Slight of Hand and Section 230: Impacts for Jersey Politics, Money and Censorship

By James Toto
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The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It’s an adage as old as the hills. Everyone in the social media market is focusing on President Trump vetoing the defense bill, and they’re focusing on Confederate base name angle. That’s what is being said, it’s not what is really at the heart of the matter. President Trump is threatening to veto the defense spending bill because of Section 230 otherwise known as the Internet Bill.

Section 230 was designed to protect internet companies from being held liable for any falsehoods, pornographic or illegal content being posted on their pages. The bill also protects them for being sued for moderating such content. In plain English, private tech companies like Facebook, Twitter or YouTube have the legal right to censor posts they deem to be in violation of their standards.

These tech companies are distributors, not publishers. This, in a court of law, is a strong distinction. A publisher can be held libel for whatever they publish. If an individual or company feels they have been misrepresented by a publisher and that misrepresentation affects their business or themselves negatively, they can sue. A distributor of content will not be held to the same standards. Therefore, companies like Facebook, and such, are not responsible for their content and cannot be held liable for it. As private companies, they do have the right to enforce their own set of “standards” on their platforms. They are within their rights to “moderate” or remove content under these standards they set. Under section 230, distributors cannot be sued for infringing on the freedom of speech of censored content creators.

In 2018 two bills were passed, and by all accounts, they were needed. They were the House bill Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Senate bill Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, both signed into law by President Trump. Both made it possible that publishers and distributors would be held responsible if third parties were found to be posting ads for sex work on their platforms.

This is a victory to help stop the horrific acts of the sex trade. Facebook was also a huge supporter of these bills, as it cut the legs out from under its minor competition from Craigslist, which erred on the side of caution and got rid of its “Personals” section. Anyone familiar with Facebook knows that it still carries the pervasive ads for the sale of sex.

So, Facebook wasn’t in support for the right reasons, but rather a shrewd business decision. Craigslist knew it couldn’t risk the cost of both the review and the cost if something fell through the cracks.

The rollback of Section 230 is supported by both President Trump and Joe Biden. Both are in support of this for completely different reasons. President Trump wants the freedom of speech protected and pursue legal action against companies like Twitter for political bias and censorship. Biden wants the repeal so that companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter can be held liable for the content their users share. Biden’s goal, on the surface, is to curb the spread of misinformation. Here’s the problem: what is information, what is misinformation and who’s going to be the judge?

Twitter decided to censor President Trump and his tweets, which they are legally protected to do so. Despite the fact that Twitter exhibited political bias, they were protected. The roll back would open big tech to reviews of its policies that exhibit political bias by the Federal Trade Commission. It would make big tech responsible to review over 500 million tweets, 95 million photos and more than 2.6 billion active users of Facebook every day.

Next year New Jersey will elect a governor. The Democrats will more than likely run Governor Phil Murphy again. The Republicans will either run Jack Ciattarelli or Doug Steinhardt. Will there be real, open discussions about the nursing home deaths due to coronavirus?

Will we have real discussions about the handling of the virus and the shutdowns that have caused so many financial hardships for people? Will we have real discussions about the debt in the State of New Jersey or the mishandling of funds?

Will we be able to have these conversations on either Facebook, Twitter or any other platform where information is shared?

Or will people be labeled as givers of false information and blocked?

When you read about why the President is threatening to veto the Defense Fund, it’s not about the renaming of military bases. It’s about the control of our freedom of speech. It’s about looking at information and questioning its validity, not being controlled by big tech and their thought managers in 2020, 2021 and beyond.

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James Toto is a councilman in Somers Point, New Jersey representing the 2nd Ward.

James Toto
About James Toto 1 Article
James Toto is a councilman in Somers Point, New Jersey representing the 2nd Ward.