There’s been a great panic regarding the update to Facebook’s terms of service. If you have not seen what this is, here’s a screen capture:
So why is this happening? Easy. Because President Donald Trump wants it to happen.
If you recall, President Trump and allies in Washington want to change Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 to make social media sites liable for what’s on their sites. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others would all face liability under the proposed Section 230 for what their users say and do on the site. That means that if somebody says something that’s untrue or libels somebody on the site, the site as the publisher is also on the hook.
The Department of Justice has a whole laundry list of recommendations as to how to make this work.
Changing the Section 230 requirements are going to be a disaster for free speech, as this Brookings Institute piece notes. Both parties want this change, and change seems inevitable.
President Trump wants this regulation in place in order to enact revenge on social media sites that he perceives as enemies of his supporters for perceived grievances of alleged throttling of conservative content and being discriminatory against conservative viewpoints. Trump and many of his supporters want social media companies to be forced to host conservative content no matter its nature.
Which makes the irony of the latest Facebook Panic so rich. Many of the same conservatives who wanted social media companies to stop “shadow banning” content who want social media companies to stop banning conservatives, and wanted President Trump to take on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act are up in arms that Facebook may now be able, thanks to their agreement to Facebook’s terms of service, delete and remove their content.
This is exactly what these same conservatives asked President Trump to do in taking on social media companies using Section 230 of the CDA.
It’s important to remember two things here when it comes to Section 230:
You do not have a right to use anybody’s social media company. It is a private service from a private company.
Amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act will be incredibly damaging to free speech online in this country, with disastrous consequences.
Like so many policy choices people make and people support in this zero-sum-game-you’re-either-for-me-or-against-me political hellscape we are currently living in, caveat emptor.
The Facebook Panic
Just try posting this url into Facebook messenger https://www.erasebook.info/ It promotes a Facebook competitor, is blocked because the link "violates Facebook community standards."