Trump’s executive order aims to clarify Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which had been introduced in 1996 to enable websites to moderate user posts — most obviously in the comment sections of the news media — but not be culpable for illegal content they fail to remove. In essence, this created a provision for social media companies like Twitter to operate simultaneously as publishers and platforms. Whenever Twitter has been sued for libelous content, the act has been cited in its defense. The executive order seeks to prevent companies from using Section 230 as justification for partisan editorializing…
Trump has a point. Evidence for Twitter’s self-proclaimed political neutrality is meagre. Those enlisted to moderate content are overwhelmingly left-leaning and supportive of intersectionality and social-justice activism. In his book The Madness of Crowds, Douglas Murray notes that this bias is reflected even in the selection criteria for employees. Companies test applicants in order ‘to weed out anyone with the wrong ideological inclinations’. The major tech giants, Murray writes, employ ‘thousands of people on six-figure salaries whose job it is to try to formulate and police content’. Even if the filtering practices are only unintentionally partisan, the inherent political bias of the Silicon Valley workforce makes this outcome inevitable…
There is little doubt that Twitter is making the most of the protections afforded by the Communications Decency Act, behaving as an editor and publisher but with none of the legal responsibilities. Trump’s executive order is an inadequate solution to a complicated problem, and it is certain to be challenged in the courts. Until social media platforms make a concerted effort to redress their ideological biases, we all have good reason to be vigilant.
ConservativeChick
Article URL : https://spectator.us/internet-bill-rights/