What Facebook, Google and Twitter are calling for from the US Congress

31 October 20203 years ago babelfish

What the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter said at the US Congress

CEOs of Facebook , Google and Twitter again testified this week before the US Senate Commerce Commission to defend their 'shield' on legal liability regarding user posts.

The bipartisan members of the Commission are eager, in fact, to reform the so-called 'Section 230', a clause of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that protects technology platforms from liability from their users' posts and allows them to moderate and remove those they find objectionable. . For this reason, despite appearances, the 'shield' was attacked by Republicans who accused tech platforms of using it to protect themselves from accusations of prejudice and by Democrats who accused them of failing to effectively remove harmful content, CNBC points out.

EXCHANGE OF CHARGES

"Senators have used the hearing extensively to launch broadsides against their political opponents ahead of the US presidential elections running towards the last week." While the CEOs of the tech groups "stressed that they are doing their best to prepare for an onslaught of disinformation in the final days of the campaign," The Independent noted in an article.

Earlier in the hearing, President Roger Wicker pointed out that Section 230 should be changed to prevent platforms from identifying who to punish. "The time has come for that pass to end," Wicker said clearly. In essence, Axios ' Kyle Daly clarified, “the way supporters of the Section 230 revocation or restriction frame their case is to call on the government to intervene to prevent Big Tech giants from promoting content. welcome smothering those unwelcome ”.

THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE

"The idea is something like the internet version of Fairness Doctrine – the previous Federal Communications Commission's policy, abolished during the Reagan administration, which required broadcasters to represent both sides when broadcasting programs on political controversies – Axios recalled. -. A digital Fairness Doctrine was just what Republicans warned against when the FCC passed net neutrality rules during the Obama administration to prevent broadband providers from blocking or slowing access to certain online content. " .

FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, a Democrat, drew a link between net neutrality and Section 230 during the agency's latest public meeting when he voted to reaffirm his 2018 move to eliminate Obama-era rules. . "These pieces don't fit together," Starks said. You can't pretend to have a light regulatory framework when proposing to regulate online content with a heavy hand. This ideological face shows that the upcoming regulation of Section 230 is more a matter of pleasing the President than that of making good politics ”.

"Some Republicans have already begun to read the principles of the Fairness Doctrine – in Section 230 as justification for its revision – reads again on Axios -. Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, who pointed to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey at the hearing, are among those who said Section 230 is meant to protect politically neutral online forums. Such a requirement does not appear in the law, and Senator Ron Wyden, who wrote it in 1996, was among those who clearly denied this intention ”. Although on the other hand, Axios always recalled, “conservatives argue that Section 230 serves as a special dispensation that gives the tech industry legal protection that doesn't apply to other sectors, such as publishing.

THE KEY POINTS OF THE AUDITION OF FACEBOOK, GOOGLE AND TWITTER

But what were the key points of the hearing that involved the number one of Facebook, Google and Twitter? First of all, “the Democrats have grown fond of the subject of 'illegitimate' hearings. Indeed, they opposed the decision of the Republican majority to hold the hearing just six days before the US presidential election. Not only does the Senate usually leave Washington in October during the election period so that incumbents can rush to their states for one final electoral push, but this year, Democrats have accused Senate Republicans of using their majority to the Chamber to hold committee hearings targeting Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, ”The Independent reported.

Republicans have for years raised baseless allegations of anti-conservative bias on Facebook and Twitter for flagging and suppressing stories in the right-wing media. More recently, they raised a crawl around Twitter's actions to cancel any posts on their platform that link to a New York Post report allegedly containing evidence of unethical and possibly illegal behavior by Hunter Biden, the former vice president's son. . Senate Democrats used similar terms to cast illegitimacy charges on Amy Coney Barrett's claim, arguing that no Supreme Court candidate had ever sat this close to the presidential election.

REPUBLICANS WORRIED MORE ABOUT HUNTER BIDEN THAN SECTION 230

"Senator Ted Cruz is the one who caused the biggest controversies at the hearing with his timely questioning of Dorsey on Twitter's decision-making process regarding the Hunter Biden Post report on business," the Independent reads. Donald Trump and his allies – including members of Congress – have tried to link Biden to unproven allegations of "corrupt" business in Ukraine and China orchestrated by his son, charges the former vice president dismissed as a Russian disinformation campaign. .

Cruz said Facebook, Twitter, and Google were under an obligation not to suppress information based on political bias against a certain point of view. "We're not doing this," Dorsey bluntly replied, reiterating his suggestion that lawmakers require large tech companies to post notes on their decisions to report or censor certain stories on their platforms to provide greater "transparency." Dorsey denied Cruz's hypothesis that Twitter would have a profound impact on the US presidential election, prompting the senator to look astonished.

THE REPUBLICANS DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY WANT

While Republicans lashed out at Dorsey and Zuckerberg for flagging and censoring conservative organ content – including several Trump posts and tweets – they offered no substantial remedy. Wicker said he supported the complete repeal of section 230. Republican Colorado Senator Cory Gardner urged lawmakers to "be very careful and don't rush to legislate in ways that stifle words." Gardner, who according to pollsters is the underdog in his Senate run against former Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper, highlighted the dilemma lawmakers face when it comes to the law. 'I don't like the idea of the unelected elites in San Francisco or Silicon Valley deciding whether my speech is allowed on their platform,' he said. But I like even less the idea of Washington, DC, unelected bureaucrats trying to impose a kind of politically neutral content moderation ”.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/che-cosa-invocano-facebook-google-e-twitter-dal-congresso-usa/ on Sat, 31 Oct 2020 08:15:25 +0000.