Joe Biden wants to make Facebook liable for users' content by revoking Section 230

[nanoguy]

In brief: While most critics of social media giants agree that we need better regulation to increase accountability, Joe Biden thinks an easier route would be to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that gives those companies the excuse of enabling free speech and giving users a voice.

Joe Biden isn't a fan of Facebook, and likely not a fan of fake campaign sites that troll and garner more attention than his actual campaign.

The Democratic front-runner told the New York Times during an 80-minute interview that to him, the Facebook CEO is "a real problem. [...] He knows better."

Biden alluded to the fact that Facebook, like other social giants and owners of big digital platforms don't want to take full editorial responsibilities and enforce a strict filter on what can be posted on them. In the case of Facebook, Zuckerberg says he wants it to be a tool that gives the little guys a powerful voice, and as such he will prioritize free speech over policing content.

This means that Facebook can find excuses that all stem from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which offers special protections for internet companies. However, Biden thinks Facebook is not just an internet company and that Section 230 should be revoked to make it easy to hold such companies responsible for "propagating falsehoods they know to be false."

Biden also advocates for setting similar privacy standards to those imposed by the EU. But his eyes are set on the 20-year-old Communications Decency Act, and Republicans have expressed similar criticisms and proposed several changes to the law.

Meanwhile, other political figures are proposing even more extreme measures against executives of companies that currently pay a relatively small price for their privacy violations and their inaction on misinformation campaigns. One notable example is the "Mind Your Own Business" act proposed by Senator Ron Wyden, which could punish those like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg directly.

In any case, Biden is the only presidential candidate that has asked for Section 230 to be repealed. Last year, President Donald Trump said he had a "constructive meeting" with Mark Zuckerberg about internet regulation and preventing the dissemination of harmful content, but only discussed those issues in more general lines.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/83604-joe-biden-wants-make-facebook-liable-users-content.html

 

[psycros]

People are free to comment on most FB posts and tweets so anyone can cry foul. The problem is that they can also call something false when its *not*, so are we gonna have to filter that kind of fake news, too? If filters and censors are implemented then who decides what's accurate? Wikipedia editors? The government? Wholly-underwritten political propagandists like Factcheck.org and Media Matters?? Yeah..the slippery slope awaits, Joe. Perhaps the answer is MORE free speech, not less.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Um, no, Joe. Pulling the rug out is not the right idea. Gradualism would suggest heaping some responsibility on the vehicle owners - but since the driver (the author/creator/deliverer) is the responsible party, then it would be wise to assert greater responsibility and liability on him.

 

[trparky]

If it kills Facebook, yeah... I'm all for it. Facebook needs to die in a fire.

 

[wiyosaya]

As I see it, the only thing that Ducky cares about is how much money fakebook puts in his pocket. In fact, "news" fake or not, is all about how much money there is to be made in the business. Ducky falls in this category; he could care less if he knows something is blatantly false if it is putting money is his pocket.

So what does it come down to? Money, nothing more, nothing less.

All the jerks out there that profit from fake news (if you think that is only a left-wing thing, or only a right-wing thing, perhaps you should find a good psychologist or psychiatrist) have trashed honesty, integrity, and decency for money. They would sell all of their relatives if it helped them profit.

I am all for something that punishes companies like fakebook for allowing content that they know is blatantly false. To me, tolerating content known to be false is easily likened to yelling "Fire!" in a crowded public space when there is no fire; you cannot do that and expect 1st amendment rights to protect you. https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/28853/is-it-illegal-to-yell-fire-in-a-crowded-theatre

The problem with this is that in a money driven litigious society, a trial in court over something like this will require proof that they knew that it was false information.

And so we come down to that money issue again. As I have said before, until a more equitable monetary system appears, the vast majority of humanity's problems will remain problems.

 

[Uncle Al]

I don't think old Joe is considering the 1st Amendment rights. Despite how terrible some of those comments are, they are still protected speech and he has a lot better lambs out there to slaughter .....

 

[Theinsanegamer]

As I see it, the only thing that Ducky cares about is how much money fakebook puts in his pocket. In fact, "news" fake or not, is all about how much money there is to be made in the business. Ducky falls in this category; he could care less if he knows something is blatantly false if it is putting money is his pocket.

So what does it come down to? Money, nothing more, nothing less.

All the jerks out there that profit from fake news (if you think that is only a left-wing thing, or only a right-wing thing, perhaps you should find a good psychologist or psychiatrist) have trashed honesty, integrity, and decency for money. They would sell all of their relatives if it helped them profit.

I am all for something that punishes companies like fakebook for allowing content that they know is blatantly false. To me, tolerating content known to be false is easily likened to yelling "Fire!" in a crowded public space when there is no fire; you cannot do that and expect 1st amendment rights to protect you. https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/28853/is-it-illegal-to-yell-fire-in-a-crowded-theatre

The problem with this is that in a money driven litigious society, a trial in court over something like this will require proof that they knew that it was false information.

And so we come down to that money issue again. As I have said before, until a more equitable monetary system appears, the vast majority of humanity's problems will remain problems.

The biggest problem with your argument is ever assuming that the media and news stories were ever honest to begin with. The internet has torn the veil of integrity from everyone's glasses, showing media for the lying cheating leeches they truly are. It was always about money, but before the internet, there was no way for the common man to point out the blatant misinformation of news stories.

The law that you think is broken, where facebook would have to prove they knew the story is false, is there for a reason. If guilt was assumed by default, you would simply strangle the flow of free information, regardless of its legitimacy. You equate it to yelling "fire", but fake news on facebook does not threaten people's lives, whereas causing a panic in a crowded area does. Apples and potatoes.

Perhaps you should be campaigning on a platform of educating people on fact checking and independent thought, instead of pinning all of this on ORANGE MAN like typical twitter NPCs do.

 

[SixTymes]

Typical demoncrat, always resorting to extremes, and trying to take away peoples freedoms.

 

[wiyosaya]

The biggest problem with your argument is ever assuming that the media and news stories were ever honest to begin with. The internet has torn the veil of integrity from everyone's glasses, showing media for the lying cheating leeches they truly are. It was always about money, but before the internet, there was no way for the common man to point out the blatant misinformation of news stories.

The law that you think is broken, where facebook would have to prove they knew the story is false, is there for a reason. If guilt was assumed by default, you would simply strangle the flow of free information, regardless of its legitimacy. You equate it to yelling "fire", but fake news on facebook does not threaten people's lives, whereas causing a panic in a crowded area does. Apples and potatoes.

Perhaps you should be campaigning on a platform of educating people on fact checking and independent thought, instead of pinning all of this on ORANGE MAN like typical twitter NPCs do.

The biggest problem with your argument is that the real problem escapes your understanding in a world of us vs them.

Its not only the law that is broken, its the whole damn world in its current state of division. But you clearly cannot see that as you are grounded in your side with no capacity to see through the veil.

 

[wiyosaya]

@Theinsanegamer If you really want to know just how much damage fake news can cause, I suggest you look at the history of Germany. Propaganda, vilification of others, fake superiority, and a charismatic figure head drove an entire country to war and ruin.


I'll make an analogy to lasers. One atom in an excited state deposits a photon that then strikes another atom in an excited state and causes it to drop a photon that is of the same frequency and phase as the one that was deposited by the starting atom. This continues and continues until there is an untold number of photons acting to support each other in unison - all nearly perfectly aligned so that the power in the group of photons is well beyond the power in the single photon alone.


So the original atom depositing the photon is someone on some useless social site depositing fake news that someone sees and takes as unquestioned truth. This someone tells all their friends who also take that as unquestioned truth and it keeps building and building until there is a mob mentality something along these lines: we must protect ourselves from the evil by any means necessary even if it means attacking and physically harming others. Fake news, then, incited violence against another human being.


If you have looked into the question of the 1st amendment as seen from SCOTUS, 1st amendment rights do not include inciting violence.


I have a feeling that I have a few more years under my belt than you do. Back in the 70's, many news organizations were viewed as bastions of truth. Political parties worked together to actually get things done instead of crapping all over each other like they do today.


I could care less what side wins as long as that side respects the rights of others that do not share their viewpoint. Right now, I see a great deal of crap from others. Using terms like NPC acts to vilify those who do not share your viewpoint. Tell me, where in the constitution does it say that anyone has a right to impose their viewpoint on someone else when that someone else is abiding to the laws of the land and the constitution?


Now abiding by the constitution is a tough call. However, that is where the founders of our land had the vision to see that there needed to be a judicial branch of government to interpret the constitution for those that would bend it to suit their own individual goals.


I see people out there trying to interpret the constitution as they see fit. It does not count. SCOTUS has weighed in on the issue many times, and it is quite clear that under certain circumstances, free speech does not mean that anyone can say anything they want in contexts where it has the ability to adversely affect a large number of people, or even one person for that matter.


As I see it, SCOTUS has said that the 1st amendment was meant to support the free exchange of ideas and that causing unjust and undeserved harm to others in the name of free speech is not necessary to support the free exchange of ideas and is the antithesis of the intent behind the 1st amendment, and, therefore, unconstitutional.


I've said my piece. I'm not coming back to this thread.

 

[treetops]

I remember when I was a child and my Grandpa told me don't believe everything you see on TV. idk what I was quoting but it made me think, it was a shocker at what 8 years old? Now we have grown ups who don't know that anything can be made up on FB.

Being a free service you could say it gets a pass, but TV is free. They have regulations. So perhaps to get the root of why TV is regulated and or was decided to be regulated, might shine some light onto why we might or might not want to regulate FB. Pertaining to fake content. No I don't know nor do I care.

To anyone who does care, FB could post a disclaimer in big bright shiny letters, nothing here is fact checked. There was a Techspot article about FB content. It was something like 33% of adults believe it's all real.

 

[Yynxs]

Apparently "The Most Terrifying IQ Statistic Simulation" isn't true. You can be VP and be interviewed. and run for President.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

As a kid, I watched the McCarthy hearings with my father. It was a young person's introduction to extremism and the narrowness of minds. My early course in Civics (no longer taught in schools though it should be) taught the ideas of government and civil rights. The recent vote on the ERA by Virginia gives me hope that this wonderful agreement to work together within a rule of laws will prevail.

An educated public, even if it is only from navigating the shoals of conflicting lies, must be our goal. If it is a tag on political lies similar to the cigarette pack warning, so be it - but it is important that their right to lie is protected.

 

[Evernessince]

People are free to comment on most FB posts and tweets so anyone can cry foul. The problem is that they can also call something false when its *not*, so are we gonna have to filter that kind of fake news, too? If filters and censors are implemented then who decides what's accurate? Wikipedia editors? The government? Wholly-underwritten political propagandists like Factcheck.org and Media Matters?? Yeah..the slippery slope awaits, Joe. Perhaps the answer is MORE free speech, not less.

The solution isn't to fact check. It's to limit "News" to only those that have a journalistic degree and that represent a publication (you can even make your own facebook publication if you want). In addition, they should be subject to the same regulations as any other news outlets. These rules will limit the number of "news" posts on facebook, require those posting to have some experience in the field, and force some journalistic integrity. Any post that could be construed as "news" without meeting the above requirements should be restricted only to that person's personal feed, cannot be shared, and should be labeled "rumor". This way anyone can post whatever they want, the only difference is non-verified "news" will not be mass-propagated on the platform.

While facebook may have a problem with fake news, that stems from the fact that everyone and anyone can put up "news" with zero qualifications and Facebook will propagate it to millions of people without a second thought for the clicks. If you limit who can post news to those with qualifications, even if a few post fake news their frequency will be far lower and it will be a lot more obvious.

 

[Danny101]

The pot calling the kettle black. Even those news organizations that were classically accepted to tell the truth don't always tell the truth either, certainly not any longer. This includes reporting stories that are nominally true, but spinning them in such a way to lead readers and viewer to the organization's accepted view. That's manipulation. As soon as any sign of manipulation is detected, people lose trust and will therefore consider it propaganda. It doesn't matter if the next story is actually hard news by a hard news reporter. The trust and credibility has already been eroded. This is why there use to be a clear demarcation line between hard news and opinion pieces in classic newspapers OTA media . Nobody said news organizations couldn't offer up opinions. But it was considered good practice to present that line so as to not lose credibility when delineating the facts. But mainstream news organizations decided at some point to start inserting opinions within the news articles. Not sure exactly when it began, but I started noticing it in the late 90's. This is why the mainstream news is not trusted anymore. They only have themselves to blame. You can judge the biases of a story by simply asking the questions. What's in it that is pertinent to the story and is informative versus that which is not and unnecessary. Some stories are just controversial no matter how you present them and most reasonable people accept that. Some reporting are just designed to cause controversy and divide and it isn't necessarily always about the facts of the case. You see it all the time. A left-wing site reports a story and a right-wing site reports the same story and each sides audience comes away with a different opinion largely due to how it was reported. Does that mean one side or the other were lying? No. But it can be equally true that both sides were wrong in how they presented it. And they wonder why so many mom and pop news sites have emerged.

 

[Darth Shiv]

I don't think old Joe is considering the 1st Amendment rights. Despite how terrible some of those comments are, they are still protected speech and he has a lot better lambs out there to slaughter .....

Free speech is not free from consequences.

 

[Yynxs]

Free speech is not free from consequences.

Very true. However, consequences mandated by 'the offended' always engenders risks of 'tyranny of the minority'. The consequences should be the offended's and their supporters' ability to 'not associate' or 'ignore' and not mandating everyone else do the same. There is a reason for secret ballots in elections and direct evidence in trials. The majority and the minority can get violent outside the law if they don't get their way or cannot make others obey them. That was the path of the original Brown Shirts in Germany, union organization, and radical Islam today, control by fear of secret and public reprisal. It is the reason the Constitution mandates 'freedom to associate'.

Without free speech in all it's heavenly, euphoic, degrading, demeaning, execrable, honorable, logical, political, illogical, etc....forms, there is no United States. Without the U.S. there is no hope for anyone else, because all the rest of the world, especially the so called 'first world' is going down the path of speech suppression. Tyranny will follow in short order.

If you want to do something serious about political speech, make the law state that everything a candidate or anyone supporting or against the candidate running for public office be clearly labeled at the beginning and the end of the communication, "Political Speech". Stay out of the business of mandating what people can say unless they are paying to say it. Let the reader decide in full knowledge of where the 'free speech' came from and stop trying to filter all that the reader sees 'for their own good'.

 

[gamerk2]

I am all for something that punishes companies like fakebook for allowing content that they know is blatantly false. To me, tolerating content known to be false is easily likened to yelling "Fire!" in a crowded public space when there is no fire; you cannot do that and expect 1st amendment rights to protect you.

That's *long* been my take as well. In addition, I would hold people accountable for the actions that stem from their speed. For example, a hate group would be legally able to sprout their hate, but the instant one of their members or anyone who follows them act on those words, the entire group is held accountable.

As it is, the US and most other liberal democracies are going to die "because" of free speech if something isn't done soon.

 

[Capaill]

I'm not sure FB should be held legally accountable for what users post. There is just too much data to trawl through and make judgements on.
Make users responsible for what users post. Make people accountable for what they say.
FB can then have a policy for what they consider acceptable on their own site and a Report option so the public can flag posts for review. FB would then be free to remove any posts they find have breached their own policy, rather than a policy dictated by the US government.
In particular, do NOT make FB responsible for removing false articles or fake news, as they will then decide what is fake, or they will be forced to by governments. It should be up to the global public to determine that. Once organisations and governments start filtering out what we read, we lose the ability to cross check and verify articles.

 

[BadThad]

"....to make it easy to hold such companies responsible for "propagating falsehoods they know to be false.""

You are a walking falsehood QUID PRO JOE! An absolute lying disgrace to America!

 

[treetops]

I'm not sure FB should be held legally accountable for what users post. There is just too much data to trawl through and make judgements on.
Make users responsible for what users post. Make people accountable for what they say.
FB can then have a policy for what they consider acceptable on their own site and a Report option so the public can flag posts for review. FB would then be free to remove any posts they find have breached their own policy, rather than a policy dictated by the US government.
In particular, do NOT make FB responsible for removing false articles or fake news, as they will then decide what is fake, or they will be forced to by governments. It should be up to the global public to determine that. Once organisations and governments start filtering out what we read, we lose the ability to cross check and verify articles.

Yeah it's funny, reminds of when people used to write **** on bathroom walls, what are they going to do sue Dennys for not fact checking it's graffiti?

 

[cliffordcooley]

sue Dennys for not fact checking it's graffiti?

lol - Dennys, I'm suing you. Because the number on the bathroom wall was not a prostitutes number.