The Justice Department announced
plans Wednesday to make legislative recommendations for
changes to the legal protections surrounding big tech
companies.
The decision comes just a day after
Google Ads attempted to demonetize
The Federalist over “race based content” and just a month
after President Trump signed an executive order with intentions to
curb the cut back on the protections after alleged censorship of
conservative news outlets. Attorney General William Barr, according
to the Wall Street Journal, also “has repeatedly voiced
concerns about online-platform immunity.”
According to the WSJ, the proposal
“would remove legal protections when platforms facilitate or
solicit third-party content or activity that violates federal
criminal law, such as online scams and trafficking in illicit or
counterfeit drugs” and rescind monetary damage immunity from
companies that knowingly allow illicit activity to continue. It
would also ensure that companies “don’t have immunity in
civil-enforcement actions brought by the federal government, and
can’t use immunity as a defense against antitrust claims that they
removed content for anticompetitive reasons.”
Despite claims by many tech
companies that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the
section that grants them protection, is necessary, the proposal’s
goal “would be to require platforms to adhere to their
terms of service as well as their public claims about their
practices. Platforms also would have to provide reasonable
explanations of their decisions.”
Lawmakers in Congress are already
examining ways to crack down on big tech censorship. On Wednesday, Sen. Joshua Hawley (R-M0.) along with
Sens. Marco Rubio, Mike Braun, and Tom Cotton debuted new
legislation that would allow “users who believe the provider is
not ‘operating in good faith’ by consistently and fairly applying
its content rules could sue for $5,000 and attorneys’ fees.”
Jordan Davidson is an intern for The
Federalist and a recent graduate of Baylor University where she
majored in political science and minored in journalism.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., introduced legislation
Wednesday to give Americans the ability to sue major tech companies like
Facebook, Google and Twitter if they engage in selective censorship
of political speech.
The Limiting Section 230 Immunity to Good Samaritans Act,
cosponsored by Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Mike Braun, R-Ind., and Tom
Cotton, R-Ark., would stop such companies from receiving immunity under
section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, unless they update their
terms of service to promise to operate in good faith.
NBC NEWS UNDER FIRE FOR APPARENTLY PUSHING GOOGLE TO
REMOVE CONSERVATIVE SITES FROM AD PLATFORM
“For too long, Big Tech companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook have
used their power to silence political speech from conservatives without
any recourse for users,” Hawley said in a statement. “Section 230 has been
stretched and rewritten by courts to give these companies outlandish power
over speech without accountability. Congress should act to ensure bad
actors are not given a free pass to censor and silence their opponents.”
The bill would allow users to sue companies for breaching that
contractual duty of good faith, and it would make them pay $5,000 plus
legal fees to each user who prevails in a case against them.
On a separate track -- reflecting renewed pressure on these companies out
of Washington -- the Justice Department is recommending that lawmakers
consider new legislation that would hold tech giants liable for
content posted online. Any such legislation would roll back legal
protections the online platforms have possessed for decades.
The DOJ proposed extensive changes to the law in question, Section 230,
in a report Wednesday afternoon. The report does not call for repealing
the statute entirely, but for rolling back immunity for platforms that
facilitate criminal activity and for those that don't take action
when notified of "specific criminal material or activity."
This comes after President
Trump signed an executive
order this month that interprets Section 230 as not providing
statutory liability protections for tech companies that engage in
censorship and political conduct -- though DOJ officials say the
department has been working on the legislative recommendations for months
and they are not a direct result of Trump’s order.
"My executive order calls for new regulations under Section 230 of the
Communications Decency Act to make it so that social media companies that
engage in censoring any political conduct will not be able to keep their
liability shield," the president said at the time.
The president's order,
which also cuts federal funding for social media platforms that censor
users' political views, came after Twitter took
the unprecedented step of slapping a "misleading" warning label on
two of Trump's tweets concerning the fraud risks of nationwide mail-in
balloting.
Axios reported that the White House requested that
Hawley target the liability shield that surrounds big tech companies.
The bill was introduced a day after NBC News reported on a Google crackdown against two
conservative websites -- Zero Hedge and The Federalist.
NBC News initially claimed Google "banned" The Federalist and ZeroHedge
from Google Ads for "pushing unsubstantiated claims" about the Black Lives
Matter movement. Google later pushed back, claiming that The Federalist
"was never demonetized.”
Justice Department proposes rolling back protections for
social media platforms
"We worked with them to address issues on their site related to the comments
section," Google said. "Our policies do not allow ads to run against
dangerous or derogatory content, which includes comments on sites, and we
offer guidance and best practices to publishers on how to comply."
A Google spokesperson reiterated to Fox News, "To be clear, The
Federalist is not currently demonetized. We do have strict publisher
policies that govern the content ads can run on, which includes comments
on the site. This is a longstanding policy."
