Recently, a friend commented on and shared an article on Facebook titled, “Climate Change Fears of Teen Activist Are Empirically Baseless.” A commenter responded, as if he was saying something dispositive about the shared article, with this:
“These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward conservative causes through story selection and/or political affiliation.”
True! Also true, however, is that there are sources that are moderately to strongly biased toward non-conservative causes… So, the ad hominem attack on the article is a classic sound and fury signifying nothing.
As if biased reporting on climate change were not a big enough problem, people in government agencies tend to be moderately to strongly biased toward causes that will lead to greater governmental power. Even if a scientist at NASA held a different view of the matter than the one NASA wanted to present (or was ordered to present by the president), speaking up against the climate change narrative would likely be hazardous to her career. (The same is true of professors at universities.) Moreover, many, if not almost all scientists want their research to be funded and their reports published, and some work is more likely to be funded and published than other work. Whether their work gets noticed depends on the receptivity of biased news outlets. Diogenes would have fared just poorly had he changed his search to a disinterested man. When someone who has a stake in the outcome of her assertion professes something to be true, skepticism is warranted.
Highly honest, smart, and educated climatologists disagree about the extent, if any, to which humans are affecting climate, how big the problem is, and whether elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations will do more harm than good or vice versa. Even if there were a consensus of climate scientists on all three of those issues (which there is not[i]) a consensus by scientists about a non-falsifiable claim is not proof the claim is true. Neither is a consensus considered to be scientific by respectable scientists. As Nobel laureate physicist Richard Fineman put it, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”[ii] A belief in the edicts of experts might, on occasion, happen to be valid, but a belief is not scientific.
In its efforts to catastrophize the issue (to increase the importance of international organizations?), the IPCC’s first climate change report in 1990 predicted a 3° per decade rise in global temperature. The IPCC relied on scientific studies, including NASA’s (the source upon which the Facebook responder relied). “Measurements” of how much the temperature has increased over the three decades since 1990 are around 1.3° per decade. Skepticism about IPCC’s motives and its summary of reports (many claim that the actual report is vastly more scientific (circumspect and fair) than the summary written for public and politician consumption and use. There are strong reasons to be skeptical of the IPCC and its reports.
Both global warming and global cooling create problems. On balance, however, the problems of global cooling are far more and more serious than those of global warming. “The NASA Earth Observatory notes three particularly cold intervals: one beginning about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850, all separated by intervals of slight warming.” Humans, of course, played no significant role in bringing on or recovering from the Little Ice Age. Because no one fully understands why those cycles occur or their exact periodicity, the possibility (probability?) that the Earth is on the verge of another Little Ice Age cannot be reasonably ruled out, i.e., no one knows that we will not soon need every extra degree of warming we can muster. Because increasing global temperatures significantly will take a long time, if we will need more heat, the last thing we should do is to spend resources to slow warming.
Humans constantly confront a Pandora’s box of problems (and always will, no matter how many problems are solved). Climate change may very well be one of them. However, to address a problem, resources must be devoted to it. Resources spent on one problem are not available to be spent on other problems. If the goal is to leave our grandchildren a better world, getting the prioritization of the most efficacious use of resources is essential, i.e., getting the biggest bangs for each buck must be the goal.[iii]
Science has much to say about problems confronting humans, how much addressing each problem might cost, and the probability that spending resources on a problem will mitigate the problem. Science has essentially nothing to say about how the multiple conflicting values implicated by a massive reallocation of resources should be weighted in prioritization of multiple catastrophic problems.
Consequently, the prioritization of priorities is ultimately a moral question. Science is of essentially no use concerning what is and is not moral, much less the weighting of various moral values. Sadly, however, philosophers must rely on scientific studies (about which much skepticism is warranted) to set moral priorities. Complicating matters, philosophers do not agree concerning the prioritization of various moral values.
For climatologists to demand that resources be spent on meteorological problems (protecting and promoting the importance of their work) “to protect our grandchildren’s future,” is, at a minimum, self-serving.
Given the above-described problems with doing something about AGW, it is irresponsible for a non-climatologists (1) not to be skeptical of AGW claims and the prudence of attempting its proposed remedies, or (2) to demand, without a comprehensive understanding of all the issues involved and the uncertainty of good results, that humans devote massive amounts of our scarce resources to global warming efforts and away from other problems that have higher chances of improving the lives of our grandchildren.
As sorted out in “Free Speech and Big Tech – The Conundrum,” Big Tech taking upon itself the role of deciding what speech is to be heard and not heard over the preeminent modern means of communication is so damaging to human rights and flourishing, all options should be on the table, carefully examined, and subjected to searing debate to tease out a policy that has a high probability of doing more good than harm.” But, as sorted out in “Free Speech and Big Tech – How To Make Things Worse,” permitting the government to moderate what speech would make matters worse. What to do?
As is typically the case when addressing complex social/economic/legal issues, there are no solutions[i] to this problem; there are only trade-offs. Whatever is done to mitigate the infringement on speech made possible by Section 230, Big Tech’s ability to provide its good stuff to society will be diminished. Although Section 230 hints that it will deliver platform neutrality, immunity is not conditioned on neutrality.[ii] Therefore, the goal should be to change existing law (either through legislation or judicial determination that aspects of Section 230 are unconstitutional) as little as possible, but as much as necessary to break the pact (Section 230) between politicians and Big Tech that results in the infringement of speech which the Big Tech-Government Complex determines to be detrimental to their continued aggregations of mutually beneficial power. Because free speech is so essential to human flourishing, doing nothing to address the extant infringement on free speech by the Big Tech-Government Complex should not be an option.
The stated purposes and most of the language of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act are sound. In particular, “The Internet and other interactive computer services offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity,” and “to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation” are were accurate and consistent with the Enlightenment ideas. Permitting Big Tech to block or filter content that is “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, [or] harassing,” conflicts little, if any with The Enlightenment ideas—so long as Big Tech does not (1) distort the plain meaning of the words such that Big Tech uses its interpretations of those words to continue with its blocking and filtering of political/social/cultural/scientific ideas that are not simpatico with Big Tech’s biased preferences, or (2) block/filter the obscene, lewd, etc. language of disfavored speakers and not block/filter similar content of favored speakers.
If Big Tech distorts the plain meaning of the words, “obscene, lewd,” etc. or selectively blocked content, Big Tech would not be providing “a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity” and would be harmfully infringing on free speech which it and the government want to suppress. More important, if Big Tech were to do that, it would be publishing curated news and opinions just as newspapers and magazines do, i.e., it would be a publisher. However, unless Section 230 is changed, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service [Big Tech] shall be treated as the publisher.”
Note that Section 230 grants immunity from publishing liability to Big Tech when it curates content on its platforms to suppress content it deems objectionable for any reason or no reason while it denies such immunity to non-Big Tech publishers who are similarly curating similar content on their platforms. Such a discriminatory application of the law is a violation of the right to equal protection of the law. That portion of Section 230 that denies equal protection should be struck down as unconstitutional, or changed.
Amending Section 230 would be preferable to judicially striking the “otherwise objectionable” language in Section 230. If all defenses for providers of neutral platforms on which users might post defamation were struck down, operating neutral platforms would likely be untenable—which would be a travesty. Also, striking down all immunity would not preserve the valuable distinction between publishers and neutral platform providers, which distinction is essential to a proper balance between the free exchange of ideas (humans’ primary means of finding truth and wisdom) and protecting the rights of individuals not to be defamed. Only legislation could strike a reasonable balance between these conflicting values.
Legislation could repeal immunity concerning “otherwise objectionable” speech and grant to Big Tech an affirmative defense to defamation claims. With such a law, Big Tech defendants would be entitled to a directed verdict if, in a contested pretrial hearing, the defendant can convince a judge that its algorithms or other means of curating content on its platform do not discriminate for or against speech concerning any political, social, cultural, or scientific matter. The trial court’s findings would be subject to appellate review.
The standard of proof for the preliminary hearing should be no less than “by a preponderance of the evidence.” However, Congress should monitor the outcomes of such trials and make periodic assessments as to whether the evidentiary standard is achieving an acceptable level of uninfringed speech. If Congress finds that such level is not being achieved, the standard of proof should be raised to “beyond a reasonable doubt.” If, however, speech remains too infringed, further measures will be required to preserve free speech.
Before we sort out what to do about Big Tech’s assaults on free speech, let’s examine the special treatment Congress granted to Big Tech, which treatment enabled it to infringe so broadly on free speech and sort out the implications and consequences of that legislation.
To get a clear picture of the situation, one must first recognize that people who publish slanderous or libelous words (“defame”) have committed a tort against the person(s) defamed are liable for damages caused by their tort. Publishers of such defamation are liable as a joint participant in the defamation.
When Big Tech came up with the idea of creating platforms on which users would post comments, Big Tech executives knew (1) their platforms would facilitate the propagation of much defamation by users, and (2) they would face huge, potentially untenable, liabilities if they were to be held responsible for the defamation posted on their platforms by users.
Before the internet, the established law was: “Distributors, such as booksellers, newsvendors, and libraries, merely distribute content and hence bear liability only upon a showing of knowledge or negligence. Common carriers, such as telephone companies, transmit information mechanically with no opportunity to review its content. Therefore, common carriers are not liable for the transfer of harmful data.”[i] In 1991 a court had held that Compuserve[ii] was a distributor rather than a publisher of content, i.e., not liable for defamation posted by users. On May 24, 1995, however, a New York Supreme Court ruled that “Prodigy was liable as the publisher of the content created by its users because it exercised editorial control over the messages on their bulletin boards in three ways: 1) by posting Content Guidelines for users, 2) by enforcing those guidelines with “Board Leaders,” and 3) by utilizing screening software designed to remove offensive language.”[iii] In response, Big Tech, that was doing things identical or similar to what Prodigy had been held liable for, ramped up lobbying efforts to obtain a federal law shielding Big Tech from publisher liability. By that time, Big Tech was in a position to greatly affect what was heard or said about Representatives and Senators. Big Tech’s lobbying efforts paid off in less than nine months.[iv]
Big Tech’s argument to Congress (at least for public consumption—more on this below) to justify a liability shield for content published on their platforms by users was that, unlike publishers who pick and choose what to publish (thereby being directly involved in the act of publishing the defamation), Big Tech, subject to a few, reasonably objective and appropriate exceptions, would not be involved curating or filtering what was published by users. Their platforms were to be open public forums available to all.
A necessary and proper role of democratic-republican governments is to ensure that public forums exist. Cass Sunstein put it this way, “The idea (the “Public Forum Doctrine”[v]) is, in addition to saying the government can’t censor speech of which it disapproves, it has to maintain spaces open for expressive activity. Parks and streets; and this is a historically-based idea, that streets and parks have been open for expressive activity. Supreme Court has actually said that’s part of what free speech tradition requires. And that’s important because it gives us an opportunity, if we want to use the streets, to have access to people with whom we have a beef–so, we can protest.”[vi] Consequently, it was appropriate and beneficial to the public for Congress to enable Big Tech to deliver on the promise of the greatest and most effective and unbiased forum for free speech humans have ever experienced. Adopting a law that, in effect, would accomplish approximately the opposite of a neutral forum open to all (and putting their interests ahead of the public’s interest in free speech in the process), however, was a betrayal of the American people.
The 1996 law, 47 U.S. Code § 230. Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material (“Section 230”) codified the betrayal. This law is startlingly short but directly enabled the unfathomably long list of Big Tech’s destructive abuses of blocking and filtering powers. Amending Section 230 could be a means to address the Big Tech problem. Sorting out the contrast between what the law proclaimed it would do and what it did is essential to understanding the issues involved.[vii]
The findings of Section 230 were reasonably accurate—in 1996:
(a) Findings The Congress finds the following:
(1) The rapidly developing array of Internet and other interactive computer services available to individual Americans represent an extraordinary advance in the availability of educational and informational resources to our citizens.
(2) These services offer users a great degree of control over the information that they receive, as well as the potential for even greater control in the future as technology develops.
(3) The Internet and other interactive computer services offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity.
(4) The Internet and other interactive computer services have flourished, to the benefit of all Americans, with a minimum of government regulation.
(5) Increasingly Americans are relying on interactive media for a variety of political, educational, cultural, and entertainment services.
The finding, “(2) These services offer users a great degree of control over the information that they receive, as well as the potential for even greater control in the future as technology develops” could not be found today—after more than 20 years the law’s consequences, quite the opposite. As Big Tech has honed its algorithms, finding the facts/truth about something is easy only if the facts/truth comport with the biases of Big Tech. Facts/truth that do not so comport crop up, if at all, after many pages of search results comprised of debunking, biased “fact checks,” counter-takes, and ridicule of the searched proposition, while the most effective critics of Big Tech’s biased “facts/truth” are suppressed, ridiculed, demonetized, and/or de-platformed.
Proof that Big Tech designs their algorithms to serve up what Big Tech leftists want users to see rather than give “users a great degree of control over the information that they receive” is in prior posts in this series. In Douglas Murray’s insightful new book, “The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity,” another way to make the point glaringly obvious was presented. Take a look at these two screenshots of Google searches that I took on 10/9/19.
The first search was for images of “straight white couples.” You will see that only 16 of the first 36 images presented were of possibly straight white couples. Six of that 16, however, were of a white couple who lost a court battle seeking equal treatment under the law for straight couples, most with controversial protest signs behind them. (Is that what typically comes to mind when you think of straight white couples?). So, only 11 of 36 different examples of straight white couples were presented. Worse, only four of the 36 results were of normal, reasonably happy, white couples. The second search was for “straight black couples.” Compared to the search for straight white couples, the search for straight black couples produced twice as many different examples of straight black couples. Moreover, 15 (as opposed to only four for whites) of the examples were of normal, reasonably happy, black couples. Note also, that when searching for “straight white couples,” Google took it upon itself to eliminate results that were limited to “straight” white couples, but did not do so for black couples. Obviously, according to Google’s biases, being a happy straight black couple is OK, but being a happy straight white couple is not.
Based on the examples given in Murray’s book, it appears that the results Google presents now have been tamed down after his book was published. Little doubt, Google will return to its more aggressive “nudging” when the hullabaloo of the book wears off. By reporting that Google’s search results in non-Western foreign countries evince none of the shenanigans described above proves that Google can tweak its algorithms to give “users a great degree of control over the information that they receive,” but chooses not to do so in Western countries.
As if the above was not bad enough, the following screenshot of Google results for “straight white couples” leaves no doubt about what Google executives want you to think about straight white couples and the lengths to which they will go to get you and everyone else to think it as Google executives do. The below image is an example of groupthink and attempted brain-washing of the highest and most evil order. A free society cannot allow this to go on for much longer.
If “(3) The Internet and other interactive computer services offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse…” was true before Section 230’s adoption, it has not been true after. Big Tech has been and is shutting down as much diversity of political thought as rapidly as Big Tech believes it can, which is a great deal. The more they have done, the more it becomes unnoteworthy, and the more they can do without effective hue and cry.
It is truer now than in 1996 that “(5) Increasingly Americans are relying on interactive media for a variety of political, educational, cultural, and entertainment services.” That is why it is so important that Congress undo the damage that Section 230 enabled Big Tech to inflict.
The policies Congress was trying to implement were laudable:
(b)Policy It is the policy of the United States—
(1) to promote the continued development of the Internet and other interactive computer services and other interactive media;
(2) to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation;
(3) to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families, and schools who use the Internet and other interactive computer services;
(4) to remove disincentives for the development and utilization of blocking and filtering technologies that empower parents to restrict their children’s access to objectionable or inappropriate online material; and
(5) to ensure vigorous enforcement of Federal criminal laws to deter and punish trafficking in obscenity, stalking, and harassment by means of computer.
If only the laudable stated policy objectives had been sincere.
Note that the removal of the “disincentives for the development and utilization of blocking and filtering technologies that empower parents to restrict their children’s access to objectionable or inappropriate online material” has not worked out as advertised. Though many blocking and filtering technologies are thankfully now available to parents, Big Tech is using blocking and filtering technologies to achieve other ends, i.e., to restrict, bury deep in search results, and eliminate access by adults to content Big Tech believes, in its own, arrogant, biased, and uncircumspect opinion, to be objectionable. To defend itself against criticism of that practice, Big Tech testifies that what it is doing is necessary to keep out of search results and platform posts what essentially everyone believes should not be in our K-12 school libraries. Because Big Tech is fully capable of producing multiple search engines equivalent to movie ratings (G, GP, GP-13, R, M, etc.) to overcome the stated obstacle to real free speech in the public forum, this defense is merely a smokescreen for their treatment adults as their who must be indoctrinated (propagandized) in the ideologies approved by the Big Tech-Government Complex. That is precisely the opposite of achieving “a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity” for adults while providing “technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families, and schools who use the Internet and other interactive computer services.” They could do both, but they falsely proclaim that Big Tech is not capable of delivering on the policies Section 230 purports to deliver. In practice, the language of the “Findings” and the “Policies” of Section are false advertising to provide cover for technologies and powers that enable Big Tech to coordinate with the federal government to enhance the powers of both.
The protections the law created were a mixed bag:
(c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material
(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
(2) Civil Liability No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
(B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph.
To divine in 1996 that all Big Tech executives will always be “Good Samaritans” in the use of blocking and screening powers granted to them by Section 230 was both naively presumptuous,[viii] a dereliction of duty, and a violation of their oaths of office. Congresspeople could have been responsible had they defined in the law what Big Tech had to do and what standards they had to meet to avail themselves of immunities a Good Samaritan would deserve, but, as you can see from the text, they did not. On the contrary, they granted blanket immunity, i.e., they, in effect, deemed Big Tech executives to be “Good Samaritans” regardless of their future conduct. As it turned out, far from being Good Samaritans, Big Tech executives now play the role of priests who pass by on the far side of the road when they see a non-leftist naked, bruised, and abandoned on the internet highway (unlike the priests of the Bible, however, the Big Tech priests, at a minimum, appear to sneer at and often smear the abandoned soul as they pass)—all with, IMO, solemn perjurious denials and arrogant impunity.
The coup de gras of the betrayal is in subsection (c)(2)(A): “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of— (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable…” [Emphasis added.]
This subsection appears to be specifying the few, reasonably objective, and appropriate authorizations to block or filter user content that a responsible Congress would impose on people who seek immunity from otherwise established law. Given that a court can be called upon to determine whether the platform provider was acting in good faith when blocking or filtering “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or excessively violent” content, this immunity is unobjectionable. A reasonable exception could be taken to the grant to Big Tech the power to determine what is “harassing,” but that grant is not blatantly objectionable. What is blatantly objectionable is the unreasonable delegation of the functional equivalent of governmental power to block “otherwise objectionable” content and effectively placing Big Tech’s blocking and filtering power beyond the review of the courts. Adding “otherwise objectionable” to the list of items permitted to be blocked renders all the previously listed standards superfluous, window dressing for the delegation of abusive power, mere feigns for the knockout punch to people’s natural right to free speech.
The “the functional equivalent of governmental power” claim is founded on the mutuality of interests between government functionaries and Big Tech. The Congresspeople who enacted the law knew that Big Tech executives, like they, are unsympathetic to (or, at a minimum were in a conflict of interest with) the Constitutional principle of “limited government.” People in power typically want unlimited power and Big Tech wanted a grant of immunity to exercise powers that Congress did and could not exercise itself. (Whether Congress can delegate a power it does not have is an interesting constitutional question that will not be sorted out here). Consequently, Congresspeople knew that Big Tech executives would use any blocking and filtering immunity delegated to them to promote posts that support Congress freeing itself from limitations and squelch contrary posts. Consequently, Section 230 was an undermining of the Constitution’s purpose of securing people’s natural rights, which violates their oath of office.
Passing Section 230 created the near-perfect, “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours” arrangement, with each party having the power to do great damage to the other if they stopped scratching. In other words, to maintain the mutually beneficial arrangement, Big Tech must either infringe on speech in the dominant modern public forum in a way that suits Congress so as not to loses the favors of Section 230, and Congress must to either ensure that the government does not prevent Big Tech from doing what it wants to do, or Big Tech will adjust the filters so as to wreak havoc on political careers. The especially delicious icing on this corrupt cake was that by granting such a valuable right to Big Tech, Congress enabled Big Tech to make enough money to thrive even after it delivers luxurious scratches to the backs of Congresspeople.
The phrases, “effectively beyond the review of the courts is the power to block or filter content that Big Tech believes, in good faith, is, in some way objectionable to Big Tech,” refers to the fact that the phrase “otherwise objectionable” in Section 230 is not a standard. Objectionable to whom? Is 66/100% objectionable (i.e., 99 and 44/100% pure/unobjectionable) enough to block speech? Is something objectionable to any madcap moderator sufficient to block, no matter how unfounded, irrational, or biased the objection? When the intent is to grant unlimited power to a third party to do one’s bidding in the public square, unconstitutional vagueness will do the trick.
With the above context in mind, we are in a position to sort out “What to do.” We’ll do that next.
[vii] The law is comprised of five subsections (a) – (e). Because they are irrelevant to this post, discussions of subsections (d) and (e) will be omitted.
As described earlier in this series,[i] major social media companies, Google/YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. (“Big Tech”) infringe on the free speech of people whose views are not in sink with the ideology of the members of Big Tech’s top brass. That the members of Big Tech companies’ top brass are ideologically simpatico is conceded even by left-leaning think tanks. For example, a Brookings report said, “We know that an overwhelming majority of technology entrepreneurs subscribe to a liberal ideology. Despite the claims by companies such as Google, I believe that political biases affect how these companies operate… Empirical evidence support this intuition; By analyzing a dataset consisting of 10.1 million U.S. Facebook users, a 2014 study demonstrated that liberal users are less likely than their conservative counterparts to get exposed to news content that oppose their political views. Another analysis of Yahoo! search queries concluded that ‘more right-leaning a query it is, the more negative sentiments can be found in its search results.’”[ii] The Washington Post confirms that Big Tech discriminates against non-leftists.[iii]/ As if that were not enough proof, Mark Zuckerburg was caught saying, “It’s just that breaking up these companies, whether it’s Facebook or Google or Amazon, is not actually going to solve the issues. And, you know, it doesn’t make election interference less likely. It makes it more likely because now the companies can’t coordinate and work together.”[iv]
As explained in the first two blogs in this series, [v] Big Tech’s selective suppression of free speech is “a big problem.” (Big Tech’s services create other serious problems, e.g., psychiatric problems for individuals,[vi] societal problems,[vii] and have increased the pace at which the cavern between competing ideologies widens, which rends society’s cohesion. All and each of these problems could be reasons to take governmental action to address them, but this series is focused exclusively on the biggest of Big Tech’s negative effects, infringement of free speech.)
While the negative effects of Big Tech’s infringement of free speech (and other domains) are huge, so are Big Tech’s positive effects in many domains. Big Tech provides incomprehensibly fantastic and desirable services. Although productivity increases attributable to information technology have been hard to find or quantify,[viii] the fact that Big Tech’s services are used/consumed in massive quantities is strong evidence that consumers find Big Tech’s services to be very valuable, i.e., are effective means by which people invent and produce things and pursue happiness. Consequently, it is reasonable to conclude that Big Tech deserves significant credit for increases in both productivity and happiness compared to what would have occurred without their services.
So, Big Tech creates huge positive and huge negative effects. We tinker with Big Tech at our peril. However, it is more perilous not to infringe upon Big Tech’s suppression of free speech. However, the extent to which regulations will reduce Big Tech’s ability to retain or increase the positive consequences of its services if Big Tech’s suppression of free speech is suppressed is an open question, but it could very seriously reduce the value of Big Tech’s services. Therein lies a conundrum, i.e., we are damned if we do suppress Big Tech’s suppression of free speech and damned if we don’t. Making matters more complicated, transferring to the government the power to control what speech should be suppressed or promoted is a surefire way to make matters worse.[ix]
Effectively addressing the huge problems Big Tech’s suppression of free speech is creating will not be easy, especially if we demand, as we should, that the policy not undermine our constitutional values. Nevertheless, Big Tech’s negative effects on free speech are so damaging to societies’ ability to enable human flourishing is so overwhelming, all options should be carefully examined and subjected to searing debate to tease out a policy that has a high probability of doing more good than harm.
The biggest hurdles to overcome concerning the regulation of Big Tech’s suppression of free speech are constitutional. The Constitution prohibits governments from infringing upon the rights of American citizens (a) to utter and publish their speech,[x] (b) to assemble peaceably with others (e.g., via a corporation) to exercise their rights as they please (e.g., to achieve political objectives), and (c) to not be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.[xi] (Note, however, uttering or publishing words to commit a crime or a tort is not the exercise of free speech.[xii])
Big Tech companies are formed by citizens who have assembled with others to exercise their constitutional rights to speak and create portals to facilitate free speech—among other things. Consequently, Big Tech companies, like other publishers, have the constitutional right to publish whatever they want.
On the other hand, Big Tech’s ability to provide the goods and services of search and social media that Americans have grown to love if it were subject to criminal and tort liability like publishers would be severely curtailed. Publishers of speech are jointly and severally liable with the authors of criminal or defamatory content. [Big Tech was granted immunity from such liability in 1996.[xiii] More on this in later posts.] Big Tech could not survive in the form we now know it (could not provide as many positive societal effects) if it were made liable for the criminal and defamatory content that populates its search results and feeds. The resulting tidal wave of lawsuits would vastly weaken them, perhaps to extinction or uselessness.
Consequently, effectively addressing the problem without undermining America’s core principles will be very hard. Telling private companies what they can and cannot do falsely presumes that regulators will selflessly prescribe what they believe is in the best interest of society and knows enough to determine what is in the best interest of society. Regulation is fraught with negative consequences (some intended, some unanticipated), a corruption factory, and is often unconstitutional. All too often, regulations exacerbate the problem they intend to solve.[xiv]
George Gilder has predicted that cloud computing, upon which Big Tech currently relies to do its good and evil, will soon become a thing of the past, i.e., that we don’t need to do anything about Big Tech’s abuses.[xv] On the chance that Gilder’s prediction will not get the job done, let’s sort out what might be done in the next blog.
[xii] The right to free speech is the right to express ideas, no matter how mean, despicable, offensive, fallacious or untenable an idea is. That right does not mean that one is free to say anything with impunity. One can be sued if she uses speech to commit a tort. For example, yelling fire in a crowded theater for the purpose of causing a stampede that will injure people, inciting violence, and defaming people (slander or libel) are not considered to be an expression of an idea, “speech.” They are wrongful acts against others, i.e., torts. Publishing tortious words of others is also a tort.
Torts, however, are not crimes. A tort is a civil wrong that causes a claimant to suffer loss or harm resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act. The Constitution places limitations on what federal and state governments can do but it does not place limits on what people acting in non-governmental capacities can do.
If “(3) The Internet and other interactive computer services offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse…” was true before Section 230’s adoption, it has not been true after. Big Tech has been and is shutting down as much diversity of political thought as rapidly as Big Tech believes it can, which is a great deal. The more they have done, the more it becomes unnoteworthy, and the more they can do without effective hue and cry.