Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) seemed unaware of the Twitter Files and rampant social media censorship in the last six years when he claimed Section 230 protects “controversial speech.”
Sen. Wyden, who co-authored the Communications Decency Act, spoke at an event hosted by New America and the Wikimedia Foundation to speak on Section 230, the infamous statute that shields internet services from being sued for what users post on their platforms. Wyden claimed that Section 230 is “what allows sites to host controversial speech—that is the speech we really care about, that is the speech that propels progress and supports democracy.” He later revealed that he was primarily talking about leftist speech that supports Black Lives Matter and #MeToo and not the speech of “right-wing culture warriors” and “MAGA Republicans.”
The senator claimed that “without 230 and the First Amendment it will be harder for people without power, without clout, without political action committees, the marginalized voices to call out wrongdoing by the powerful and it will certainly be easier for government to set the terms of public debate.” He later added that repealing Section 230 “would put immense pressure on websites to quickly take down content that offends people with power and anything else outside the comfortable and the mainstream.”
He seems to forget, however, that while his description may to some extent exemplify how Section 230 is supposed to work on paper, in practice it has not prevented any of his doomsday predictions from coming true, as free speech advocates have warned.
“It is an outrageous line of reasoning to suggest that Section 230 as it is interpreted today protects the speech of everyday Americans,” MRC Free Speech America Director Michael Morris said. “MRC’s CensorTrack.org has over 5,600 examples of documented cases of censorship that demonstrate that even with the statute in place Big Tech oligarchs have censored the speech of Americans time and time again.”
Wyden claimed that “Section 230 helps ensure that critical information gets online and accessible for those who need it most,” yet even with Section 230 Big Tech censored the Hunter Biden laptop scandal nearly three weeks before the 2020 election. A 2020 MRC poll found that 45 percent of President Joe Biden’s voters weren’t fully aware of the New York Post story and, 9.4 percent of Biden voters would have abandoned him had they known about the scandal.
MRC Free Speech America researchers similarly found in an April 2022 damning study that Big Tech censored users who criticized candidate and later President Joe Biden 646 times over the course of two years.
Wyden accused Republicans of “trying to shut down access to gender-affirming care” and characterized laws protecting children from sexually explicit books as shutting down “access to information about gender identity including by banning books and teaching on the subject.” Meanwhile, according to a recent MRC Free Speech America study, Big Tech censored those who dissent from Wyden’s extreme narrative on gender ideology 689 times in the last year.
The senator argued that without Section 230 the #MeToo movement could never have called out powerful people who sexually exploited women and he may be right. Platforms allowed users to call out elite offenders unless, of course, that offender’s name was Joe Biden. MRC Free Speech America found that Big Tech companies removed no fewer than 232 posts of memes, videos, or comments about Biden’s notoriously touchy behavior around women and children.
Wyden let his bias really shine when caricatured “MAGA Republicans” and accused them of wanting to “force companies to carry harmful content because that promotes [Republicans’] political agenda.” He added that he “sincerely hope[s] that no Democrats play into the hands of right-wing culture warriors and help them use Section 230 to force sites to give voice to hate and radicalism.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and an equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
