Time to hold social media accountable
A 25-year-old rule intended to shield service providers at the dawn of widespread consumer internet access has outlived its usefulness and needs to be rewritten to bring social responsibility to social media.
When Congress passed the Communication Decency Act in 1996, it did so with the intention of drawing lines about what was and wasn’t acceptable online. The law’s primary intent, to block access to pornography, was largely gutted in 1997 in a landmark Supreme Court ruling Reno vs. ACLU. Among the provisions that remained was Section 230.
The section 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.”
This gave internet service companies a free pass to allow libel, slander and all manner of contemptible activities to occur on their services without facing the same legal ramifications print or broadcast media do face.
At the time, high-minded judges and lawmakers viewed the internet as a way to foster public discussion and debate. It would be, they envisioned, a great equalizer where all people could stand on their proverbial soapboxes and have free and open dialogue about the issues of the day.
As with many idealized, high-minded notions over the years, this failed miserably. Instead of conversations on broad ideas there are algorithm-driven echo-chambers fracturing society into groups of “us” versus “them.” Instead of dialogue there are flame wars with trolls lurking to destroy all they come into contact with. Instead of open and frank discussions, people tread lightly for fear of being canceled or having their lives casually destroyed by people with power, but no responsibility.
In 1651, philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote that outside of rules governing behavior, the natural state of humanity is “solitary, poor, nasty brutish, and short.”
While Hobbes wrote those words many centuries before Facebook, Twitter and the other modern social media platforms, his description of the natural state of humanity is a fair description of the interactions that take place on those platforms.
Social media profits directly off the discord sown on its platforms and with a shield from civil liability has no economic incentive to police itself. While those wronged may attempt to seek legal remedy from individuals, these attempts are ineffectual in enacting real change and just add more chum to the social media feeding frenzy bringing more eyeballs and more dollars to social media platforms. For substantial and real change to happen, social media platforms must be hit where it hurts the most, in their pocketbooks.
Section 230 needs to be modified to clarify that social media platforms are indeed publishers and should be held as accountable for the content on their pages as the publishers of this newspaper or any other media. It is time to bring social responsibility and accountability to social media.
