If you’re claiming to be a service and not a publisher, then it means you have to abide by that standard, which means not picking and choosing what you publish on that service platform based on political biases. However, as we’ve seen with Google’s shadow bans, Facebook’s politically motivated censorship, YouTube’s “borderline” content suppression, and Twitter’s selective account suspensions, it’s quite obvious that the biggest tech platforms in operation today are not operating with politically indifference but are indeed operating with very clear Left-leaning political biases. Republican Senator Josh Hawley introduced a bill recently that would remove the Safe Harbor protections under section 230 of the Communications Act for platforms that decide to act as publishers, meaning that they would be held liable for everything that is published on their platform, legal or otherwise.
NewsChute posted up a link to the bill on June 19th, 2019.
Sen. Josh Hawley has introduced a bill that would remove the immunity big tech companies receive under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Only platforms whose algorithms are “politically neutral” would receive immunity from the bill: https://t.co/zKf44j02lo pic.twitter.com/DTJRmAKmat
— NewsChute (@NewsChute) June 19, 2019
The link takes you to Hawley’s website where it outlines the goal of the bill, which would remove the Communications Act protection from big tech websites that decide to enact political biases when publishing content. The bill further states that their protections will be safeguarded if they commit to non-partisan moderation.
If you don’t have time to parse through the bill, the introduction paragraph makes it pretty clear what Hawley’s intentions are, where it states…
“To amend the Communications Decency Act to encourage providers of interactive computer services to provide content moderation that is politically neutral. “
The “End Support For Internet Censorship Act” would essentially mean that Google, Twitter, and Facebook would have to stop shadow banning, censoring, and suspending users, websites, and content on ideological grounds, or otherwise lose immunity under the 230 Communications Act, which grants platforms immunity from liability for content made available through their services.
More specifically, the bill points out what would net a platform a loss of immunity for unfair moderation, stating…
“IN GENERAL.—Paragraphs (1) and 6 (2) shall not apply in the case of a covered company unless the company has in effect an immunity certification from the Federal Trade Commission (referred to in this paragraph as the ‘Commission’) under subparagraph (B) that the company does not moderate information provided by other information content providers in a manner that is biased against a political party, political candidate, or political viewpoint. “
Whether or not this goes anywhere is anyone’s guess. Previous bills of a similar nature were always cut short by one committee or another, and it gets lost in a tangled web of bureaucratic molasses.
However, Hawley has been attempting to fight on behalf of the people in the past. He’s the same Senator that also targeted loot boxes with his bill that was introduced back in May, 2019 to limit the accessibility of loot boxes in games available for those under the age of 18, which is technically how it should be to match existing gambling laws. The ESRB is supposed to enforce such regulations where games that contain real gambling are supposed to be rated AO (Adults Only) but they haven’t been enforcing that rule because the ESA deemed that loot boxes “aren’t gambling”.
We’ll see if Hawley has better luck at getting traction and movement from the House with his latest attempts to keep big tech from perverting American standards.
(Thanks for the news tip Nick)