by Patricia Anthone, America Outloud:
Having abandoned its role as a “neutral platform for user-generated content” to take up a left-leaning publisher’s role, Facebook should immediately be STRIPPED of the codified immunity it presently enjoys as a social media platform.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shields Facebook and other social media platforms from liability for content on their platforms. The rationale is that social media platforms don’t control the content in the way that publishers do and should, therefore, not be faced with the liability for content in the manner of a publisher.
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Section 230 says that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” This federal law preempts any state laws to the contrary: “[n]o cause of action may be brought, and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section.” (EFF)
But given Meta’s use of Facebook to favor left-leaning candidates and causes, can it still be claimed it is not acting as a publisher? Having brought the enormous weight of its platform down solidly and consequentially on the Left side of the ballot in 2020, can Zuckerberg claim, with a straight face, that he has not leveraged the power of Facebook in pursuit of political advocacy?
To be clear, I am NOT in favor of any attempt to legislate “fairness” in the treatment of social media content; such an effort will only be abused to further empower governmental control of speech.
I am strongly in favor of legal challenges to the Section 230 protection behind which social media companies hide. The real harm is done by a social media company that abandons its role as a platform for public discourse and instead seeks to protect partisan narratives by censoring dissent.
In that case, they can no longer absolve themselves of responsibility for content. The blanket of immunity offered to social media platforms in the existing law is being abused when platforms are permitted to manipulate public discourse in ways that contrive support for positions, policies, and politicians they favor.
Facebook obviously exercises control over content, enhancing the distribution of content they prefer and censoring via shadow-ban, distribution-suppression, and outright removal of content with which they disagree. Any entity exercising this prerogative should be held accountable for the harm caused by their choices.
When it mattered most, Facebook decided to suppress info on C19 treatment protocols devised by physicians as early as March 2020. Protocols involving EXISTING medications that were shown to prevent the progression of the disease were willfully suppressed while provably false statements about “horse-paste” were elevated. Had Facebook acted as a platform rather than a partisan publisher, users would have had access to competing viewpoints and the data to which each referred.
People died for want of simple, outpatient treatments with inexpensive and readily available drugs.
The FDA has recently been forced to retract its outright lies about Ivermectin, a viral-replication suppressant that has been on the market for decades. It was shown to have been effective against covid, is inexpensive, readily available, and has a well-known safety profile. Facebook elected to actively suppress results being achieved with this medication at the expense of medical freedom, freedom of speech, and the DE-CENTRALIZED, innovative approach to solution-seeking for which America was once known.
Imagine what would have happened had the early-treatment protocols, which were already emerging in March 2020, not been suppressed.
With effective, early outpatient treatment available, the entire Covidocracy would have been prevented. Consider all that might never have happened:
> There would have been no threat of overrunning the hospitals.
> The argument for “shutdown,” which suppresses all of society, could not have been made.
> The great fear they promoted could not have taken hold.
> Most importantly, the Emergency Use Authorization for their precious mRNA injections could not have been given because an EUA is predicated on the assurance that no other treatment exists.
Just as a lawsuit asserting that a corporate organization acted outside its own charter can successfully pierce a “corporate shield,” so might the behavior of Facebook acting in direct contradiction to its own claims, providing an opening for content-liability suits.
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