President Biden has revoked yet another one of this predecessor’s Executive Orders. In May 2020, President Trump signed an order targeting online censorship for massive platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google to be held accountable for the content posted on their sites. Trump was specifically targeting Section 230 which provides blanket protection to these sites regardless of the dangerous or violent content posted on them.
The Daily Wire reports:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account ofany action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.
The term “otherwise objectionable” has given license to sites such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter to censor material they find “otherwise objectionable.”
Last October, Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, spoke before Congress and claimed, “Of course, our ability to provide access to a wide range of information is only possible because of existing legal frameworks, like Section 230. The United States adopted Section 230 early in the internet’s history, and it has been foundational to US leadership in the tech sector. Section 230 protects the freedom to create and share content while supporting the ability of platforms and services of all sizes to responsibly address harmful content.”
Trump’s executive order noted that Section 230 was crafted in the early days of the internet and was never meant to be applied to “titans” and now major internet companies should be held accountable.
Section 230 was not intended to allow a handful of companies to grow into titans controlling vital avenues for our national discourse under the guise of promoting open forums for debate, and then to provide those behemoths blanket immunity when they use their power to censor content and silence viewpoints that they dislike. When an interactive computer service provider removes or restricts access to content and its actions do not meet the criteria of subparagraph (c)(2)(A), it is engaged in editorial conduct. It is the policy of the United States that such a provider should properly lose the limited liability shield of subparagraph (c)(2)(A) and be exposed to liability like any traditional editor and publisher that is not an online provider.
