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Cyber

For those who believe Joe Manchin is a ‘centrist’; and yet another Section 230 ‘reform’ proposal

2021-02-08

[The Truth About Guns] Senator Joe Manchin, whom you may recall from his star turn promoting the failed Manchin-Toomey universal background check push after Sandy Hook, is still busy in the Senate. He’s the "centrist" West Virginia Democrat who, in a 50-50 world, is described by many as the upper chamber’s most powerful Senator. But if those on the right are looking to Manchin as a safeguard against some of the left’s most ambitious attacks on individual freedoms, a bill he just introduced should be cause for concern.

His S. 27 is described as a bill to require reporting of "suspicious transmissions" in order to assist in criminal investigations and counterintelligence activities relating to international terrorism, and "for other purposes." It promises to do for free speech what Manchin-Toomey would have done to the Second Amendment.

The text of the bill is here, but I’ll give you the basics. If enacted, any "interactive computer service" will be required to report wrongthink questionable posts or comments by a user, content referred to here as "suspicious transmissions."

The term ’’suspicious transmission’’ means any public or private post, message, comment, tag, transaction, or any other user-generated content or transmission that commits, facilitates, incites, promotes, or otherwise assists the commission of a major crime.

That definition is broad enough to encompass just about anything a government bureaucrat wants it to.

Failure to report such "transmissions" would result in the loss of the computer service company’s CDA Section 230 protection against liability for third parties’ speech. To be clear, the speech that Senator Manchin wants to know about here includes commenting on articles such as this one, or even on smaller, personal, noncommercial blogs.

Democrats Seek to Make Big Tech More Accountable in Section 230 Reform Bill

[EpochTimes] Democrat politicians have introduced a bill to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, seeking to make big tech companies more accountable and force them to police their content more stringently.

Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Amy Klobuchar

Senatrix from Minnesota, candidate for the Dem presidential 2020 nomination. You can tell the kind of husband a boy will make by the way he treats his mother. You can tell the kind of leader a politician will make by the way he treats his staff. Klobuchar is reportedly overbearing, snide, and dictatorial with her people. She see this as merely getting the best from them. Her name spelled backward in the Russian alphabet would be "Rachubolk," which sounds pretty daggone suspicious...
(D-Minn.) on Feb. 5 introduced the Safeguarding Against Fraud, Exploitation, Threats, Extremism and Consumer Harms (SAFE TECH) Act to reform Section 230 and "allow social media companies to be held accountable for enabling cyber-stalking, targeted harassment, and discrimination on their platforms."

The Democrats’ proposal creates a series of carve-outs to Section 230 protections, including by making the liability shield inapplicable to ads or other paid content, to instances where content and services delivered via the platforms are discriminatory, "likely to cause irreparable harm," "may have directly contributed to a loss of life," or where they "directly enable harmful activity."

Warner said in a statement that, "Section 230 has provided a ’Get Out of Jail Free’ card to the largest platform companies even as their sites are used by scam artists, harassers, and ~~violent~~ mostly peaceful gunnies to cause damage and injury."

Section 230, which was passed in 1996 to help online platforms develop without fear of litigation over user-generated content, shields them from liability for content posted by users while giving them the leeway to moderate it if they consider it harmful by, in turn, protecting them from lawsuits over moderation.

The law has come under fire from both sides of the aisle, with Democrats generally calling for tighter policing of content, seeking to curb "hate speech," harassment, and calls for violence, while Republicans and conservatives more broadly have taken aim at the liability shields for enabling what they say is suppression of conservative voices and stifling of free speech.

At a recent hearing on domestic terrorism, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) warned tech companies to police content more tightly or face more stringent government intervention.

Posted by:M. Murcek

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