President Trump threatened to veto the entire National Defense Authorization Act Tuesday, unless section 230 is completely removed and government protections for Big Tech companies are rescinded.
In a brace of tweets, the President called section 230 “very dangerous & unfair” and “a serious threat to our National Security & Election Integrity.”
Section 230 refers to the part of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which is being used by big tech as a way of washing their hands of any liability concerning content posted on their platforms, and to defend censorship of the content.
Critics have charged that Twitter, Facebook and Google should no longer be protected as ‘neutral’ platforms, given that they are acting as publishers.
In October, the Department of Justice sent a letter to Congress pushing for modifications to the 25-year-old law.
“Today’s large online platforms hold tremendous power over the information and views available to the American people. It is therefore critical that they be honest and transparent with users about how they use that power,” the letter stated.
Meanwhile, proving the point, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this week that he wants to provide platform users with “authoritative information about Covid-19 vaccines.”
During a conversation with Dr. Fauci this week, Zuckerberg said: “There’ll be a few important things that we can do together. We’re already planning a push around authoritative information about the vaccines.”
Pushing ONE VIEWPOINT is content selection! As long as they do this they are publishers and ought to be liable to any legal sanctions any other corporations is. e.g. lawsuits, legal judgements rendered based on that content. Censoring opposing viewpoints and allowing only one makes it as if they themselves wrote the content. They own it. So, get rid of section 230 protections!