Josh Hawley Introduces Bill to Put Washington In Charge of Internet Speech – Reason.com - Elizabeth Nolan Brown:
"Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) is introducing legislation to clamp down on free expression online, under the pretense of fighting tech-company 'bias' against Republicans. Hawley's solution is to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a measure that prevents individual users of internet platforms and the companies that run them from being treated as legally indistinguishable from one another. Without it, digital companies and the users of their products (i.e., all of us) could be sued in civil court or subject to state criminal prosecution over content and messages created and published by others....
"Now, national and state leaders are insisting that Section 230 must be destroyed in order to fight "foreign influence" in our elections, the manipulated videos known as "deepfakes," fentanyl trafficking, gun violence, and an array of other (sometimes real, sometimes imaginary) problems. "For some Republican leaders — chief among them Hawley—this has led to the truly Orwellian tack of trying to convince conservative internet users that taking away protection for online speech will somehow allow them to speak more freely.
"That's the nonsensical proposition at the heart of Hawley's new legislation, misleadingly called the 'Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act.' The measure would give the government control over online speech by denying Section 230 protections to platforms that don't hand over an array of private intellectual property and satisfactorily prove to a bunch of partisan political appointees that they are operating in a 'politically neutral' manner. Essentially, Hawley wants to revive the old Fairness Doctrine—a policy that was roundly denounced by conservatives for its chilling effect on free speech and its propensity to further marginalize non-mainstream voices—and apply this cursed policy paradigm to anything online.
"Under Hawley's bill, companies would be required to reapply with the Federal Trade Commission every two years for this political favor—a situation that would mean companies having "to constantly curry favor with the administration," as Mapbox policy head Tom Lee noted on Twitter. Hawley's proposal would also require tech companies to discipline or fire any employee who made a content moderation decision that bureaucrats deem to be in violation of online-speech neutrality principles....
"Censorship would be universally worse without Section 230 and, as someone who studied law, Hawley should know this. But it doesn't matter what he knows about Section 230, it matters what the masses know about Section 230—which was basically zilch, until recently. That's what makes it easy for folks like Hawley ... and the rest of the bipartisan chorus calling for 230's demise to manipulate their base into buying that it's about 'bias' or or any other number of hated things.
"But no matter how many culture war red flags Hawley and company raise, their solutions all come down to the same thing: letting folks in Washington have more say over what can be said on the internet."
Read more: https://reason.com/2019/06/19/josh-hawley-introduces-bill-to-put-washington-in-charge-of-internet-speech/
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"Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) is introducing legislation to clamp down on free expression online, under the pretense of fighting tech-company 'bias' against Republicans. Hawley's solution is to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a measure that prevents individual users of internet platforms and the companies that run them from being treated as legally indistinguishable from one another. Without it, digital companies and the users of their products (i.e., all of us) could be sued in civil court or subject to state criminal prosecution over content and messages created and published by others....
"Now, national and state leaders are insisting that Section 230 must be destroyed in order to fight "foreign influence" in our elections, the manipulated videos known as "deepfakes," fentanyl trafficking, gun violence, and an array of other (sometimes real, sometimes imaginary) problems. "For some Republican leaders — chief among them Hawley—this has led to the truly Orwellian tack of trying to convince conservative internet users that taking away protection for online speech will somehow allow them to speak more freely.
"That's the nonsensical proposition at the heart of Hawley's new legislation, misleadingly called the 'Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act.' The measure would give the government control over online speech by denying Section 230 protections to platforms that don't hand over an array of private intellectual property and satisfactorily prove to a bunch of partisan political appointees that they are operating in a 'politically neutral' manner. Essentially, Hawley wants to revive the old Fairness Doctrine—a policy that was roundly denounced by conservatives for its chilling effect on free speech and its propensity to further marginalize non-mainstream voices—and apply this cursed policy paradigm to anything online.
"Under Hawley's bill, companies would be required to reapply with the Federal Trade Commission every two years for this political favor—a situation that would mean companies having "to constantly curry favor with the administration," as Mapbox policy head Tom Lee noted on Twitter. Hawley's proposal would also require tech companies to discipline or fire any employee who made a content moderation decision that bureaucrats deem to be in violation of online-speech neutrality principles....
"Censorship would be universally worse without Section 230 and, as someone who studied law, Hawley should know this. But it doesn't matter what he knows about Section 230, it matters what the masses know about Section 230—which was basically zilch, until recently. That's what makes it easy for folks like Hawley ... and the rest of the bipartisan chorus calling for 230's demise to manipulate their base into buying that it's about 'bias' or or any other number of hated things.
"But no matter how many culture war red flags Hawley and company raise, their solutions all come down to the same thing: letting folks in Washington have more say over what can be said on the internet."
Read more: https://reason.com/2019/06/19/josh-hawley-introduces-bill-to-put-washington-in-charge-of-internet-speech/
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