When I read in the article:
> the EARN IT Act would, if passed, pare back online service providers’ broad immunity under a federal law called Section 230, exposing them to civil lawsuits and state-level criminal charges for the child sexual abuse material (CSAM) posted by their users.
I assumed it was reclassifying social media companies, which would have broad implications, under the stated purpose of CSAM. I wanted to provide background on why 230 should be changed, not on the content of EARN IT. But I agree it conflates two separate things.
Here is the bill for anyone else that wants to read it.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6544...
How would reworking Section 230 fix this? Most of that information isn't punishable by the federal government, it falls under first amendment protections.
A lot of the most dangerous speech online is protected speech, the exclusions here like libel or incitement to violence are very narrow. For better or worse, the government can't punish people over saying that vaccines are dangerous. The only entities that can legally crack down on that information are the private entities that control their own platforms.
I often find in critiques of Section 230 that people have (for lack of a better word) an optimistic view of what the government can and can't do in regards to speech. Remember that a lot of the TV content from stations like Fox News are not covered by Section 230, and they're still legal. If the government had the ability to shut that misinformation down, why would those networks still be operating today? Even just regulations on how sorting algorithms work for social media are not certain to pass a Supreme Court challenge.
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You link to the FCC rules on broadcasting, here's what they state:
> FCC rules specifically say that the "public harm must begin immediately, and cause direct and actual damage to property or to the health or safety of the general public, or diversion of law enforcement or other public health and safety authorities from their duties."
Covid misinformation is obviously bad and harmful, it has obviously made the pandemic worse and people have died because of it. Covid misinformation also doesn't rise to the standard that the FCC sets above; the Supreme Court has ruled multiple times that "immediate" harm is a pretty narrow category, and that causing "direct and actual damage" is also a kind of high bar to clear. The reality is that even if the government got rid of Section 230, it couldn't ban vaccine misinformation from Facebook. At best, it could impose large liabilities that made Facebook very nervous about having unvetted speech of any kind, as well as making it dangerous for any competitors or smaller companies to try and compete without a large legal team backing them up -- in other words, exactly the chilling effects and market consequences that people warn about whenever these bills come up.
I want to provide some background on section 230 which the EARN IT act proposes to amend. I was against regulating social media companies, then I researched and wrote a paper on misinformation and changed my opinion on whether or not any policy action should be taken. I'm not saying the EARN IT act is correct (Edit: It's not), but here are some excerpts with sources on why I believe Section 230 should be amended in some way. I hope it makes more clear the reasons people want to change section 230.
Social media companies currently enjoy protections from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. For reference, Myspace was launched in 2003. Section 230 allows social media companies to be classified as interactive computer services and not information content providers (Gallo, 2021). Due to this designation, social media companies are not responsible for the content they distribute. Even media companies in America are still held responsible for libel or false information designed to incite immediate violence or public harm (FCC, 2021) which social media companies are not. The media is still provided many freedoms guaranteed by our constitution while being held responsible for gross negligence.
Social media companies do not adequately moderate the content they promote to their users, allowing members of society to be presented misinformation by domestic and foreign actors resulting in polarization, the propagation of false facts, and the loss of faith in our democratic electoral process. Social media algorithms, motivated by financial gains, promote divisive content and have little incentive to prevent the distribution of false information. This false, divisive information comes from internal actors, such as those who want to discredit climate change and COVID facts. It also comes from external actors, such as Russia, who want to destabilize our democratic systems and influence our policy choices in their best interest.
For example, YouTube shared videos containing COVID-19 misinformation 20 million times, generating 71 million reactions in eight months (Gallo, 2021). Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA) is a private organization funded by a close confidant of Putin (Bowen, 2021). Eighty thousand posts were made on Facebook by IRA-controlled accounts in two years, reaching 126 million users. The IRA even organized political rallies in the United States through these accounts (Mueller, 2019). Intelligence services have determined that Russia uses its cyber teams to "undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process," as Russia's influence operations demonstrated in the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton (Sayler, 2021).
I'm not saying that social media companies should be held to the same standard as content creators or the media, or that the EARN IT act is right. I haven't looked at the implications of that. However, the current law is outdated and something needs to change the incentives of social media companies to prevent these externalities (influencing elections, misinformation, etc) from effecting our population.
FCC. (2021, January 8). Broadcasting False Information. Federal Communications Commission. https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/broadcasting-false-info...
Gallo, J. A. G., & Cho, C. Y. C. (2021, January). Social Media: Misinformation and Content Moderation Issues for Congress (No. R46662). Congressional Research Service. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46662
Mueller, R. S. M. (2019, March). Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, Volume I of II. U.S. Department of Justice. https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download
Sayler, K. M. S., & Harris, L. A. H. (2021, June). Deep Fakes and National Security (No. IF11333). Congressional Research Service. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11333