The past month has been a difficult one for the largest tech companies. In late May, President Trump signed an executive order asking the FCC to propose regulations clarifying Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a foundational law of the modern internet that provides websites liability protection for content users post on their platforms. This month, the Department of Justice recommended additional reforms to Section 230, and several proposals are already making their way through Congress that would condition liability protection on compliance with future government regulations.
The writing is on the wall that some sort of major action will likely be taken against Big Tech in the near future. Conservatives concerned about bias in content moderation may cheer these developments, but they should be careful what they wish for. While the Trump administration may be sympathetic to conservative values, they won’t always be in power. A future Democratic administration could easily pervert the proposed Section 230 tweaks to pressure platforms to take down “hate speech” and “misinformation” — code words for speech they disagree with.
The seeds for this dystopian future are already being sowed. Earlier this month, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign published a letter demanding that Facebook “proactively stem the tide of false information” in the lead-up to the 2020 election. In response, Facebook pushed back, promising to “protect political speech, even when we strongly disagree with it.” Several household-name brands, including Ben & Jerry’s, The North Face, Patagonia, and REI, are now ratcheting up the pressure, boycotting advertising on Facebook for at least one month in an effort to get the social media giant to take down so-called hate speech.
Now, imagine if Trump and conservatives such as Sen. Josh Hawley had their way, giving the government greater control over which websites are afforded protection under Section 230. Things may be all well and fine for a while, but imagine if Biden wins the presidency in November. Considering that his campaign called on Facebook to take down more posts, it seems very likely that the new president could easily use the threat of revoking Section 230 protections to force social media sites to bend to progressive demands to censor conservative thoughtcrime.
Anti-Section 230 conservatives discount the mediating role that Facebook and Twitter currently play. While the right would generally like to see less moderation to political speech online, the Left is ravenous for more. In short, Big Tech is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Any action one way or another will only displease a large swath of their users. Ipso facto, everyone’s angry. The Verge’s Adi Robinson summed up the situation well in a recent headline: “Lots of politicians hate Section 230 — but they can’t agree on why.”
Undoubtedly, the motivation for many politicians on both sides of the aisle to take up Section 230 is to score political points for standing up to big corporations. Such a David and Goliath narrative plays well on the campaign trail. Robinson explains:
Conservatives shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Tech companies offer powerful free resources to amplify their message that could easily be regulated away by hostile government bureaucrats. Studies have shown that conservative Facebook pages get higher engagement than liberal ones. Meanwhile on YouTube, conservative personality Dennis Prager recently broke one billion views while others such as Ben Shapiro and Stephen Crowder have been able to build entire companies around their audiences.
There’s a natural instinct to be skeptical of big companies such as America’s top tech firms, and skepticism towards power is healthy. However, Section 230 also protects small startups, and the government is the ultimate powerful institution. Using its destructive powers to bring the hammer down on what has been a thriving internet will only end in disaster for America’s tech companies, big and small.
At a time when the progressive mob feels emboldened to “cancel” seemingly anyone for a minor offense, conservatives should not be so naive as to think that the government will always act in their favor. It hasn’t in the past, and it won’t at some point in the future.
Casey Given (@CaseyJGiven) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the executive director of Young Voices.
