FRANCIS ON LACK OF WEB POLICE.
This is the fourth in a series of articles on Big Tech’s damage to democracy, public safety and consumers.
SILICON VALLEY’S IMMUNITY HAS MADE IT ARROGANT ...
The internet has connected people in marvellous and unprecedented ways, but there are virtually no police monitoring the information superhighway.
Silicon Valley’s social media giants have been dominant players in the industry, but have failed to assume the accompanying responsibility to regulate the content on their sites. This is because of a 1996 law in the United States, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet companies from liability for what appears on their platforms. They have parlayed this privilege into empires and exported licentiousness around the world.
Finally, one of the biggest social media sites — Twitter — broke ranks last month and decided to take responsibility for its content. Up until then, its policing consisted only of kicking out those who flagrantly contravened its ethical standards, which forbids bullying, threatening or inciting violence and hate speech. But in May, due to a growing backlash, Twitter finally factchecked and flagged several of U.S. President Donald Trump’s inaccurate tweets.
The president was infuriated and immediately launched an attack, accusing Twitter of censorship and interfering in the 2020 election campaign. He pledged to “defend free speech from one of the gravest dangers it has faced in American history.”
Facebook posted Trump’s Tweets on its site without alteration and also played the “free speech” card. Then Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, swiped Twitter for its new-found morality, and said that Facebook was not the “arbiter of the truth.” Within days, some employees staged a virtual walkout in protest. One employee, Lauren Tan, took to Twitter to say that, “Facebook’s inaction in taking down Trump’s post inciting violence makes me ashamed to work here.… Silence is complicity.”
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey responded to Zuckerberg, saying: “This does not make us an ‘arbiter of truth.’ Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves.… We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally.”
The free speech defence is nonsense, considering that all other content providers
— including newspapers, TV stations and advertisers — are obliged to fact check, edit and remove inaccurate, hateful, defamatory or malicious speech. If they do not, they are legally liable for damages.
But Silicon Valley’s immunity has made it arrogant and has also led to collaborations with some unseemly regimes. For example, Google and Apple recently redrew the borders on their maps to placate Russia, which disagrees that Ukraine includes Crimea and the Donbas region, which it illegally invaded in 2014.
And Facebook’s “free speech” posturing is laughable considering that it developed censorship tools for China until critics forced it to drop those plans. The site has also been accused of deactivating the accounts of dozens of Tunisian, Syrian and Palestinian activists and journalists. Civil liberties and human rights groups have argued that this shows that Facebook’s dedication to free speech is geographically disparate.
In 2006, Yahoo handed information to Chinese authorities about an activist user that led to him being imprisoned. In 2020, Facebook agreed to censor “anti-state” posts made by users in Vietnam.
And in 2018, Reuters reported that, “UN human rights experts investigating a possible (Rohingya) genocide in Myanmar said that Facebook had played a role in spreading hate speech there.”
On Thursday, Facebook announced it would start labelling objectionable posts just as Twitter did, after being hit with boycotts by major advertisers. But the only remedy is to do what the Germans do, which is to legally require sites to remove hate posts immediately, or face fines of up to 50 million euros.
In February, Britain took Facebook, Youtube, Google and others to task and announced that its media regulator will police internet content. The government agency will impose penalties against companies that do not sufficiently combat “harmful and illegal terrorist and child abuse content,” or, presumably, other offences.
Fortunately, the policing issue may be addressed south of the border soon. Republicans and Democrats appear to agree that immunity for internet companies must be rescinded. That will at least be a start.