done.

> Specifically, it says that you have to show that you have tried to prevent malevolent content in good faith.

No, it doesn't, for the type of liability for hosted content, rather than its removal/restriction, that it applies to at all.

> You can't just let it sit there and fester on your servers and pretend that you're covered.

Yes, you can. 230 has more than one area of protection. Two of them are:

(1) You (as a service provider or another user) aren't liable as a publisher for user-generated content that you aren't the origin of. 47 USC Sec. 230(c)(1)

(2) As a provider, you also aren't liable for good faith efforts to restrict access to offensive content or enable content providers the ability to restrict access to offensive content. 46 USC Sec 230(c)(2)

But, notably, Section 230 doesn't apply to criminal liability at all, and there is a real risk of criminal liability under the law against material support for terrorism for knowingly providing any service that you know is supporting some of the acts that have occurred or which have been reported to be now being publicly planned on social media platforms.

The problem isn't what happens when tech companies censor a very power man. It's that if they can censor a very power man, then there is no bounds on what they can and will do for less powerful people.

For social networks, the root of the problem is their quasi-monopoly status. We wouldn't accept Comcast deplatforming people.

It's a bad idea to set policy based on the worst examples. I can't see any harm in kicking Trump off twitter. He was basically begging for it. But should Trump's extreme actions be used to justify banning BLM protests because they sometimes turn violent? How about Hong Kong demonstrations? Didn't they storm a legislature? How about WSJ? They print people who believe in election fraud.

It's like using 9-11 to set all terrorism policy.

IMO--these actions should be an "emergency only" policy rather than Big Tech deciding it needs to police what we all hear and think. It's really not clear which its going to be.

The way you’re using “censor” doesn’t accurately describe the situation. It evokes images of people being sent to the gulag for sharing samizdat but he’s not exactly silenced when he can have full coverage by the international media any time he chooses, and Trump’s accounts were not disabled for spreading conservative ideas but for inciting deadly violence. A private company exercising its rights under the contract he voluntarily made with them does not seem like something conservatives should be complaining about.