Comments by "Valen Ron" (@valenrn8657) on "‘Unbelievable’: Twitter’s new CEO once said the company isn’t ‘bound by the First Amendment’" video.
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@chcheese8108
When the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on social media censorship late last month, liberal Democratic congressman Ted Lieu transformed into a hardcore libertarian. “This is a stupid and ridiculous hearing,” he said, because “the First Amendment applies to the government, not private companies.” He added that just as the government cannot tell Fox News what content to air, “we can’t tell Facebook what content to filter,” because that would be unconstitutional.
Lieu is incorrect. While the First Amendment generally does not apply to private companies, the Supreme Court has held it “does not disable the government from taking steps to ensure that private interests not restrict . . . the free flow of information and ideas.”
But as Senator Ted Cruz points out, Congress actually has the power to deter political censorship by social media companies without using government coercion or taking action that would violate the First Amendment, in letter or spirit.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes online platforms for their users’ defamatory, fraudulent, or otherwise unlawful content. Congress granted this extraordinary benefit to facilitate “forum[s] for a true diversity of political discourse.”
This exemption from standard libel law is extremely valuable to the companies that enjoy its protection, such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, but they only got it because it was assumed that they would operate as impartial, open channels of communication—not curators of acceptable opinion.
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