In the last few days of October, the Senate Commerce Committee requested that the CEOs of major technology companies appear to defend their practices. Those on this committee representing the Democrats and Republicans had very different grievances they wanted to address. The Democrats were mainly focused on predatory practices taking advantage of the near monopolistic status of these companies. The Republicans focused on the concern that conservative voices were being silenced and were particularly irked by the lack of attention given to a recent story in the New York Post promoting a conspiracy theory involving the son of Presidential candidate Biden. In the time since, this story has pretty much disappeared. Twitter was singled out for the most intense attacks because they were ignoring the posts of the President and others attempting to share this story. Twitter CEO Dorsey claimed the post was being blocked because the content relied on hacked content violating its policies. Several days after this meeting Twitter did allow the sharing of this content.
Fast forward to election eve through today.
President Trump in response to disappointing vote counts has been tweeting accusations of improper voting procedures and vote counts. Twitter has again warned again against these tweets. The claims are not actually blocked as a viewer can click through the warning and view the claims made by the President. Twitter is also offering related information explaining the rules by which the election was held and the procedures by which votes are being counted.
Again, I am guessing some will be critical of Twitter’s behavior using some kind of free speech defense. I am guessing I could get away with making whatever claim I wanted in regard to the election. I have not tried submitting something I know to be factually inaccurate so I am just guessing, but I judge this to be the case from comments I observe when scrolling Twitter. Here is why I think the President should be treated differently. Protestors are converging on some of the locations where votes are being counted demanding that the counting of ballots be stopped. Counter-protesting demanding that all votes legally cast be counted are showing up. This situation is dangerous. My claims on this matter would generate very little attention and I would not have the standing resulting in people taking to the streets. The President is different and hence I agree with Twitter in blocking these yet to be validated claims.
At this point, any possible justification for blocking the counting of votes submitting under the rules established by the states with close elections has failed to be established. Counting any votes that might eventually be deemed to be in violation of state rules could later be deemed invalid. To stir up anger and division in this manner is dangerous and irresponsible.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act establishes two principles – social media sites are not responsible for the content posted by those outside the company and these companies can act in good faith to protect those who use the sites. Promoting potentially violent and illegal acts by the leader of a country would seem to qualify.
Section 230(c)(2) provides immunity from civil liabilities for information service providers that remove or restrict content from their services they deem “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected”, as long as they act “in good faith” in this action.