Trump is a symptom of our social media disease

The following is from a Dallas Morning News editorial:

If ever silence was golden, the lack of incendiary tweets from @realdonaldtrump is it.

But looking at the frightening and direct relationship between social media and the riots at the Capitol puts Twitter’s 11th-hour action into perspective. No one should think deplatforming President Donald Trump solves the problems created and spread by the way this country engages with itself on social media.

Trump is not a cause but a terrible symptom of a disease we created during the early days of the internet. This is a disease we need to cure through the law — not through the arbitrary, capricious and self-serving decisions of major technology companies.

Congress must take up social media reform by revising Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. This clause gives internet companies near-total immunity from liability for what people post on their sites.

The Capitol riot was openly planned, coordinated and executed on social media. It was livestreamed on social media sites used to radicalize people into what amounts to an insurrectionist cult willing to believe anything but the truth that Donald Trump lost the election.

Facebook and Twitter deplatformed Trump. But so what? Their sites are being used even now to discuss further acts of insurrectionist violence. Just as they were aware that their sites were vulnerable to being used by foreign agents to manipulate our elections, so they are aware their sites are tools of homegrown radicals bent on attacking democracy.

Social media platforms can and must operate under stricter rules that hold companies responsible for content. It is easy to imagine a scenario where users have to be verified as real people and platforms that don’t act with haste to investigate and remove users who threaten, libel or otherwise violate terms of service are subject to civil liability.

We are a nation of laws. And good law is the best medicine for bad business. Many of those who stormed the Capitol appear to live in an internet la la land that led them to attack their own country.

The law can help return our citizens to reality by placing appropriate responsibility on those who post or spread falsehoods.

Social media platforms can and must operate under stricter rules that hold companies responsible for content.