I honestly had zero interest in watching the Senate hearings that featured new testimony from Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey and Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai. All these people do is lie about how they are doing everything they can to protect free speech on the Internet while their companies continue to enact increasingly more draconian bans and blacklists on people attempting to exercise free speech.
On top of that, you mostly get nothing but grandstanding from members of Congress. This is especially true of Republicans who claim they care so much about free speech but ultimately do nothing to stop any of these companies from stifling it.
But with that said, Dorsey’s testimony at today’s hearing was particularly ridiculous and worthy of further comment. He literally claimed in his prepared remarks that reforms to Section 230 would harm free speech. He also said that without Section 230, a small handful of tech companies would control speech on the Internet.
Testifying in the Senate today, @Jack will trot out a series of straw man arguments to defend the sweetheart deal Big Tech enjoys under Section 230.
His suggestion that any reforms to Section 230 will result in more censorship, not less, does not withstand even casual scrutiny. https://t.co/qJ2lfdePwj
— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) October 28, 2020
Yep: "“Eroding the foundation of Section 230 could collapse how we communicate on the internet,” Mr Dorsey said, “leaving only a small number of giant and well-funded technology companies” able to fully police content and deal with legal liabilities." https://t.co/HE2G96NJf5
— Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (@rasmus_kleis) October 28, 2020
It’s a comical statement by Dorsey considering we don’t have free speech right now in large part because the company he runs has gone crazy banning people and blacklisting content. Their treatment of the New York Post after they ran the Hunter Biden laptop story has been particularly over the top. But there are unlimited numbers of examples we could reference over the past several years where they have banned people or censored content for political reasons.
And him saying that touching Section 230 would leave only a small number of big tech companies around is an equally ridiculous comment. That’s pretty much what we have now. A small number of big tech companies conspiring to silence people’s speech under the guise that speech they don’t like is “hate speech” “disinformation” or whatever.
Ted Cruz did a pretty good job questioning Dorsey.
He aggressively questioned him on why Twitter was interfering in the election with their censorship practices. He also called out their bullshit justification in censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story. Twitter originally said they censored the story because it was based on hacked material even though the material was not obtained through hacking and was instead obtained from a computer repair shop. But the idea that Twitter thinks it can ban content and block news from being disseminated on this basis is absurd on its face. How are they qualified to make such determinations and why should they be allowed to make such determinations? They’re in essence claiming that they have the right to decide what reality is and isn’t with such a policy. It’s outright insanity.
Quite frankly, the entire tech censorship issue has gotten tiresome and I’m sick of talking about it. I remain pessimistic that anything substantive will be done to force these companies into providing legitimate platforms that do not censor speech.
Don’t be surprised if Dorsey just goes ahead and blocks/bans Donald Trump on election night. There is a non-zero chance of that happening.
