Thread by @normative

This SOUNDS like a libertarian-friendly approach to achieving conservative aims via a truth-in-advertising approach. But in practice this would be a disaster, requiring the government to judge which expressive acts are politically “biased.”

https://twitter.com/SenMikeLee/status/1336689751546597379

I’m a bit of a broken record on this point but: There just isn’t any way to disentangle the concept of “bias” from one’s own political perspective. “Bias” is only meaningful relative to accuracy, objectivity, or truth. What you think is biased depends on what you think is true.

Is YouTube biased if they remove videos alleging massive electoral fraud? They don’t think so; they think they’re countering objectively false disinformation, and that lies about elections or (say) medical treatments are more important to police than flat earth videos.

So are courts or (worse) some regulatory body going to decide whose conception of “bias” is correct in the context of these hotly contested political claims & judgments? It’s just totally unworkable.

Though realistically, it just won’t have any effect. I don’t think any platforms actually promise political neutrality in their terms of service currently, but if this legislation passed they’d all immediately amend their TOS to disclaim any such guarantee.

Maybe it’ll work as a short-term sop so Republicans can say they “did something” while effectively preserving the status quo. But not for very long.