The fate of free speech on the internet could be discussed at an upcoming discussion hosted by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
The News Media Alliance (NMA), a thousands-strong coalition of U.S. news organizations, is criticizing the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provided legal protection for tech companies from the consequences of users’ posts. The NMA seeks to “propose limits” to this rule which it says, “to-date, has helped Big Tech companies dodge responsibility for the content people upload to their platforms” an Axios newsletter summarized.
Those for and against the rule will lock horns on Feb. 18 at the DOJ’s “public workshop,” officially titled “Section 230 – Nurturing Innovation or Fostering Unaccountability?”
The workshop, which NMA will attend, will discuss “the evolution of Section 230 from its original purpose in granting limited immunity to Internet companies, its impact on the American people, and whether improvements to the law should be made,” according to the DOJ. The conference will be opened by Attorney General William P. Barr, and feature academics and experts from a variety of fields.
NMA leadership proposed "limiting the exemption for just the very largest companies who both derive the most benefits from Section 230 and have the greatest capacities to take legal responsibility for their commercial decisions around content and reach,” according to the testimony.
Section 230, which NMA wishes to restrict, has become “a cornerstone of the modern internet since it was passed in 1996, freeing companies from having to closely police every sentence, video or photo published on their platforms,” Axios summarized. If Section 230 were taken away, “companies like Facebook could get in legal trouble if someone posted a defamatory fake video and the company didn't act reasonably to take it down or tell users it was manipulated.”
Considering how legacy news media has been pulverised by the rise of social media, it could be in their economic interests to see this happen. NMA, however, has at least postured as if it is merely concerned with the quality of information itself. NMA’s President & CEO David Chavern wrote in his proposal:
For our part, news publishers believe that the value of their brands is centered in trust with readers, and that delivering false or dangerous information would damage that trust. Google and Facebook, on the other hand, are the means by which many people receive horrible and deeply dangerous information.
Chavern did suggest, though, that ”[i]f done right, this could also drive business incentives for the platforms to value quality journalism over overtly bad sources of information about our world and our communities.”
