Thread by @BerinSzoka

Can't wait to hear @LindseyGrahamSC, the guy who urged Georgia's Secretary of State to throw out Democratic votes, accuse #BigTech of trying to steal the election 🤣

Watch this thread for more debunking of GOP nonsense about free speech and #Section230

https://twitter.com/senjudiciary/status/1328708152217530369

"I don't want the government to have the power to decide what content stays up"
-@LindseyGrahamSC

No, he just wants to amend #Section230 to enable, especially, for Republican hack state AGs to sue websites for removing hate speech, misinformation, voter suppression, etc

Content moderation involves difficult trade-offs that we think are better resolved through the democratic process
- Mark Zuckerberg

Um, no, the First Amendment bars the government from making decisions about online speech

No, you can't just "leave it up to Congress"

I get the Zuckerberg desperately needs Republicans to stop screaming at him about "anti-conservative bias," but Facebook can no more outsource its editorial decisions about which speech to carry to the government than could The New York Times

Is it just me, or did Jack get a makeover between today's Republican-orchestrated circus and the last one?

He cleaned up nice!

Just hilarious to hear @LindseyGrahamSC keep trying to position himself as skeptical of government getting involved in content moderation when THE ENTIRE POINT OF THIS HEARING is to torment tech companies for removing awful speech that Republicans find useful: hate speech, etc

Nothing says "I don't understand content moderation at all" like repeatedly calling it "content modification," as @SenBlumenthal just did (three times)

Pro tip: #Section230 doesn't protect you if you "modify" content in way that makes it illegal

That's 💯 not what this is about

What this debate is really about: Republican want to discourage websites from moderating racism, bigotry generally, Holocaust denial, voter suppression, (most) foreign election interference, etc

We explained here in a letter debunking Senate GOP claims:
techfreedom.org/wp-content/upl…

A private right of action for people to sue websites over bias would be regulation by litigation
-@JohnCornyn 👏

But then he says #Section230 "delegates" control over speech to tech companies

Um, no, the First Amendment does that

230 merely protects those 1A rights...

The key to Republicans' confusion is this:
—Websites have exactly the same 1A as newspaper right to decide what speech to carry
—#Section230 does not expand the constitutional right to moderate content. It merely ensures that websites can resolve lawsuits quickly when sued

—Thus, #Section230 is somewhat like anti-SLAPP laws: it protects a constitutional right from being overwhelmed by the cost of litigating every case, which, at the scale of the Internet, would mean "death by ten thousand duck-bites"

Cornyn (citing Justice Brandeis in Whitney v. California (1927)): Why isn't the answer to bad speech more speech?

Um because that case involved THE GOVERNMENT and now we're talking about PRIVATE companies, and aren't Republican supposed to be the ones defending hate cakes etc?!?

.@SenMikeLee: FTC act bars unfair & deceptive trade practices... Both Twitter & Facebook represent that they're neutral [so let's sue them]

The FTC regulates ONLY commercial speech, not the exercise of editorial discretion

I explain in detail here:
gaidigitalreport.com/2020/10/04/sec…

#Section230 isn't what stops the FTC (or state AGs or PragerU) from suing websites for "deceiving" their users

The FIRST AMENDMENT does that: it has constrained consumer protection law from getting into such issues

Just as the Republican FTC in 2004 refused to pursue claims that Fox News had "deceived" its users by failing to deliver on its "Fair & Balanced" slogan

.@SenMikeLee now attacking Facebook & Twitter because their employees overwhelmingly donate to Democratic candidates

The reality is, ALL big companies and nearly all highly educated professions skew heavily Democratic

https://twitter.com/BerinSzoka/status/1326222076919877638

.@SenMikeLee: Do Facebook and Twitter have lists of the people they've deplatformed?

There IS such a list from 2016, one cited repeatedly by those claiming bias. That is is FULL of actual Nazis, near Nazis, and other alt-right lunatics

richardhanania.com/data

THAT is who we're talking about being censored here

If Richard Spencer is your idea of a "conservative," then, yeah, I guess Twitter has an anti-conservative (actually, anti-Nazi) bias

Cruz: Facebook and Twitter have a monopoly on the public discourse

How can two two companies have "A monopoly?!?"

Now, Cruz ranting about Democrats not standing up for free speech, attacking "totalitarian instinct" of big companies censoring dissent

Again, he's actually talking about removal of hate speech, misinformation, voter suppression, foreign election interference, etc, etc

Cruz: 230 is a subsidy for Big Tech "that nobody else gets"

Um, no, it applies equally to:
—ALL websites, large and small
—Websites of traditional media
—USERS of all websites, just like Trump invoked #Section230 to avoid being sued for retweeting defamatory conduct

Cruz's "were you acting as a publisher?!?" questions all completely miss the point of #Section230, which was to say that the publisher/distributor/whatever distinction is unworkable online and therefore would be abolished

He knows better. This is utterly dishonest preening.

"I understand that you have the Star Chamber power" says the guy (Cruz) who is (yet again) running his own Star Chamber as an elected Senator to play Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor of the Republican Inquisition, on unsupported allegations of anti-conservative bias

AMEN to @SenatorDurbin: Congress has better things to do during a pandemic than indulge Republican conspiracy theories about anti-conservative bias. Like, say, investigating death threats against *Republican* poll workers

Or maybe Lindsey Graham's meddling in the GA election?

Zuckerberg: the Internet needs its own regulatory framework because websites aren't like traditional media or telcos

Yeah, that's EXACTLY why Congress enacted #Section230, the law that made social media possible

.@SenSasse: I'm concerned about bias, but I'm skeptical that there's a regulatory fix that will make this better. I's odd that Republicans want to mess with #Section230 as Democrats are about to take the White House and as Dems talk about forcing websites to take down more speech

I can't wait to hear how Republicans flip-flop when Democrats haul Fox News and Sinclair in for hearings about their political bias

It's the same thing, folks

And no, you can't #Section230 eligibility on websites' surrender of editorial discretion

Sasse: You're moderating content based on subjective questions.

Yeah, which is precisely why the First Amendment protects content moderation decisions absolutely. So there's really nothing the government can do about this, and this entire hearing is offensive to the Constitution

If Facebook wants to publish more detailed reports on its content moderation practices, fine

But gov't can no more force websites to publish "transparency" reports about speech they take down than it could force newspapers to publish stats on which letters to the editor they run

Here we go... Hawley describing Facebook's internal workflow management/chat system as some kind of ongoing virtual Wannsee Conference to silence conservatives

Overall, which Senate Commerce Committee Republican is most outrageously dishonest about #Section230?

.@HawleyMO (literally shouting): We have evidence that Facebook tracks its own users across the web!

Yeah, bro. That's not some anti-conservative conspiracy. That's just how Internet advertising works

Klobuchar: Why has Facebook blocked researchers from collecting data on FB ads?!?

Zuckerberg: Because they were scraping data in ways that our FTC consent decree (re Cambridge Analytica) would not allow

Yup: be careful what you wish for in cracking down on "Big Tech"

Here we go again: @SenJoniErnst complaining that tech companies don't hire enough conservatives

Again, the employees of ALL large companies (except, basically, Walmart) are overwhelmingly Democratic

https://twitter.com/BerinSzoka/status/1326222076919877638

And it's not just big companies: educated professionals skew heavily Democratic

Anyway, when did it become OK for Republicans ("Defenders of Free Enterprise") to attack private companies based on the political affiliation of their employees?!?

https://twitter.com/BerinSzoka/status/1326226515328110602

At last, @maziehirono asks THE BIG question: Will Facebook & Twitter allow Trump to keep spewing misinformation, hate speech, etc when he's no longer a public official?

Zuckerberg: Trump will be subject to our Terms of Service like any other user

Dorsey: same

Everyone (sane):

.@SenJohnKennedy: Why don't you just let users say whatever they want short of harassment, incitement of violence, illegal content, etc?

So, basically, why don't you just turn into Gab, where anyone can celebrate racism or the Holocaust, spread anti-mask/vax lies, etc?

Kennedy: I'm not saying you're wrong by (moderating harmful content on your platforms) but that makes you a publisher, and that creates problems under #Section230

NO, IT DOESN'T! THE WHOLE POINT OF 230 IS THAT IT DOESN'T FRIGGING MATTER WHETHER YOU'RE A PUBLISHER OR NOT!

Blackburn ranting about totalitarian countries blacklisting people so they can't get jobs in the future and social media companies blacklist bar Trump admin appointees

This is literally the woman who, at the last hearing, asked Google if they'd fired someone who was mean to her