These are bad times for the First Amendment.
The very big picture is bad. Progressives woke up one morning to realize they controlled the media. People who thought like them made our movies, TV shows, and most importantly, owned the greatest propaganda tool ever invented, social media. They could significantly influence not only which breakfast cereal America liked best, but also which candidate America should vote for.
And none of it fell under the First Amendment. That old saw only protects people from government censorship, not corporate censorship or propaganda. The Founders never conceived we the people would want to have our media censored, or that companies would grow more powerful than the government to be able to do so, or that the age-old remedy for misinformation–truth–would become so reviled and feared. Of all the Founders’ omissions of issues unimaginable in the 18th century, this is the one that may prove fatal to the Republic.
The big picture is bad. Thanks to legal razzle-dazzle aimed at limiting corporate liability for the garbage service providers host, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was born. As interpreted today, this has removed the threat of lawsuits to allow social media to become an even more powerful influence in our lives.
The law reads “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” In other words, online intermediaries that host or republish speech are protected against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what is on their platforms. So, if Twitter wants to only include false happy news about Hunter Biden, it can. If Twitter wants to enable those who spew out out-and-out lies about Trump, it can. They ran amok with Trump and Russia, willfully promoting lies that were part of a professional disinformation campaign Goebbels would have looked at in awe.
read more:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/journalism-turns-on-the-first-amendment/
Replies