Thread by @BerinSzoka

Another "Big Tech" hearing today (noon ET) with G, TW & FB CEOs

Dems will complain that tech companies don't moderate enough content and Republicans will say they're being "censored"

Both sides will attack 230, but the real issue is the First Amendment

energycommerce.house.gov/committee-acti…

Websites have the same First Amendment rights as parade organizers, newspapers or other media to exclude speech they find objectionable, however "unfair" their decisions may be

It's just not the government's job to second-guess those content moderation decisions

Republicans used to understand this. They spent 80 years attacking Fairness Doctrine mandates for broadcasting, yet are now demanding a Fairness Doctrine of their own

Here's Rep @CathyMcMorris Rodgers firmly rejecting such nonsense in late 2019

https://twitter.com/_/status/1184503142412627968

Sadly, @CathyMcMorris has done a complete 180

Now that she's Ranking Member on the E&C Committee, she's leading the charge to use the power of government to force websites not to take down content that helps the GOP

Read our take here:
techfreedom.org/wp-content/upl…

In a nutshell, Republicans say it's outrageous for the gov't to force broadcasters (licensed by gov't) to offer a right of reply to attacks on air, but also totally cool to force private websites (NOT state actors) to keep up hate speech, misinformation, incitement to violence &c

We've repeatedly debunked the pseudo-legal arguments Republicans make to justify their absurdly contorted positions. Here's the best place to start

https://twitter.com/_/status/1357069231188299781

Meanwhile, Democrats propose to amend #Section230 to force tech companies to cut off the flow of misinformation online, while also pressuring cable companies not to carry Fox, NewsMax & OANN

In some ways, this is just as offensive to the First Amendment, which protects the right of private media to decide whether to carry lawful speech, but with two key differences

1) Unlike the conspiracy theory about normal conservatives being "censored," misinformation is a very real problem with obvious consequences--most notably, the January 6 insurrection, fueled by 8+ months of QOP 💩 about the election being stolen

2) While the First Amendment gives websites an absolute right *not* to carry misinformation, hate speech, etc., it *might* allow Congress ban certain forms of extreme misinformation or to clarify how the standard for defining incitement should apply online

In short:
- What Republicans is flatly unconstitutional
- Instead of trying to force websites to take down content that is currently lawful, Democrats *should* be focused on what categories of speech Congress could make unlawful

In short, Republicans are crazy and Democrats are lazy

And neither really seem to care about the First Amendment

Writing a law to ban certain forms of misinformation (eg about elections) would NOT be easy.

In Alvarez (2012), the Court affirmed that the 1A protects even false speech

What room does this leave for new laws? Read scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles/121/

and arizonalawreview.org/resolving-the-…

It's one thing to ask judges to decide when to ban such speech directly

It's even more constitutionally problematic to deputize private websites to make such decisions at the scale of the Internet

This 1978 decision (affirmed by SCOTUS) is apt casetext.com/case/midwest-v…

The court said that cable operators couldn't be required to decide what constituted obscenity

That problem is FAR harder when we're talking about things like misinformation or hate speech, and when we're talking about billions of pieces of content

The best approach would be:
1) Craft narrowly tailored laws focused on the most egregious problems
2) Enforce them in court
3) Require websites to take down content that a court has determined to be unlawful

I am not a #Section230 absolutist. I would not object to a legal mandate for websites to take down content that a court has adjudged to be unlawful

What I object to is expecting websites to be judge, jury and executioner

Even though the courts allowed the FCC to regulate the fairness of of broadcasters' editorial judgments, they also recognized that broadcasters could not be "judicialized"

No less a conservative icon than Judge Robert Bork wrote this in 1983 casetext.com/case/loveday-v…

We cannot possibly require websites (which have the same 1A rights as newspapers) to adjudicate line-drawing in ways that broadcasters (which lack full 1A rights because they're licensed by the gov't) could not be expected to do

If Congress wants to get serious about problematic speech online, there is only one way out of today's current feedback loop of political theatre: create an independent commission of free speech lawyers and social media scholars to craft *narrow* legislation

There is simply no way anything constructive will ever come out of Congress. If legislation does somehow pass, it will doubtless be struck down in court, just as the CDA and COPA were

So, please, folks, stop rushing to "do something" that will simply waste years of litigation

Finally, a word about the two proposals in Zuckerberg's testimony, which are bound to greatly amplify the push to amend #Section230, just as Facebook's endorsement of SESTA put that law over the top
energycommerce.house.gov/sites/democrat…

First, Zuckerberg proposes to tie #Section230 immunity to meeting standards set by some unspecified independent body for how to identify and remove unlawful content

Let's start with the practical problem here. What Zuckberg is proposing is essentially the Digital Trust & Safety Partnership recently launched by leading tech companies to develop best practices for content moderation except doing something infinitely harder...

It was possible to get all major tech companies involved in DSTP precisely because the effort is focused on high-level issues of process, NOT the issue Zuckerberg is proposing become a condition of #Section230 immunity: whether a site is doing enough about unlawful content

What Zuckerberg is really proposing is that Congress outsource a de facto rulemaking to a private body minus any of the safeguards of administrative law

Make no mistake: the "standards" it develops would be the most online important regulations....

And compliance with them would be VERY far from voluntary: there is simply no way one could run a social media site at scale without the protections of #Section230

This is effectively no different from the original version of the EARN IT Act, where a working group led by the AG would have developed "best practices" that companies would have to follow to "earn" their #Section230 immunity.

Zuckerberg sweeps a lot of vital detail under the rug by just saying "Definitions of an adequate system could be proportionate to platform size and set by a third-party"

That may sound reassuring, but what does it really mean and, critically, who decides?!?

Having sat through many a multi-stakeholder process, I am highly skeptical that this one would ever produce workable "standards"

Or, more specifically, that whatever it produces would be declare adequate under whatever process the law creates for approving them

Because Zuckerberg is leaving out the key detail: there's no way any law Congress might pass would simply allow a private standards-setting body to come up with its own standards by consensus. Like the EARN IT Act, the gov't would ultimate have to decide whether to approve it

Knowing that you're not really working towards "consensus," as in the kind of multistakeholder process that has developed the standards that made today's Internet work changes the entire process: the whole thing is being done under durress

I'm not advocating for that, just saying it's inevitable, and that we shouldn't kid ourselves into believing that this will be a voluntary process, or even comparable to, say, the kind of standard setting that the film & video game industries have done for parental ratings

Yes, those were done under enormous pressure from the government, but they are at least independent efforts, and they're not directly tied to what amounts to a system of government licensure

Here, if you don't meet this "voluntary" standard, you lose your 230 protections and go out of business

So what we're talking about is equivalent to the FCC setting conditions to your broadcast license

As with EARN IT, if compliance with these standards is a thing you do, say, annually, that certification process is tantamount to licensure

Conversely, if the assessment is kept more "flexible," websites have a different problem: they can no longer resolve lawsuits with a simple motion to dismiss, and must instead bear the expense of discovery and maybe litigating a motion for summary judgment on Qs of fact

The once-and-done approach raises profound questions of outsourcing regulation to a private body with no clear safeguards

The case-by-case approach is problematic because it fundamentally breaks #Section230 by *greatly* increasing the cost of fighting lawsuits, which means websites will have an incentive to over-moderate. Again, recall the 8th Circuit's warning

Either way, since what we're talking about is which speech goes up and which doesn't, the First Amendment problems here are severe

Second, Zuckerberg tries to placate Republicans by endorsing their demands for regulation of content moderation. This is understandable, given the full-court press FB has been getting from the GOP for years

But it's also unconstitutional...

When Zuckerberg talks about "accountability and oversight" in content moderation, what he's really saying is that courts (and maybe also regulators) should get to second-guess a website's decision to disassociate itself from speech it finds objectionable

Again, no, the First Amendment will not permit this anymore than the government could scrutinize decisions a newspaper makes not to carry an op-ed or a parade organizer makes to bar certain signs

Read this thread:

https://twitter.com/_/status/1357069231188299781

Republicans insist that social media websites should be subject to suit if they don't live up to their promises of "neutrality" or "fairness" in content moderation

But consumer protection law has NEVER policed such subjective questions of opinion

Policies about what constitutes hate speech or misinformation are clearly non-commercial speech, totally unlike the kinds of objective statements of fact that the FTC enforces (nutrition labels. etc)

Read Section IV of our paper

https://twitter.com/_/status/1329057638533967873

Who knows what Zuckerberg means when he talks about the government ensuring "transparency" in content moderation, but what Republicans have demanded is detailed, "granular" disclosures about what is and isn't allowed and limits on how and how often these can be changed

The First Amendment bars websites from being compelled to change how they explain their content moderation policies
techfreedom.org/wp-content/upl…

I've written about all of this many times before, so will stop there

I'll continue livetweeting the hearing here

.@BobLatta (R-OH): tech companies are acting as the new "Little Brother," censoring speech at the direction of the actual Big Brother: government

If that were true, I'd agree, but the content moderation Rs complain about is clearly being done *voluntarily*

Websites aren't removing hate speech or misinformation or incitement to violence etc because Democratic lawmakers are asking them to (an inappropriate use of their bully pulpit) but because their users don't want to see it and every sane person blames them for it, esp advertisers

Fundamentally, social media sites are in the same business as newspapers: they don't want to carry content that their advertisers are uncomfortable having their own brands associated with

Websites have the same First Amendment right to disassociate from such content

.@RepGusBilirakis: don't forget the intent of the Communications Decency Act! Websites were supposed to clean up the Internet -- but also not clean it up too much (in ways that piss off Republicans)

Um, bro, unconstitutional. Ever heard of 𝑅𝑒𝑛𝑜. 𝑣 𝐴𝐶𝐿𝑈?

.@CathyMcMorris: I changed my mind about social media because... protect the children...

In 2019, she said "harmful speech… should be removed, regardless of the political leanings of the speaker or
the moderator”

But now she calls it "censorship" when social media banned Trump

Trump incited an insurrection that resulted in the death of five Americans (plus two more police suicides)

He was banned for doing enormous damage to our democracy. Yet @CathyMcMorris Rodgers doesn't think that's a valid reason for banning him.

Here, again, here are her comments at 2019 hearing, denouncing efforts to impose any kind of a Fairness Doctrine online

Yet now, she's demanding precisely what she denounced then: empowering the government to second-guess how private companies exercise their editorial discretion

https://twitter.com/_/status/1184503142412627968

Zuckerberg: Many people say social media site shouldn't have the power to silence leaders like Trump. I agree: we need gov't to develop rules...

Um, no. The gov't doesn't get to do that.

The First Amendment leaves it entirely to each private media site to decide whether it wants to help, for example, Trump undermine an election and incite a mob to storm the Capitol.

FB is just afraid of GOP criticism and wants to diffuse responsibility for doing the right thing

Again, *maybe* Congress could carefully craft a new law *requiring* Facebook to take down certain speech, but it can't compel you to take down lawful speech

That's up to Facebook to do or not to do as it sees fit

.@Jack Dorsey: If we woke up tomorrow and decided to stop moderating content, we'd wind up with a service that very few people and advertisers want to use. Enforcing policies is a business decision.

AMEN

In this excellent thread, @Daphnehk explains the implications of Facebook's endorsement of making #Section230 contingent on compliance on with "standards" developed by some unspecified "private" body

https://twitter.com/_/status/1375072209266376705

As you're listening to Republicans try to change the subject of today's hearing from misinformation to "censorship" (of people who spread misinformation, spew hate speech, etc), keep in mind that 11/22 of them voted against certifying a valid election based on Trump's 💩 claims

First, props to @RepKinzinger and @RepFredUpton, the two Republicans at today's hearing who voted for impeachment. They embody everything decent about a party that has lost its mind in recent years.

And partial credit to @CathyMcMorris Rodgers, the *only* House Republican who had announced plans to vote against certifying the election results, but changed her mind after 5 people died

But let's not forget: she had joined in gaslighting America about the election

Here are the 11 Republicans involved in today's hearings who voted against certifying the election:
1.Steve Scalise
2.Bill Johnson
3.Billy Long
4.Richard Hudson
5.Markwayne Mullin
6.Tim Walberg
7.Earl Carter
8.Jeff Duncan
9.Neal Dunn
10.Debbie Lesko
11.Greg Pence

If these people still have any moral authority to speak about any subject, that definitely does *not* include the subject of today's hearing: misinformation

Because THEY are the problem. And instead of holding them accountable for undermining an election, we're blaming tech.

More generally, think about what it says that HALF of the GOP Members involved in today's hearing refused to accept the clear results of the last election

And that only after the tragic events of January 6 did the new Ranking Member of the Committee back off of joining them

.@CathyMcMorris Rodgers is using suicide as a way to attack Big Tech companies for not doing enough about harmful content

Huh. I wonder what she thinks about the two Capitol Police Officers who killed themselves days after battling a deranged mob of lunatics incited by Trump

Again, in 2019, she said “harmful speech… should be removed, regardless of the political leanings of the speaker or the moderator."

Yet now, she's outraged that social media "censored" Trump only after he incited an insurrection that resulted in the deaths of 7 Americans

.@CathyMcMorris: You've studied extremism... Have your companies studied the mental health effects of your products on children?

She keeps changing the subject from the way Trump and his cultists have used media (new and old) to radicalize the Right into violent extremism

2 further thoughts what Zuckerberg has said about FB's proposed amendments to #Section230:

First, if "transparency" means regular reporting of how much content is moderated in specific categories, that's less constitutionally problematic than what Rs want: "granular" detail

But it's also not going to move the needle: Republicans won't be satisfied with anything less than forcing websites to justify why they removed specific pieces of content

Also query how narrowly or broadly these "categories" will be defined

More generally, does anyone really think the gov't could require newspapers to issue "transparency reports" about how they decide to run op-eds? Of course not. Not even as a condition of, say, PPP funding

Second, Zuckerberg keeps saying that the standards he's proposing won't apply to small websites, but what he actually said was "Definitions of an adequate system could be proportionate to platform size and set by a third-party"

That means SOME standard WOULD apply

Scalise: "Twitter censored the New York Post and we have a First Amendment... so you're no longer operating as a town square when you do that, you're a publisher"

🤦

- 1A limits gov't, not private companies
- The point of 230 is that websites can't be sued as publishers

Meanwhile, on Parler, this is (actually among the least awful examples of) what "conservatives" (actually White supremacists) are saying when they're not being "censored"

fReEdOm!

.@DorisMatsui: Why don't tech companies ban all uses of anti-Asian hashtags?

@Jack: Many of those tweets involve counter-speech *against* racism

Matsui: I'm sure you have algorithms that can tell the difference

Um, no, parsing meaning really is not that easy. #MagicalThinking

Proving my point:

@RepKinzinger: What are tech companies doing to counter radicalization?

Zuckerberg: we stopped recommending ALL civil or political groups

In other words, machines just aren't smart enough to tell the difference between "radicalization" and "normal" groups

Or, to the extent that machines could figure this out, Facebook is terrified of trying to parse the difference between, say, the Kiwanas and the Klan because they know Republicans will harangue them for "bias"

So they error on the side of ending a useful feature for all

A dominant theme at today's hearing: tech companies profit off of radicalization, misinformation, and bigotry

Just the opposite: they make money by selling ads, and advertisers are *extremely* protective of their brands.

Advertisers don't want their products shown next to awful (but lawful) speech, and face growing pressure not to support platforms that won't do enough to combat misinformation, hate speech, abuse, etc

Just look at Big Tech companies' earning statements and calls, which warn investors that concern among users and advertisers about the companies' not doing *enough* content moderation as a top threat to their revenues

Making precisely this point...

Zuckerberg: users don't want to see disinformation on our services and when they do, it hurts our long-term business prospects

The First Amendment bars government from pressuring websites to "clean up" lawful content, but market forces can & do

Deep thoughts from @USRepLong (in response to #Zuckerberg): "I don't know why people say 'attorney general' when they refer to former attorneys general, but 'former President Trump,' but that's another issue..."

Clear proof of tech's anti-conservative bias, eh?

Also, Long was one of 11 Republicans at today's hearing (50%) who voted to invalidate Electoral College votes for Biden, so... it's not clear whether he actually thinks Trump *is* the "former" president (or the current one)

Best tweet of the day: after @USRepLong asks each Big Tech CEO whether they understand the difference between "yes" and "no" (and then says he won a steak dinner in a bet with his staff)...

@Jack tweets this poll:

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1375152199433527296

.@RepMcNerney: We need an agency like the SEC to address these questions about algorithms and speech online

Meanwhile, the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law...") says no

Finally, we're having the "isn't your control over speech an #antitrust problem?!?" conversation

No, by definition, it isn't. Antitrust polices *conduct* that abuses market power, not editorial judgments ever, even by monopolies

Again, read this thread & our paper

https://twitter.com/_/status/1329057638533967873

And read Lorain Journal v. United States (1951): First Amendment permits an antitrust suit against a newspaper for refusing to carry ads from advertisers that didn't join in a boycott of the new radio station (but NOT for refusing ads on editorial grounds)
casetext.com/case/lorain-jo…

.@RepYvetteClarke: will Federated Learning of Cohorts (a technique for doing targeted advertising WITHOUT tracking users) stop discrimination?

Pichai: Google will ban discrimination using #FLoC just as it does now

But the key point here is more complicated...

What some civil rights groups seem to be asking is whether, as advertisers stop stop using third-party cookies (or fingerprinting) to track users, #FLoC can be engineered to stop all discrimination automatically

The answer is no...

Not a technologist, but as I understand it, #FLoC isn't a centralized system that can be engineered to control what everyone does with it. It will still be up to each ad tech company to police how advertisers use its product, and to prevent use of its tools for discrimination

.@RepWalberg to tech CEOs: Do you think the law should allow you to be the arbiters of truth, as #Section 230 does?

The law he's referring to is the First Amendment,* which, yes, leaves it to each private entity to make its own decisions about truth anything else it values

Also, after @RepWalberg complained that some Republican was censored when they announced their campaign, remember that Walberg was one of 11 Republicans at today's #BigTech hearing who voted against certifying Electoral College votes for Biden

So, yeah, "truth"...

And speaking of "misinformation," cue Republican ranting about "this crisis, this disaster at the southern border..."

#FakeCrisis

.@RepBuddyCarter (who voted to invalidate the 2020 election) demands that Big Tech help Republicans prevent "theft" of an Iowa House seat (which the R claims to have won by 6 out of 400,000 votes, but which the D they won if 22 discarded votes are counted)

#FalseEquivalency

After THREE HOURS, today's #BigTech hearing took a half-time break (😱)

Here's what we've learned thus far:

nothing

Yup, nothing.

I can't think of a single new thing said today, except for Facebook unconstitutional proposal to make #Section230 immunity contingent on compliance with some "best practice" for dealing monitoring and removing unlawful content

It's just a repeat of the usual talking points from both sides -- with the added hilarity of Republicans wringing their hands about "truth" and "abuse" online after voting to steal the 2020 election and insisting that Trump shouldn't have been banned for inciting an insurrection

Zuckerberg makes THE key point: yes, individual users may want to see more of content they like, including radicalization, but overall, users don't want to see what 💩, and advertisers definitely don't want to be associated with it, so FB's incentive is NOT to radicalize users

Since much of today's #BigTech hearing is about hate speech and discrimination online, I'd like to take a moment to celebrate the diversity of the GOP membership of the Consumer Protection & Commerce and Communications & Technology Subcommittees: all white but *two* women!

These are definitely the focus groups we should all want to hear from about the problem of misinformation being used to radicalize the American right to the point where it would try to steal an election (which half of these Congressmen voted for) and mount an insurrection

Zuckerberg: My proposed amendments to #Section230 should only apply to relatively large platforms

Again, NOT what his testimony says: "proportionate to" implies means obligations will scale up according to size for *all* sites, not that only large sites will face them

.@RepDarrenSoto: should Congress focus on define categories of content as illegal?

YES! It's up to Congress to craft laws that are narrow enough, and targeted at such clear problems, that they can pass muster under the First Amendment, INSTEAD of forcing tech companies to do so

If I were a Big Tech CEO, you'd better believe I would correct Member of Congress who mispronounced my name, as well as the names of other panelists

This really isn't so hard -- especially after FOUR hours of hearing these *three* names pronounced over and over (usually correctly)

.@GregPenceIN (R-IN) complains that public officials can't do enough to block abusive, discourteous comments posted by users on their official pages

Indeed! But does he understand that he just validated the need for more content moderation across the board?!?

Does @GregPenceIN not understand that other Republicans are trying to force tech services NOT to moderate the kind of content he's complaining about?!?

Amazing...

Also, the reason public officials can't take block content is because courts have held that their pages are limited public fora, and the First Amendment bars them (politicians) from blocking users

So it really is up to websites to enforce their community standards *more*

Rs insist that the First Amendment permits the gov't to supersede the editorial judgments of private websites because they're big and powerful

The Supreme Court rejected precisely the same arguments about true local media monopolies in blocking a Fairness Doctrine for newspapers

.@Armstrong_ND: Yes, #FLoC could help privacy, but Google is gaining market power! You're forcing advertisers to work with you!

Um, no. ALL browser makers are blocking third-party cookies (and other fingerprinting technologies) to protect users from being tracked

#FLoC is an alternative that would allow ALL advertisers to continue to conduct interest-based advertising *without* tracking, and it does *not* force them to work with Google. They could run their own ad campaigns, because it's a decentralized architecture

Again, that's precisely why #FLoC won't magically solve the problem of algorithmic discrimination: Google won't be able to block all ad discrimination; that will still be up to each advertiser

.@Armstrong_ND: Can privacy be a non-price term of competition?

An astute question. Yes, in principle, it could -- IF the plaintiff *prove* that consumers would be made objectively worse off by a merger or practice

What @Armstrong_ND didn't say, but what other Republicans have said and likely have in mind today, is whether "political diversity" can similarly be a non-price term of competition

The answer is no -- because it's inherently subjective, not objective

Ah, great, we've now moved to the "Hey, you're a tech CEO... So what should I say to my children [when I use the powerful parental control tools you give me to use for free] and they complain?!?"

What's next? "Could you just talk to them for me, please?"

The greatest overstatement of this 4.5 hour #BigTechhearing: "This Committee is ready to legislate to protect our children"

No, it isn't. The Committee clearly has no idea what the real issues are, how these services work, or what might be constitutional (unlike the CDA & COPA).

OMG NO

They're letting other members of the Committee (but who aren't on the *two* subcommittees hosting the hearing) ask questions?!? This thing could go on all night!

Did this really just happen?

@michaelcburgess (R-TX): Are you exercising editorial discretion?

Zuckerberg: No, we don't do anything like what newspapers do

Burgess: Yes, it seems to me that you do exercise editorial authority, which calls into question #Section230

OMG no...

Burgess is making MY argument: websites have a First Amendment right (indeed, the same First Amendment right as a newspaper) to decide what content they will/won't carry

We will quote his "you are exercising editorial discretion" when we sue to block the law he votes for 🤦

#Section230 isn't premised on the idea that websites aren't publishers. Just the opposite: the law says that they can't be *treated* as publishers (even if they are like publishers), that the distinction *doesn't matter*

WHY is this so hard for Republicans to understand?!?

In short, "but you're acting like a publisher" is an argument AGAINST the government meddling here, and it in no way undermines the application of #Section230

230 already addresses this issue: the (c)(1) immunity doesn't apply to sites that help *create* content

New rule: if you can't figure out that "pichai" isn't pronounced with a "k" (after 5 hours of hearing it aloud in a hearing you *should* have been listening to)... you don't get to write laws totally changing how the Internet works

I mean, "Szoka" is hard. "Pichai" isn't.

.@RepMcKinley; it's time to break up Big Tech the way we broke up AT&T in 1984

You mean that time the gov't broke up a *national* monopoly (that it created in 1913) to create 7 *regional* monopolies & only innovation (cable & wireless telephony) actually introduced competition?

Likewise, breaking up Big Tech won't "solve" any of these content moderation problems. Smaller sites will still face exactly the same problem but have a harder time keeping up with the scale of unlawful/awful content

Also, network effects will still drive user to big sites

.@RepMGriffith (R-VA): Why can't we just have a group like Underwriter's Labs police how content moderation work?

Um because that's about certifying the safety of electronic devices and this is about private companies making editorial decisions protected by the First Amendment?

Also, why does @RepMGriffith have a picture of @NunesCow on his wall?!?

Does @mom_nunes know about this?!?

So confused 😕

Oh boy, here we go... @DanCrenshawTX has decided to take a break from playing Special Forces to actually pretend to be lawmaker for 5 minutes

"You have more power over free speech than government does"

Um, duh. Because... the First Amendment....

He's right that Dems violate the First Amd. when pressuring websites to take down lawful speech, and that this is different from pressuring companies to take down *un*lawful speech

But he leaves out the part where Rs strongarm sites to keep up speech they find objectionable

After posturing as a fierce defender of the First Amendment, @DanCrenshawTX insists "we have to root out political bias on these platforms"

Nah, brah. The First Amendment bars you from meddling with private media's decisions (websites or Fox) about what speech they won't carry

.@RepDaveJoyce insists we need an appeals process for content moderation

OK, great, let's mandate that for how newspapers decide which op-eds to run, how Fox News books guests, how publishers decide which books to publish...

The First Amendment problem here should be obvious

.@RepDaveJoyce: "Shutting down a GOP Facebook page strikes me as an infringement of speech and that is normally protected in the public domain"

Um, what does that even mean?

These are private websites, which make their own decisions about what speech they will carry

And here's my essay (with @CorbinKBarthold) explaining why you can't use campaign finance law (or analogies to campaign finance law) to regulate content moderation, ensure fairness, consistency, neutrality, etc. etc
lawfareblog.com/no-florida-can…

@threadreaderapp unroll please