Part of a broader bill called the Communications Decency Act, it came to be known simply by its location: Section 230. So they hashed out a statute that gave online service providers broad latitude to host, distribute and moderate content posted by users without being held liable when they posted something illegal. Cox and Wyden worried the judgment would stifle the fledgling internet. Earlier that year, a libel judgment against Prodigy held that its attempt to police its forums made it responsible for users’ content. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) had a different concern. That consensus survived early battles over pornography, copyright infringement, breastfeeding photos and terrorist propaganda.īut as in so many realms of American society, the 2016 election marked the beginning of the end of that bipartisan comity.Ĭox and Rep. When the consumer internet was born in the mid-1990s, lawmakers in both parties shared a desire to see American tech firms thrive. How online forums set and enforce rules for what users can post wasn’t always so divisive. “The political pressures on content moderation have increased tremendously.”
“We’re approaching a pivotal moment for online speech,” said Daphne Keller, who directs the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center. 6, 2021, has reverberated as perhaps the single most divisive act of content moderation in internet history. Meanwhile, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is pushing to close a deal that would give him sole control of Twitter, whose decision to ban President Donald Trump after the attack on the U.S. Last month, a federal court upheld a Texas law that would prevent social media platforms from removing or limiting posts on the basis of political viewpoint. Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that accuses YouTube of abetting terrorism by recommending content from the Islamic State. In recent months, several flash points have brought this battle to the fore.
#Battle cry of freedom youtube free#
The right calls that censorship and demands the right to free speech. The left cries for content moderation to tamp down disinformation, racism and misogyny. What people can and can’t say online - and the role of Big Tech in making those calls - has emerged as a critical fault line in American politics. In May 2021, barely three months after it imposed the ban, Facebook backtracked: “In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts,” the company said, “we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made from our apps.” But others complained that the crackdowns squelched legitimate debate about the frustrating performance of public health authorities - a view that was partly vindicated when China’s lack of transparency prompted prominent scientists to declare the lab-leak theory “viable” and demand further investigation. To the Biden administration and the scientific establishment, Facebook’s efforts to rein in misinformation were too little, too late, given how its network had helped false and damaging claims to go viral in the first place. Among them: The claim that COVID was “man-made” and had leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.
Early last year, amid mounting criticism that social media was spreading disinformation about COVID-19, Facebook expanded an unprecedented campaign to police falsehoods by banning what it called “debunked claims” about the virus.
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