From TechCrunch, July 17:
Amidst questions about how conspiracy theorists’ accounts are treated during today’s House Judiciary hearing
with Facebook, Google and Twitter on social media filtering practices,
Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) dropped a bombshell. “What about converting the large behemoth organizations that we’re talking about here into public utilities?”
King’s suggestion followed his inquiries about right-wing outlet Gateway Pundit losing reach on social media and how Facebook’s algorithm worked. The insinuation was that these companies cannot properly maintain fair platforms for discourse.
The
representative also suggested there may be need for “review” of Section
230 of the Communications Decency Act that protects interactive
computer services from being treated as the publisher of content users
post on their platforms. If that rule was changed, social media
companies could be held responsible for illegal content, from copyright
infringement or child pornography, appearing on their platform. That
would potentially cripple the social media industry, requiring extensive
pre-vetting of any content they display.
The share prices of the
tech giants did not see significant declines upon the representative’s
comments, indicating the markets don’t necessarily fear that overbearing
regulation of this nature is likely.
Here’s the exchange between King and Google’s Global Head of Public Policy and Government Relations for YouTube Juniper Downs:
King:
“Ms. Downs, I think you have a sense of my concern about where this is
going. I’m all for freedom of speech, and free enterprise, and for
competition and finding a way that competition itself does its own
regulation so government doesn’t have to. But if this gets further out of hand, it appears to me that Section 230 needs to be reviewed.
And
one of the discussions that I’m hearing is ‘what about converting the
large behemoth organizations that we’re talking about here into public
utilities?’ How do you respond to that inquiry?”
Downs: “As I said previously, we operate in a highly competitive environment, the tech industry is incredibly dynamic, we see new entrants all the time. We see competitors across all
of our products at Google, and we believe that the framework that
governs our services is an appropriate way to continue to support
innovation.”
Unfortunately, many of the
representatives frittered away their five minutes each asking questions
that companies had already answered in previous congressional hearings or public announcements...
....
MUCH MORE
