MSNBC's Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough and New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay claimed Wednesday that technological advancements on the internet have rendered the idea of free speech “out of date” because non-journalists are using it to advance “hate speech” and “dangerous” content.
As the Supreme Court deliberates whether companies like Google can be held liable for content posted on their sites, Scarborough declared, “The idea that this is 1996 and we’re talking about You’ve Got Mail or CompuServe is completely asinine.”
Offering up a combination of a statement and a question, he continued, “Isn't it time for Congress to start holding Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and other owners of these, these corporations, just to the same standard that everybody else is held to? Why do we carve things out for -- and I would ‘ve said Jack Dorsey before and I did say that a couple years ago? This is -- it's just insanity that we're allowing these billion dollar corporations to have an exemption that nobody else has.”
Gay concurred with Scarborough’s assessment, “You know, Joe, you're making a powerful case here that the law just, maybe it just is out of date. I mean, listening to you talk about the way you were thinking about it when it was enacted is reason enough. You're right. The internet has changed.”
As for the First Amendment, Gay declared, “of course, as a journalist, that’s a wonderful thing.”
However, she lamented that other people, who are not journalists, have an expectation that the First Amendment applies to them as well, “The problem here is that the world has changed, and so to your point, Joe, now you have companies that are actually not journalistic organizations that disseminating information, some of it factual, some of it dangerous, some of it hate speech, and they are, they essentially have no responsibility for the consequences of that.”
Who decides who is a journalist or what is hate speech? Naturally, Gay avoided these glaring questions to claim “for the Americans sitting at home, the question is well, what responsibility should YouTube or Google or Facebook have if they're promoting hate speech on their platforms?”
Gay admitted that she did not have a good legal answer, but also, “that I don't think we can allow it to go on as it has where there's no consequences and people can make money, in fact, to your point while this information that is tearing the country apart and by the way providing disinformation and at some cases has made us very endangered, like with January 6. So, there's real consequences to this and I hope the Court realizes that.”
The case before the Court deals with ISIS radicalization, the idea that Morning Joe would use that to go after their domestic opponents show why people are right to be concerned with people like Gay seeking to appoint themselves as the deciders of what constitutes misinformation or hate speech.
This segment was sponsored by Subway.
Here is a transcript for the February 22 show:
MSNBC's Morning Joe
02/22/2023
6:48 AM ETJOE SCARBOROUGH: The idea that this is 1996 and we’re talking about You’ve Got Mail or CompuServe is completely asinine. Isn't it time for Congress to start holding Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and other owners of these, these corporations, just to the same standard that everybody else is held to?
Why do we carve things out for -- and I would ‘ve said Jack Dorsey before and I did say that a couple years ago? This is -- it's just insanity that we're allowing these billion dollar corporations to have an exemption that nobody else has.
MARA GAY: You know, Joe, you're making a powerful case here that the law just, maybe it just is out of date. I mean, listening to you talk about the way you were thinking about it when it was enacted is reason enough. You're right. The internet has changed. The world has changed, but this is one of those areas of American exceptionalism, too, where other democracies look at us and say “well, why can't you figure this out?”
And one of the reasons is we actually have a very broad First Amendment statute and of course, as a journalist, that’s a wonderful thing. The problem here is that the world has changed, and so to your point, Joe, now you have companies that are actually not journalistic organizations that disseminating information, some of it factual, some of it dangerous, some of it hate speech, and they are, they essentially have no responsibility for the consequences of that.
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
GAY: So, we have this central tension and, you know, it's easy to get wonky. We all know what Section 230 is here at the table, but, you know, for the Americans sitting at home, the question is well, what responsibility should YouTube or Google or Facebook have if they're promoting hate speech on their platforms?
I think the average American would say they should have some, but legally that's a harder case to make, and I don't have an answer for it. But it's just to say that I don't think we can allow it to go on as it has where there's no consequences and people can make money, in fact, to your point—
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
GAY: while this information that is tearing the country apart and by the way providing disinformation and at some cases has made us very endangered, like with January 6. So, there's real consequences to this and I hope the Court realizes that.
