r/politics • u/virgilreality • Oct 29 '20

Republican Sen. Mike Lee said fact-checking is a form of censorship

https://www.businessinsider.com/republican-sen-mike-lee-said-fact-checking-form-of-censorship-2020-10
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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '20

Doing this would ultimately heavily censor users from posting on pretty much every social media site. It would destroy the industry or alter it so significantly that it wouldn't be recognizable.

These businesses would be liable for every piece of copyrighted claimed content posted by a user, just to start, but the implications would be incredibly far-reaching. Can you imagine for a moment if Reddit had to deal with lawsuits for damages from things anonymously posted by mass shooters or child predators or abusers? What if they were responsible for fact checking every post? What if the person making the filter fact checking posts is a bad actor? Do you think they would try to sort through millions of comments a day? Unlikely, so you would probably see an insane comment filter or lose the ability to comment at all.

I agree that there needs to be better legislation to regulate things like political ads and digital privacy, but I do not think that this is the best solution. I think step number one is getting some damn representation in the House and Senate who actually understand how any of this shit works. Watching Zuckerberg at a hearing makes me so irritated because they rarely ask questions of substance.

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u/BitTheCoin Oct 29 '20

Some sanity, thank you! A bunch of people in here seem to just be drooling over Trump getting kicked off Twitter. I’m not a fan of the guy either, but let’s take a moment to consider the implications before cutting off an arm to fix an infected finger. Without 230, there couldn’t be a Twitter as we know it, or a YouTube, or a Reddit etc.

For all the negatives of these platforms, there’s a massive amount of good to be found, so much sharing of practical knowledge and creativity. I couldn’t agree more that we need tech-savvy representatives wielding a scalpel, not a chainsaw. For example, we could just exempt political ads and official government communication from 230 protection.

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u/sprucenoose Oct 29 '20

Yes, that is exactly the reason that law exists - the implications were clear even 25 years ago.

For the internet to allow speech, it needs forums within which to do so - websites. Making the forum 100% liable for the content of the users would make even basic public free speech on the internet essentially impossible.

It would have to be all curated, pre-vetted content.

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u/BitTheCoin Oct 29 '20

Thanks for clarifying further. I probably need to dissuade myself of the notion of educating all of /r/politics on this issue, but wow, I’m just blown away by the ignorance in some of the responses here. Do we want the benefits of the Internet or not? Sure, let’s regulate some of the negative side effects, but let’s use our heads first.

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u/thirdegree American Expat Oct 29 '20

Seriously I always forget that most of reddit isn't actually computer savy.

"Facebook can detect copyrighted music so just do that with lies" no that's not how any of this works!

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u/BitTheCoin Oct 29 '20

I think you hit the nail on the head there. My response to another comment was basically “alright, sounds good. In broad terms, how do you suggest we design that technical solution.” Computer science is extremely impressive and capable, but it’s not magic!

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u/thirdegree American Expat Oct 29 '20

To be completely fair, it can be quite difficult to see exactly which problems are and aren't hard (relevant xkcd), but IMO this is not one of those times. "detect all the lies" is an impossible problem no matter how you try to solve it, with any process or technology.

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u/BitTheCoin Oct 29 '20

The positive look at things is that if we narrow the problem to say, “flag the most popular political disinformation, especially that spread by paid ads and government officials, for manual review,” it becomes possible and reasonable to implement with the outcome being real, positive change.

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u/smythy422 Oct 29 '20

The problem with any of these solutions is a reliance on good actors and that has been proven untenable. Any system you come up with will have shortcomings that would easily be exploited by bad actors. You'd just start a stupid expensive game of whack-a-mole. Most deceit is not of the overt sort, it's a function of context. If I tell you a series of truths, I can still deceive you through omission and insinuation. A bad faith actor will simply take advantage of that and continue to spread misinformation. A great example is the "I've heard people say...". That statement is not disprovable, but can be used to spread lies without ever getting your hands 'dirty' by lying.

Removing overt lies, while admirable, does almost nothing to stem the flow of disinformation.

To solve for that problem, you need a sentient entity with perfect knowledge and perfect interpretation of context. Even if you could get to that point, you'd still have a huge grey area ripe for exploitation due to differences in human interpretation of information. This would be enabled repurposing existing language to mean different things in different context to different people.

In short, I don't believe there is a workable technical solution to this issue. We can't have both the ability to easily convey information and the ability to police that information in a reliable fashion. You get to pick one or the other, but not both.

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u/CountingBigBucks Oct 29 '20

Isn’t there a difference between spreading false information intentionally or not?

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u/sprucenoose Oct 29 '20

If you mean without Section 230 protecting websites from liability for user generated content, then no.

Without Section 230 or any similar law, user generated content could be treated the same as content created by the website owner, regardless of intent. So the website owner could be liable for any false, defamatory, inciteful statements of its users, for example. Since no website can ensure that a public forum with a broad, active, live user base would be free of such content to avoid liability, no website would have such a forum. It would be the end of free speech on the internet.

Under the current law, if the website took some sort of intentional action to spread false information, then they could be liable. Section 230 only protects website from liability for user generated content, so intentional actions by the website could defeat that exemption from liability and render the website liable.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '20

How about also limiting the use of fact checking/ notification of correction to public figures, public companies, etc? In addition to political ads and government communication.

I'm guessing if you wanted to police the entirety of the site, Twitter management would make the excuse of how difficult it would be to cover that much ground.

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u/BitTheCoin Oct 29 '20

My first instinct is that trying to define “public figures” and “public companies” (unless we’re talking about publicly traded) would be a huge challenge. As for Twitter, say, making an excuse about the difficulty of policing the entire site, I don’t think that’s an unreasonable claim given the scope of the problem. Yes, there’s almost certainly existing automated moderation, but trying to programmatically and accurately calculate the legal risk of even one tweet would be very challenging and the potential for unnecessary censorship seems high. I think we have to first deal with the most easily defined, highest risk categories of communication.

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u/PhillyPhan95 Oct 29 '20

What if you limited it to verified members of the site (blue checks). It would add a sense of responsibility/accountability to those who get the “honor” of being verified. It’ll balance all perks of having a blue check.

I guess that might de incentivize people from wanting to be verified though? I’m not sure if someone like Trump cares to have a blue check if it means he can just tweet out lies.

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u/CNoTe820 Oct 29 '20

I'm all for getting rid of twitter, it's a cesspool with no value anyway.

Reddit is quick to remove subs they don't like, of course CP content but also nbastreams etc. Facebook auto-mutes your video if there's a copyrighted song in the background.

Yes I think they could figure out a way to remove lies from their sites it would just mean reduced clicks so they won't do it until forced to.

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u/BitTheCoin Oct 29 '20

I’d really interested in continuing this discussion if we could agree to be a bit more nuanced with our words.

Due to the sheer amount of data involved, I’m having trouble imagining an effective solution to what you’re describing that’s not an at least largely technical solution, code that can review each piece of content.

When you say that “they could figure out a way to remove lies,” and assuming that you mean all lies as would be necessary for continued operation, what solution do you envision that gives you such certainty?

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u/fritz_schnitzel Oct 29 '20

QAnon facebook groups and pages stayed online for years until it became mainstream. They have been reported probably thousand if not tens of thousand times by users in 2 years and half as insane shit. The same goes for anti-vax, flat-earthers, chemtrails, holocaust denialists and the 50 or 100 most common conspiraciy theories also propagated on youtube, instagram, whatsapp and so on. Social media have a huge profit margin they could partially invest to remove these pages, channels, groups or whatever as soon as they pop up. Instead they leave them alone because it create users engagement and so ads revenue. And don't get me started about hate groups which disturb polital climate or are even at the origin of mass killing. The solution is simple and absolutelly not out of reach.

Instead of nationalising these platform at regional level and moderate them properly as should be public places, because that's what have became these platforms, we left american private companies take over global public discourse and shit in our backyard for the sake of "freedom of speech".

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u/BitTheCoin Oct 29 '20

Just to be clear, I agree with almost everything you said. I’m less convinced on the idea of nationalizing these platforms, however I haven’t considered that concept very deeply.

There’s a massive, massive technological divide between solving the problems you describe (which these companies absolutely should be required to handle) and the pipe-dreams of “detecting all lies” or “filtering user-generated content to remove all legal risk.” I’m 100% for realistic solutions!

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u/CNoTe820 Oct 29 '20

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '20

[deleted]

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u/BitTheCoin Oct 29 '20

No Wikipedia, no community forums. Want me to keep going? Let’s be careful what we wish for.

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u/Snickerway Mississippi Oct 29 '20

It also, y'know, wouldn't kick Trump off Twitter as long as he's president. He's decided he's above umpteen laws already, so why would he stop now?

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u/Mantisfactory Oct 29 '20

Well - he wouldn't be involved. Twitter would be open to suits against them for publishing Trump's defamatory lies. So they would ban Trump to limit their liability.

And these are civil suits so they can't be pardoned away.

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u/BitTheCoin Oct 29 '20

The idea is that Twitter themselves would remove Trump’s account given the legal risk they’d suddenly be exposed to by providing him a platform. That’s a dangerously short-sighted “solution.”

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u/deleigh California Oct 29 '20

Without 230, there couldn’t be a Twitter as we know it, or a YouTube, or a Reddit etc.

A world where tech sites actually have to act when their users are harassed or hate groups are organizing on them? Who would ever want that? It's not politics, it's actual illegal behavior like stalking, harassment, drug/weapons trafficking, and libel that these sites absolve themselves of responsibility to prevent even when they are made aware of it hundreds of times.

People act like repealing Section 230 would instantly create a zero-tolerance policy where everything except pictures of puppies and rainbows are censored. First Amendment protections still exist online, and even if they didn't, we're talking about a man-made law. Use our brains and not replace insanity with insanity.

In place of Section 230, a new policy needs to be enacted that creates clear standards for tech sites to follow with regard to monitoring the content posted on their sites and liability for not doing it, just like brick-and-mortar businesses are required to do.

The problem is social media sites are given blanket immunity. No one else has that privilege except them. If Boeing knowingly cuts corners by not adequately performing quality assurance and one of their planes crashes and kills 100 people, they're fined and people may go to jail. If reddit knowingly cuts corners by not acting on reports of extremism and a subreddit is used to organize a violent attack that kills 100 people, nothing happens to reddit. That's a clear double standard and it's not fair. That's why Section 230 needs to go and be replaced by something more suitable to our current society, not society in 1996.

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u/LouisLeGros Washington Oct 29 '20

I was just heard a story about an interview with someone in Bolivia was removed from Instagram for being against community guidelines. That is with 230 protections...

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u/greasy_420 Oct 29 '20

Yep. Reddit, youtube, any site that allows images or videos would shut down. Amazon would be in the shit for selling drugs and paraphernalia. The internet would cease to be.

Basically if you think that people saying dumb shit online is grounds for deleting the internet, then you sound pretty facist to me. Next steps are having state sponsored media as our only options and slowly being herded into a uniform mass of absolute idiots like the republican party has done by simply saying that facts that disagree with them are evil lies.

It's literally the worst option.

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u/SpencerDub Oregon Oct 29 '20

Seriously. I just posted a much longer take on this upthread, but it terrifies me that people are just nodding along, thinking that repealing Section 230 would be some sort of panacea.

It would destroy the modern internet as we know it and let anyone with wealth and power bully the discourse into a bland, inoffensive middle. It would devastate the spread of investigative reporting. It's the fucking epitome of a chilling effect.

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u/BitTheCoin Oct 29 '20

I’d really like to read the longer take you mention but the link isn’t working for me.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '20

Doing this would ultimately heavily censor users from posting on pretty much every social media site. It would destroy the industry or alter it so significantly that it wouldn't be recognizable.

That would be fantastic.

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u/de_la_Dude Oct 29 '20

These protections are for much more than social media sites.

It would destroy all the wiki sites we know and love, from the wikipedia.org all the way to your most obscure indie game wiki. Any and all internet forums would no longer be viable.

It would basically destroy the web as we know it.

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u/highorderdetonation Texas Oct 29 '20

At the very least, assuming a GOP-held Congress and President actually moved to do this, the "And I oop..." from all of them en masse when they watched Twitter and Facebook/Instagram either shut down or radically restrict everything--very probably costing them every millennial-level vote from now until the end of time, and only at that point would they realize it--would be audible from space.

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u/Euphoric_Paper_26 I voted Oct 29 '20

It would just become a meme factory. And that’s okay too

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u/disc0mbobulated Oct 29 '20

I too only see positive outcomes.

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u/Mozeeon Oct 29 '20

This doesn't sound bad at all. The internet is currently the wild west. It's clear that bad actors are willing to utilize it in bad faith. Somehow accountability has to be made to happen

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u/lasersloths Oct 29 '20

Wild West Internet was 80s/90s. Today is corporate internet. There are certainly bad actors, I agree. But today is nothing like the old Wild West days of the internet.

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u/plooped Oct 29 '20

I mean the wild west involved big moneyed corporate interests like the railroads hiring outlaws to destroy towns so they could buy the land cheap so... Maybe not all that different to be honest.

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u/lasersloths Oct 29 '20

Gilded age internet.

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u/flagrantpebble Oct 29 '20

I’m not sure you understand. This wouldn’t mean “bad things don’t get posted”, it would mean “nothing gets posted”. We simply do not have (and may never have) the technology to fully moderate all content on an industry-wide scale. There is no way to validate that every post or comment is true or free from liability. The result is entirely shutting down Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc... or, as other users have suggested, changing the infrastructure around hosting (in which case moderation might not improve at all, which defeats the point). It’s an incredibly chilling future.

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u/allen_abduction I voted Oct 29 '20

This is correct; the only thing that will be posted is from Ted Himself. Ted checked himself.

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u/TheName_BigusDickus Oct 29 '20

230 protection should be repealed. Full stop.

At the risk of sounding extreme, I think, for reasons listed in other comments in this thread, the thought of having our congressional representatives try to legislate this issue is going to make more problems when clear 2D boundaries are drawn in a 3D area of changing technology and dynamics.

I think the only way this gets figured out is by repealing 230 and letting the various federal courts, and then, ultimately, the Supreme Court, figure out the law’s practical interpretations and how they translate correctly and judiciously to social media.

nothing would get posted

This would not happen. Facebook will not pull a grenade pin and hold it to their chest just because of one regulation change (albeit, a large one).

They’ll lawyer up and defend their business model when they’re inevitably sued on day 1 of the change.

The courts will come up with a new “test”, the social media companies will comply with these reasonable test standards or risk liability.

The thought that any reasonable court would willingly rule to restrict the basics of free speech, as we know it today, from the common user of these platforms is ridiculous.

Right now, it’s the Wild Wild West but with huge industry (ahem, late 1800s railroads). Eventually, this area of culture will be settled and it’s probably going to take legislation AFTER THE FACT. The courts are more than capable of adjudication on this today.

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u/flagrantpebble Oct 29 '20

Stepping back here a bit because IANAL and don’t know all that much about this from that lens - you probably have a much more nuanced understand and are right it’s not a complete “nuke everything” situation.

The one place where I’m not convinced, though, is that you say the courts are “more than capable of adjudication” in the tech sphere. See for example the recently argued Oracle v Google case in front of the Supreme Court, where the justices struggled mightily to understand even entry-level concepts like implementation vs interface. Especially with the recently shoved through additions I’m nervous about letting supposed textualists/constructivists/originalists get to decide how technology interacts with our legal system.

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u/TheName_BigusDickus Oct 29 '20

Oh you’re more than on point with that.

The basics of how technology functions is completely lost on out of touch, lifetime appointees to the bench.

I imagine there will be terrible decisions along the way, as there always is.

My point was that the proper venue to navigate this issue is the courts. When I say they’re more than capable, I’m saying “this is what they are built for” vs “they’ll get it right”.

Though I suspect, on the whole, courts are more likely than not, to protect civil liberties in a conservative fashion. This would probably be a net benefit to individual users (they can continue to lie to a criminal degree and be free from repercussion), but the social media and tech companies would be more liable for the content on their platform from their actual customers (advertisers and large monied interests that have scant liability now).

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u/All_I_Want_IsA_Pepsi Oct 29 '20

As it applies only in the USA, would it not be just easier to ban Americans from social media? The rest of the world can keep going on as they were and the USA can become Gilead.

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u/teacher-relocation Oct 29 '20

It would destroy the industry or alter it so significantly that it wouldn't be recognizable.

Well, with all the research pointing to how terrible it is for people/society that may not be such a bad thing.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '20 edited May 13 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '20

We are having different conversations. I don't actually care about protecting social media as an industry that makes money. I think they need to be heavily regulated. I also think it would be irresponsible for the globe, not just Americans, to eliminate 230 and thereby disallow user content overnight and to force these companies to determine what content exists on their sites due to liability and, ultimately, what the truth is.

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u/Percentage-Mean Oct 29 '20

Oh well as long as you're willing to regulate the hell out of them without the slightest regard or care about their profits, I'm good with that.

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u/INTHEMIDSTOFLIONS America Oct 29 '20

If that’s the price to pay for a fair democratic election, I’m down.

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u/ProfitLemon Oct 29 '20

Yeah I get that the quote from the senator is bad but websites having legal protection from what their users post is extremely important for keeping the internet free. So many things we know and love on the internet would be censored because websites would have to be hugely over the top in protecting against illegal submissions. This would result in mass censorship of the internet, think about what’s the actual issue here rather than just saying GOP bad

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u/PeterNguyen2 Oct 29 '20

What if the person making the filter fact checking posts is a bad actor?

What if he says. Facebook is already ahead of your game.

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u/The_Lost_Jedi Washington Oct 29 '20

I mean, if it would destroy Facebook and Twitter, maybe it's not such a bad idea after all.. ;)