Archives For free speech

Does the DOJ’s Approach in Gonzalez Point the Way Toward Section 230 Reform?

Ben Sperry & Kristian Stout —  11 January 2023

Later next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google LLC, a case that has drawn significant attention and many bad takes regarding how Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should be interpreted. Enacted in the mid-1990s, when the Internet as we know it was still in its infancy, Section 230 has grown into a law that offers online platforms a fairly comprehensive shield against liability for the content that third parties post to their services. But the law has also come increasingly under fire, from both the political left and the right. 

At issue in Gonzalez is whether Section 230(c)(1) immunizes Google from a set of claims brought under the Antiterrorism Act of 1990 (ATA). The petitioners are relatives of Nohemi Gonzalez, an American citizen murdered in a 2015 terrorist attack in Paris. They allege that Google, through YouTube, is liable under the ATA for providing assistance to ISIS for four main reasons. They allege that: 

  1. Google allowed ISIS to use YouTube to disseminate videos and messages, thereby recruiting and radicalizing terrorists responsible for the murder.
  2. Google failed to take adequate steps to take down videos and accounts and keep them down.
  3. Google recommends videos of others, both through subscriptions and algorithms.
  4. Google monetizes this content through its AdSense service, with ISIS-affiliated users receiving revenue. 

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed all of the non-revenue-sharing claims as barred by Section 230(c)(1), but allowed the revenue-sharing claim to go forward. 

Highlights of DOJ’s Brief

In an amicus brief, the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) ultimately asks the Court to vacate the 9th Circuit’s judgment regarding those claims that are based on YouTube’s alleged targeted recommendations of ISIS content. But the DOJ also rejects much of the petitioner’s brief, arguing that Section 230 does rightfully apply to the rest of the claims. 

The crux of the DOJ’s brief concerns when and how design choices can be outside of Section 230 immunity. The lodestar 9th Circuit case that the DOJ brief applies is 2008’s Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com.

As the DOJ notes, radical theories advanced by the plaintiffs and other amici would go too far in restricting Section 230 immunity based on a platform’s decisions on whether or not to block or remove user content (see, e.g., its discussion on pp. 17-21 of the merits and demerits of Justice Clarence Thomas’s Malwarebytes concurrence).  

At the same time, the DOJ’s brief notes that there is room for a reasonable interpretation of Section 230 that allows for liability to attach when online platforms behave unreasonably in their promotion of users’ content. Applying essentially the 9th Circuit’s Roommates.com standard, the DOJ argues that YouTube’s choice to amplify certain terrorist content through its recommendations algorithm is a design choice, rather than simply the hosting of third-party content, thereby removing it from the scope of  Section 230 immunity.  

While there is much to be said in favor of this approach, it’s important to point out that, although directionally correct, it’s not at all clear that a Roommates.com analysis should ultimately come down as the DOJ recommends in Gonzalez. More broadly, the way the DOJ structures its analysis has important implications for how we should think about the scope of Section 230 reform that attempts to balance accountability for intermediaries with avoiding undue collateral censorship.

Charting a Middle Course on Immunity

The important point on which the DOJ relies from Roommates.com is that intermediaries can be held accountable when their own conduct creates violations of the law, even if it involves third–party content. As the DOJ brief puts it:

Section 230(c)(1) protects an online platform from claims premised on its dissemination of third-party speech, but the statute does not immunize a platform’s other conduct, even if that conduct involves the solicitation or presentation of third-party content. The Ninth Circuit’s Roommates.com decision illustrates the point in the context of a website offering a roommate-matching service… As a condition of using the service, Roommates.com “require[d] each subscriber to disclose his sex, sexual orientation and whether he would bring children to a household,” and to “describe his preferences in roommates with respect to the same three criteria.” Ibid. The plaintiffs alleged that asking those questions violated housing-discrimination laws, and the court of appeals agreed that Section 230(c)(1) did not shield Roommates.com from liability for its “own acts” of “posting the questionnaire and requiring answers to it.” Id. at 1165.

Imposing liability in such circumstances does not treat online platforms as the publishers or speakers of content provided by others. Nor does it obligate them to monitor their platforms to detect objectionable postings, or compel them to choose between “suppressing controversial speech or sustaining prohibitive liability.”… Illustrating that distinction, the Roommates.com court held that although Section 230(c)(1) did not apply to the website’s discriminatory questions, it did shield the website from liability for any discriminatory third-party content that users unilaterally chose to post on the site’s “generic” “Additional Comments” section…

The DOJ proceeds from this basis to analyze what it would take for Google (via YouTube) to no longer benefit from Section 230 immunity by virtue of its own editorial actions, as opposed to its actions as a publisher (which 230 would still protect). For instance, are the algorithmic suggestions of videos simply neutral tools that allow for users to get more of the content they desire, akin to search results? Or are the algorithmic suggestions of new videos a design choice that makes it akin to Roommates?

The DOJ argues that taking steps to better display pre-existing content is not content development or creation, in and of itself. Similarly, it would be a mistake to make intermediaries liable for creating tools that can then be deployed by users:

Interactive websites invariably provide tools that enable users to create, and other users to find and engage with, information. A chatroom might supply topic headings to organize posts; a photo-sharing site might offer a feature for users to signal that they like or dislike a post; a classifieds website might enable users to add photos or maps to their listings. If such features rendered the website a co-developer of all users’ content, Section 230(c)(1) would be a dead letter.

At a high level, this is correct. Unfortunately, the DOJ argument then moves onto thinner ice. The DOJ believes that the 230 liability shield in Gonzalez depends on whether an automated “recommendation” rises to the level of development or creation, as the design of filtering criteria in Roommates.com did. Toward this end, the brief notes that:

The distinction between a recommendation and the recommended content is particularly clear when the recommendation is explicit. If YouTube had placed a selected ISIS video on a user’s homepage alongside a message stating, “You should watch this,” that message would fall outside Section 230(c)(1). Encouraging a user to watch a selected video is conduct distinct from the video’s publication (i.e., hosting). And while YouTube would be the “publisher” of the recommendation message itself, that message would not be “information provided by another information content provider.” 47 U.S.C. 230(c)(1).

An Absence of Immunity Does Not Mean a Presence of Liability

Importantly, the DOJ brief emphasizes throughout that remanding the ATA claims is not the end of the analysis—i.e., it does not mean that the plaintiffs can prove the elements. Moreover, other background law—notably, the First Amendment—can limit the application of liability to intermediaries, as well. As we put it in our paper on Section 230 reform:

It is important to again note that our reasonableness proposal doesn’t change the fact that the underlying elements in any cause of action still need to be proven. It is those underlying laws, whether civil or criminal, that would possibly hold intermediaries liable without Section 230 immunity. Thus, for example, those who complain that FOSTA/SESTA harmed sex workers by foreclosing a safe way for them to transact (illegal) business should really be focused on the underlying laws that make sex work illegal, not the exception to Section 230 immunity that FOSTA/SESTA represents. By the same token, those who assert that Section 230 improperly immunizes “conservative bias” or “misinformation” fail to recognize that, because neither of those is actually illegal (nor could they be under First Amendment law), Section 230 offers no additional immunity from liability for such conduct: There is no underlying liability from which to provide immunity in the first place.

There’s a strong likelihood that, on remand, the court will find there is no violation of the ATA at all. Section 230 immunity need not be stretched beyond all reasonable limits to protect intermediaries from hypothetical harms when underlying laws often don’t apply. 

Conclusion

To date, the contours of Section 230 reform largely have been determined by how courts interpret the statute. There is an emerging consensus that some courts have gone too far in extending Section 230 immunity to intermediaries. The DOJ’s brief is directionally correct, but the Court should not adopt it wholesale. More needs to be done to ensure that the particular facts of Gonzalez are not used to completely gut Section 230 more generally.  

In Constitutional Law, First Amendment, Platforms, Supreme Court, Truth on the Market , ,
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A Coasean Analysis of Offensive Speech

Jamie Whyte —  13 September 2021

[The following post was adapted from the International Center for Law & Economics White Paper “Polluting Words: Is There a Coasean Case to Regulate Offensive Speech?”]

Words can wound. They can humiliate, anger, insult.

University students—or, at least, a vociferous minority of them—are keen to prevent this injury by suppressing offensive speech. To ensure campuses are safe places, they militate for the cancellation of talks by speakers with opinions they find offensive, often successfully. And they campaign to get offensive professors fired from their jobs.

Off campus, some want this safety to be extended to the online world and, especially, to the users of social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. In the United States, this would mean weakening the legal protections of offensive speech provided by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (as President Joe Biden has recommended) or by the First Amendment and. In the United Kingdom, the Online Safety Bill is now before Parliament. If passed, it will give a U.K. government agency the power to dictate the content-moderation policies of social media platforms.

You don’t need to be a woke university student or grandstanding politician to suspect that society suffers from an overproduction of offensive speech. Basic economics provides a reason to suspect it—the reason being that offense is an external cost of speech. The cost is borne not by the speaker but by his audience. And when people do not bear all the costs of an action, they do it too much.

Jack tweets “women don’t have penises.” This offends Jill, who is someone with a penis who considers herself (or himself, if Jack is right) to be a woman. And it offends many others, who agree with Jill that Jack is indulging in ugly transphobic biological essentialism. Lacking Bill Clinton’s facility for feeling the pain of others, Jack does not bear this cost. So, even if it exceeds whatever benefit Jack gets from saying that women don’t have penises, he will still say it. In other words, he will say it even when doing so makes society altogether worse off.

It shouldn’t be allowed!

That’s what we normally say when actions harm others more than they benefit the agent. The law normally conforms to John Stuart Mill’s “Harm Principle” by restricting activities—such as shooting people or treating your neighbours to death metal at 130 decibels at 2 a.m.—with material external costs. Those who seek legal reform to restrict offensive speech are surely doing no more than following an accepted general principle.

But it’s not so simple. As Ronald Coase pointed out in his famous 1960 article “The Problem of Social Cost,” externalities are a reciprocal problem. If Wayne had no neighbors, his playing death metal at 130 decibels at 2 a.m. would have no external costs. Their choice of address is equally a source of the problem. Similarly, if Jill weren’t a Twitter user, she wouldn’t have been offended by Jack’s tweet about who has a penis, since she wouldn’t have encountered it. Externalities are like tangos: they always have at least two perpetrators.

So, the legal question, “who should have a right to what they want?”—Wayne to his loud music or his neighbors to their sleep; Jack to expressing his opinion about women or Jill to not hearing such opinions—cannot be answered by identifying the party who is responsible for the external cost. Both parties are responsible.

How, then, should the question be answered? In the same paper, Coase the showed that, in certain circumstances, who the courts favor will make no difference to what ends up happening, and that what ends up happening will be efficient. Suppose the court says that Wayne cannot bother his neighbors with death metal at 2 a.m. If Wayne would be willing to pay $100,000 to keep doing it and his neighbors, combined, would put up with it for anything more than $95,000, then they should be able to arrive at a mutually beneficial deal whereby Wayne pays them something between $95,000 and $100,000 to forgo their right to stop him making his dreadful noise.

That’s not exactly right. If negotiating a deal would cost more than $5,000, then no mutually beneficial deal is possible and the rights-trading won’t happen. Transaction costs being less than the difference between the two parties’ valuations is the circumstance in which the allocation of legal rights makes no difference to how resources get used, and where efficiency will be achieved, in any event.

But it is an unusual circumstance, especially when the external cost is suffered by many people. When the transaction cost is too high, efficiency does depend on the allocation of rights by courts or legislatures. As Coase argued, when this is so, efficiency will be served if a right to the disputed resource is granted to the party with the higher cost of avoiding the externality.

Given the (implausible) valuations Wayne and his neighbors place on the amount of noise in their environment at 2 a.m., efficiency is served by giving Wayne the right to play his death metal, unless he could soundproof his house or play his music at a much lower volume or take some other avoidance measure that costs him less than the $90,000 cost to his neighbours.

And given that Jack’s tweet about penises offends a large open-ended group of people, with whom Jack therefore cannot negotiate, it looks like they should be given the right not to be offended by Jack’s comment and he should be denied the right to make it. Coasean logic supports the woke censors!          

But, again, it’s not that simple—for two reasons.

The first is that, although those are offended may be harmed by the offending speech, they needn’t necessarily be. Physical pain is usually harmful, but not when experienced by a sexual masochist (in the right circumstances, of course). Similarly, many people take masochistic pleasure in being offended. You can tell they do, because they actively seek out the sources of their suffering. They are genuinely offended, but the offense isn’t harming them, just as the sexual masochist really is in physical pain but isn’t harmed by it. Indeed, real pain and real offense are required, respectively, for the satisfaction of the sexual masochist and the offense masochist.

How many of the offended are offense masochists? Where the offensive speech can be avoided at minimal cost, the answer must be most. Why follow Jordan Peterson on Twitter when you find his opinions offensive unless you enjoy being offended by him? Maybe some are keeping tabs on the dreadful man so that they can better resist him, and they take the pain for that reason rather than for masochistic glee. But how could a legislator or judge know? For all they know, most of those offended by Jordan Peterson are offense masochists and the offense he causes is a positive externality.

The second reason Coasean logic doesn’t support the would-be censors is that social media platforms—the venues of offensive speech that they seek to regulate—are privately owned. To see why this is significant, consider not offensive speech, but an offensive action, such as openly masturbating on a bus.

This is prohibited by law. But it is not the mere act that is illegal. You are allowed to masturbate in the privacy of your bedroom. You may not masturbate on a bus because those who are offended by the sight of it cannot easily avoid it. That’s why it is illegal to express obscenities about Jesus on a billboard erected across the road from a church but not at a meeting of the Angry Atheists Society. The laws that prohibit offensive speech in such circumstances—laws against public nuisance, harassment, public indecency, etc.—are generally efficient. The cost they impose on the offenders is less than the benefits to the offended.

But they are unnecessary when the giving and taking of offense occur within a privately owned place. Suppose no law prohibited masturbating on a bus. It still wouldn’t be allowed on buses owned by a profit-seeker. Few people want to masturbate on buses and most people who ride on buses seek trips that are masturbation-free. A prohibition on masturbation will gain the owner more customers than it loses him. The prohibition is simply another feature of the product offered by the bus company. Nice leather seats, punctual departures, and no wankers (literally). There is no more reason to believe that the bus company’s passenger-conduct rules will be inefficient than that its other product features will be and, therefore, no more reason to legally stipulate them.

The same goes for the content-moderation policies of social media platforms. They are just another product feature offered by a profit-seeking firm. If they repel more customers than they attract (or, more accurately, if they repel more advertising revenue than they attract), they would be inefficient. But then, of course, the company would not adopt them.

Of course, the owner of a social media platform might not be a pure profit-maximiser. For example, he might forgo $10 million in advertising revenue for the sake of banning speakers he personally finds offensive. But the outcome is still efficient. Allowing the speech would have cost more by way of the owner’s unhappiness than the lost advertising would have been worth.  And such powerful feelings in the owner of a platform create an opportunity for competitors who do not share his feelings. They can offer a platform that does not ban the offensive speakers and, if enough people want to hear what they have to say, attract users and the advertising revenue that comes with them. 

If efficiency is your concern, there is no problem for the authorities to solve. Indeed, the idea that the authorities would do a better job of deciding content-moderation rules is not merely absurd, but alarming. Politicians and the bureaucrats who answer to them or are appointed by them would use the power not to promote efficiency, but to promote agendas congenial to them. Jurisprudence in liberal democracies—and, especially, in America—has been suspicious of governmental control of what may be said. Nothing about social media provides good reason to become any less suspicious.

In Constitutional Law, Facebook, First Amendment, International, International Center for Law & Economics, Platforms, Truth on the Market, Twitter, United Kingdom , , , , , , , , , ,
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The Dishonesty of Conservative Attacks on Section 230

Ben Sperry —  17 November 2020

President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for repeal of Section 230. But while Trump and fellow conservatives decry Big Tech companies for their alleged anti-conservative bias, including at yet more recent hearings, their issue is not actually with Section 230. It’s with the First Amendment. 

Conservatives can’t actually do anything directly about how social media platforms moderate content because it is the First Amendment that grants those platforms a right to editorial discretion. Even FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who strongly opposes “Big Tech censorship,” recognizes this. 

By the same token, even if one were to grant that conservatives are right about the bias of moderators at these large social media platforms, it does not follow that removal of Section 230 immunity would alter that bias. In fact, in a world without Section 230 immunity, there still would be no legal cause of action for political bias. 

The truth is that conservatives use Section 230 immunity for leverage over social media platforms. The hope is that, because social media platforms desire the protections of civil immunity for third-party content, they will follow whatever conditions the government puts on their editorial discretion. But the attempt to end-run the First Amendment’s protections is also unconstitutional.

There is no cause of action for political bias by online platforms if we repeal Section 230

Consider the counterfactual: if there were no Section 230 to immunize them from liability, under what law would platforms face a viable cause of action for political bias? Conservative critics never answer this question. Instead, they focus on the irrelevant distinction between publishers and platforms. Or they talk about how Section 230 is a giveaway to Big Tech. But none consider the actual relationship between Section 230 immunity and alleged political bias.

But let’s imagine we’ve done what President Trump has called for and repealed Section 230. Where does that leave conservatives?

Unfortunately, it leaves them without any cause of action. There is no law passed by Congress or any state legislature, no regulation promulgated by the Federal Communications Commission or the Federal Trade Commission, no common law tort action that can be asserted against online platforms to force them to carry speech they don’t wish to carry. 

The difficulties of pursuing a contract claim for political bias

The best argument for conservatives is that, without Section 230 immunity, online platforms could be more easily held to any contractual restraints in their terms of service. If a platform promises, for instance, that it will moderate speech in a politically neutral way, a user could make the case that the platform violated its terms of service if it acted with political bias in her particular case.

For the vast majority of users, it is unclear whether there are damages from having a post fact-checked or removed. But for users who share in advertising revenue, the concrete injury from a moderation decision is more obvious. PragerU, for example, has (unsuccessfully) sued Google for being put in Restricted Mode on YouTube, which reduces its reach and advertising revenue. 

Even where there is a concrete injury that gets a case into court, that doesn’t necessarily mean there is a valid contract claim. In PragerU’s case against Google, a California court dismissed contract claims because the YouTube terms of service contract was written to allow the platform to retain discretion over what is published. Specifically, the court found that there can be no implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing where “YouTube reserves the right to remove Content without prior notice” and to “discontinue any aspect of the Service at any time.”

Breach-of-contract claims for moderation practices are highly dependent on what is actually promised in the terms of service. For instance, under Facebook’s TOS the company retains the right “to remove or restrict access to content that is in violation” of its community standards. Facebook does provide a process for users to request further review, but retains the right to remove content. The community standards also give Facebook broad discretion to determine, among other things, what counts as hate speech or false news. It is exceedingly unlikely that a court would ever have a basis to find a contract violation by Facebook if the company can reasonably point to a user’s violation of its terms of service. 

For example, in Ebeid v. Facebook, the U.S. Northern District of California dismissed fraud and breach of contract claims, finding the plaintiff failed to allege what contractual provision Facebook breached, that Facebook retained discretion over what ads would be posted, and that the plaintiff suffered no damages because no money was taken to be spent on the ads. The court also dismissed an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing claim because Facebook retained the right to “remove or disapprove any post or ad at Facebook’s sole discretion.”

While the conservative critique has been that social media platforms do too much moderation—in the form of politically biased removals, fact-checking, and demonetization—others believe platforms do far too little to restrain bad conduct by users. But as long as social media platforms retain editorial discretion in their terms of service and make no other promises that can be relied upon by their users, there is little basis for a contract claim. 

The First Amendment protects the moderation policies of social media platforms, and there is no way around this

With no reasonable cause of action for political bias under the law, conservatives dangle the threat of making changes to Section 230 immunity that could prove costly to the social media platforms in order to extract concessions from the platforms to alter their practices.

This is why there are no serious efforts to actually repeal Section 230, as President Trump has asked for repeatedly. Instead, several bills propose to amend Section 230, while a rulemaking by the FCC seeks to clarify its meaning. 

But none of these proposed bills would directly affect platforms’ ability to make “biased” moderation decisions. Put simply: the First Amendment protects social media platforms’ editorial discretion. They may set rules to use their platforms, just as any private person may set rules for their own property. If I kick someone off my property for saying racist things, the First Amendment (as well as regular property law) protects my right to do so. Only under extremely limited circumstances can the government change this baseline rule and survive constitutional scrutiny.

Social media platforms’ right to editorial discretion is the same as that enjoyed by newspapers. In Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, the Supreme Court found:

The choice of material to go into a newspaper, and the decisions made as to limitations on the size and content of the paper, and treatment of public issues and public officials—whether fair or unfair—constitute the exercise of editorial control and judgment. It has yet to be demonstrated how governmental regulation of this crucial process can be exercised consistent with First Amendment guarantees of a free press as they have evolved to this time. 

Social media platforms, just like any other property owner, have the right to determine what they want displayed on their property. In other words, Facebook, Google, and Twitter have the right to moderate content on news feeds, search results, and timelines. The attempted constitutional end-run—threatening to remove immunity for third-party content unrelated to political bias, like defamation and other tortious acts, unless social media platforms give up their right to editorial discretion over political speech—is just as unconstitutional as directly imposing “fairness” requirements on social media platforms.

The Supreme Court has held that Congress may not leverage a government benefit to regulate a speech interest outside of the benefit’s scope. This is called the unconstitutional conditions doctrine. It basically delineates the level of regulation the government can undertake through subsidizing behavior. The government can’t condition a government benefit on giving up editorial discretion over political speech.

The point of Section 230 immunity is to remedy the moderator’s dilemma set up by Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy, which held that if a platform chose to moderate third-party speech at all, they would be liable for what was not removed. Section 230 is not about compelling political neutrality on platforms, because it can’t be consistent with the First Amendment. Civil immunity for third-party speech online is an important benefit for social media platforms because it holds they are not liable for the acts of third-parties, with limited exceptions. Without it, platforms would restrict opportunities for third-parties to post out of fear of liability. 

In sum, the government may not condition enjoyment of a government benefit upon giving up a constitutionally protected right. Section 230 immunity is a clear government benefit. The right to editorial discretion is clearly protected by the First Amendment. Because the entire point of conservative Section 230 reform efforts is to compel social media platforms to carry speech they otherwise desire to remove, it fails this basic test.

Conclusion

Fundamentally, the conservative push to reform Section 230 in response to the alleged anti-conservative bias of major social media platforms is not about policy. Really, it’s about waging a culture war against the perceived “liberal elites” from Silicon Valley, just as there is an ongoing culture war against perceived “liberal elites” in the mainstream media, Hollywood, and academia. But fighting this culture war is not worth giving up conservative principles of free speech, limited government, and free markets.

In Constitutional Law, Facebook, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, First Amendment, Google, Platforms, Regulation, Telecommunications, Truth on the Market, Twitter , , , , , , ,
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Conservatism and the Section 230 Debate: Applying First Principles

Ben Sperry —  30 September 2020

Over at the Federalist Society’s blog, there has been an ongoing debate about what to do about Section 230. While there has long-been variety in what we call conservatism in the United States, the most prominent strains have agreed on at least the following: Constitutionally limited government, free markets, and prudence in policy-making. You would think all of these values would be important in the Section 230 debate. It seems, however, that some are willing to throw these principles away in pursuit of a temporary political victory over perceived “Big Tech censorship.” 

Constitutionally Limited Government: Congress Shall Make No Law

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution states: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.” Originalists on the Supreme Court have noted that this makes clear that the Constitution protects against state action, not private action. In other words, the Constitution protects a negative conception of free speech, not a positive conception.

Despite this, some conservatives believe that Section 230 should be about promoting First Amendment values by mandating private entities are held to the same standards as the government. 

For instance, in his Big Tech and the Whole First Amendment, Craig Parshall of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) stated:

What better example of objective free speech standards could we have than those First Amendment principles decided by justices appointed by an elected president and confirmed by elected members of the Senate, applying the ideals laid down by our Founders? I will take those over the preferences of brilliant computer engineers any day.

In other words, he thinks Section 230 should be amended to only give Big Tech the “subsidy” of immunity if it commits to a First Amendment-like editorial regime. To defend the constitutionality of such “restrictions on Big Tech”, he points to the Turner intermediate scrutiny standard, in which the Supreme Court upheld must-carry provisions against cable networks. In particular, Parshall latches on to the “bottleneck monopoly” language from the case to argue that Big Tech is similarly situated to cable providers at the time of the case.

Turner, however, turned more on the “special characteristics of the cable medium” that gave it the bottleneck power than the market power itself. As stated by the Supreme Court:

When an individual subscribes to cable, the physical connection between the television set and the cable network gives the cable operator bottleneck, or gatekeeper, control over most (if not all) of the television programming that is channeled into the subscriber’s home. Hence, simply by virtue of its ownership of the essential pathway for cable speech, a cable operator can prevent its subscribers from obtaining access to programming it chooses to exclude. A cable operator, unlike speakers in other media, can thus silence the voice of competing speakers with a mere flick of the switch.

Turner v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 656 (1994).

None of the Big Tech companies has the comparable ability to silence competing speakers with a flick of the switch. In fact, the relationship goes the other way on the Internet. Users can (and do) use multiple Big Tech companies’ services, as well as those of competitors which are not quite as big. Users are the ones who can switch with a click or a swipe. There is no basis for treating Big Tech companies any differently than other First Amendment speakers.

Like newspapers, Big Tech companies must use their editorial discretion to determine what is displayed and where. Just like those newspapers, Big Tech has the First Amendment right to editorial discretion. This, not Section 230, is the bedrock law that gives Big Tech companies the right to remove content.

Thus, when Rachel Bovard of the Internet Accountability Project argues that the FCC should remove the ability of tech platforms to engage in viewpoint discrimination, she makes a serious error in arguing it is Section 230 that gives them the right to remove content.

Immediately upon noting that the NTIA petition seeks clarification on the relationship between (c)(1) and (c)(2), Bovard moves right to concern over the removal of content. “Unfortunately, embedded in that section [(c)(2)] is a catch-all phrase, ‘otherwise objectionable,’ that gives tech platforms discretion to censor anything that they deem ‘otherwise objectionable.’ Such broad language lends itself in practice to arbitrariness.” 

In order for CDA 230 to “give[] tech platforms discretion to censor,” they would have to not have that discretion absent CDA 230. Bovard totally misses the point of the First Amendment argument, stating:

Yet DC’s tech establishment frequently rejects this argument, choosing instead to focus on the First Amendment right of corporations to suppress whatever content they so choose, never acknowledging that these choices, when made at scale, have enormous ramifications. . . . 

But this argument intentionally sidesteps the fact that Sec. 230 is not required by the First Amendment, and that its application to tech platforms privileges their First Amendment behavior in a unique way among other kinds of media corporations. Newspapers also have a First Amendment right to publish what they choose—but they are subject to defamation and libel laws for content they write, or merely publish. Media companies also make First Amendment decisions subject to a thicket of laws and regulations that do not similarly encumber tech platforms.

There is the merest kernel of truth in the lines quoted above. Newspapers are indeed subject to defamation and libel laws for what they publish. But, as should be obvious, liability for publication entails actually publishing something. And what some conservatives are concerned about is platforms’ ability to not publish something: to take down conservative content.

It might be simpler if the First Amendment treated published speech and unpublished speech the same way. But it doesn’t. One can be liable for what one speaks, writes, or publishes on behalf of others. Indeed, even with the full protection of the First Amendment, there is no question that newspapers can be held responsible for delicts caused by content they publish. But no newspaper has ever been held responsible for anything they didn’t publish.

Free Markets: Competition as the Bulwark Against Abuses, not Regulation

Conservatives have long believed in the importance of property rights, exchange, and the power of the free market to promote economic growth. Competition is seen as the protector of the consumer, not big government regulators. In the latter half of the twentieth century into the twenty-first century, conservatives have fought for capitalism over socialism, free markets over regulation, and competition over cronyism. But in the name of combating anti-conservative bias online, they are willing to throw these principles away.

The bedrock belief in the right of property owners to decide the terms of how they want to engage with others is fundamental to American conservatism. As stated by none other than Bovard (along with co-author Jim Demint in their book Conservative: Knowing What to Keep):

Capitalism is nothing more or less than the extension of individual freedom from the political and cultural realms to the economy. Just as government isn’t supposed to tell you how to pray, or what to think, or what sports teams to follow or books to read, it’s not supposed to tell you what to do with your own money and property.

Conservatives normally believe that it is the free choices of consumers and producers in the marketplace that maximize consumer welfare, rather than the choices of politicians and bureaucrats. Competition, in other words, is what protects us from abuses in the marketplace. Again as Bovard and Demint rightly put it:

Under the free enterprise system, money is not redistributed by a central government bureau. It goes wherever people see value. Those who create value are rewarded which then signals to the rest of the economy to up their game. It’s continuous democracy.

To get around this, both Parshall and Bovard make much of the “market dominance” of tech platforms. The essays take the position that tech platforms have nearly unassailable monopoly power which makes them unaccountable. Bovard claims that “mega-corporations have as much power as the government itself—and in some ways, more power, because theirs is unchecked and unaccountable.” Parshall even connects this to antitrust law, stating:  

This brings us to another kind of innovation, one that’s hidden from the public view. It has to do with how Big Tech companies use both algorithms plus human review during content moderation. This review process has resulted in the targeting, suppression, or down-ranking of primarily conservative content. As such, this process, should it continue, should be considered a kind of suppressive “innovation” in a quasi-antitrust analysis.

How the process harms “consumer welfare” is obvious. A more competitive market could produce social media platforms designing more innovational content moderation systems that honor traditional free speech and First Amendment norms while still offering features and connectivity akin to the huge players.

Antitrust law, in theory, would be a good way to handle issues of market power and consumer harm that results from non-price effects. But it is difficult to see how antitrust could handle the issue of political bias well:

Just as with privacy and other product qualities, the analysis becomes increasingly complex first when tradeoffs between price and quality are introduced, and then even more so when tradeoffs between what different consumer groups perceive as quality is added. In fact, it is more complex than privacy. All but the most exhibitionistic would prefer more to less privacy, all other things being equal. But with political media consumption, most would prefer to have more of what they want to read available, even if it comes at the expense of what others may want. There is no easy way to understand what consumer welfare means in a situation where one group’s preferences need to come at the expense of another’s in moderation decisions.

Neither antitrust nor quasi-antitrust regimes are well-suited to dealing with the perceived harm of anti-conservative bias. However unfulfilling this is to some conservatives, competition and choice are better answers to perceived political bias than the heavy hand of government. 

Prudence: Awareness of Unintended Consequences

Another bedrock principle of conservatism is to be aware of unintended consequences when making changes to long-standing laws and policies. In regulatory matters, cost-benefit analysis is employed to evaluate whether policies are improving societal outcomes. Using economic thinking to understand the likely responses to changes in regulation is fundamental to American conservatism. Or as Bovard and Demint’s book title suggests, conservatism is about knowing what to keep. 

Bovard has argued that since conservatism is a set of principles, not a dogmatic ideology, it can be in favor of fighting against the collectivism of Big Tech companies imposing their political vision upon the world. Conservatism, in this Kirkian sense, doesn’t require particular policy solutions. But this analysis misses what has worked about Section 230 and how the very tech platforms she decries have greatly benefited society. Prudence means understanding what has worked and only changing what has worked in a way that will improve upon it.

The benefits of Section 230 immunity in promoting platforms for third-party speech are clear. It is not an overstatement to say that Section 230 contains “The Twenty-Six Words that Created the Internet.” It is important to note that Section 230 is not only available to Big Tech companies. It is available to all online platforms who host third-party speech. Any reform efforts at Section 230 must know what to keep.In a sense, Section (c)(1) of Section 230 does, indeed, provide greater protection for published content online than the First Amendment on its own would offer: it extends the First Amendment’s permissible scope of published content for which an online service cannot be held liable to include otherwise actionable third-party content.

But let’s be clear about the extent of this protection. It doesn’t protect anything a platform itself publishes, or even anything in which it has a significant hand in producing. Why don’t offline newspapers enjoy this “handout” (though the online versions clearly do for comments)? Because they don’t need it, and because — yes, it’s true — it comes at a cost. How much third-party content would newspapers publish without significant input from the paper itself if only they were freed from the risk of liability for such content? None? Not much? The New York Times didn’t build and sustain its reputation on the slapdash publication of unedited ramblings by random commentators. But what about classifieds? Sure. There would be more classified ads, presumably. More to the point, newspapers would exert far less oversight over the classified ads, saving themselves the expense of moderating this one, small corner of their output.

There is a cost to traditional newspapers from being denied the extended protections of Section 230. But the effect is less third-party content in parts of the paper that they didn’t wish to have the same level of editorial control. If Section 230 is a “subsidy” as critics put it, then what it is subsidizing is the hosting of third-party speech. 

The Internet would look vastly different if it was just the online reproduction of the offline world. If tech platforms were responsible for all third-party speech to the degree that newspapers are for op-eds, then they would likely moderate it to the same degree, making sure there is nothing which could expose them to liability before publishing. This means there would be far less third-party speech on the Internet.

In fact, it could be argued that it is smaller platforms who would be most affected by the repeal of Section 230 immunity. Without it, it is likely that only the biggest tech platforms would have the necessary resources to dedicate to content moderation in order to avoid liability.

Proposed Section 230 reforms will likely have unintended consequences in reducing third-party speech altogether, including conservative speech. For instance, a few bills have proposed only allowing moderation for reasons defined by statute if the platform has an “objectively reasonable belief” that the speech fits under such categories. This would likely open up tech platforms to lawsuits over the meaning of “objectively reasonable belief” that could deter them from wanting to host third-party speech altogether. Similarly, lawsuits for “selective enforcement” of a tech platform’s terms of service could lead them to either host less speech or change their terms of service.

This could actually exacerbate the issue of political bias. Allegedly anti-conservative tech platforms could respond to a “good faith” requirement in enforcing its terms of service by becoming explicitly biased. If the terms of service of a tech platform state grounds which would exclude conservative speech, a requirement of “good faith” enforcement of those terms of service will do nothing to prevent the bias. 

Conclusion

Conservatives would do well to return to their first principles in the Section 230 debate. The Constitution’s First Amendment, respect for free markets and property rights, and appreciation for unintended consequences in changing tech platform incentives all caution against the current proposals to condition Section 230 immunity on platforms giving up editorial discretion. Whether or not tech platforms engage in anti-conservative bias, there’s nothing conservative about abdicating these principles for the sake of political expediency.

In Amazon, Constitutional Law, Facebook, First Amendment, Platforms, Telecommunications, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , , ,
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Senator Hawley’s Unconstitutional, Unconservative Attack on the Internet

Ben Sperry —  26 June 2020

Twitter’s decision to begin fact-checking the President’s tweets caused a long-simmering distrust between conservatives and online platforms to boil over late last month. This has led some conservatives to ask whether Section 230, the ‘safe harbour’ law that protects online platforms from certain liability stemming from content posted on their websites by users, is allowing online platforms to unfairly target conservative speech. 

In response to Twitter’s decision, along with an Executive Order released by the President that attacked Section 230, Senator Josh Hawley (R – MO) offered a new bill targeting online platforms, the “Limiting Section 230 Immunity to Good Samaritans Act”. This would require online platforms to engage in “good faith” moderation according to clearly stated terms of service – in effect, restricting Section 230’s protections to online platforms deemed to have done enough to moderate content ‘fairly’.  

While seemingly a sensible standard, if enacted, this approach would violate the First Amendment as an unconstitutional condition to a government benefit, thereby  undermining long-standing conservative principles and the ability of conservatives to be treated fairly online. 

There is established legal precedent that Congress may not grant benefits on conditions that violate Constitutionally-protected rights. In Rumsfeld v. FAIR, the Supreme Court stated that a law that withheld funds from universities that did not allow military recruiters on campus would be unconstitutional if it constrained those universities’ First Amendment rights to free speech. Since the First Amendment protects the right to editorial discretion, including the right of online platforms to make their own decisions on moderation, Congress may not condition Section 230 immunity on platforms taking a certain editorial stance it has dictated. 

Aware of this precedent, the bill attempts to circumvent the obstacle by taking away Section 230 immunity for issues unrelated to anti-conservative bias in moderation. Specifically, Senator Hawley’s bill attempts to condition immunity for platforms on having terms of service for content moderation, and making them subject to lawsuits if they do not act in “good faith” in policing them. 

It’s not even clear that the bill would do what Senator Hawley wants it to. The “good faith” standard only appears to apply to the enforcement of an online platform’s terms of service. It can’t, under the First Amendment, actually dictate what those terms of service say. So an online platform could, in theory, explicitly state in their terms of service that they believe some forms of conservative speech are “hate speech” they will not allow.

Mandating terms of service on content moderation is arguably akin to disclosures like labelling requirements, because it makes clear to platforms’ customers what they’re getting. There are, however, some limitations under the commercial speech doctrine as to what government can require. Under National Institute of Family & Life Advocates v. Becerra, a requirement for terms of service outlining content moderation policies would be upheld unless “unjustified or unduly burdensome.” A disclosure mandate alone would not be unconstitutional. 

But it is clear from the statutory definition of “good faith” that Senator Hawley is trying to overwhelm online platforms with lawsuits on the grounds that they have enforced these rules selectively and therefore not in “good faith”.

These “selective enforcement” lawsuits would make it practically impossible for platforms to moderate content at all, because they would open them up to being sued for any moderation, including moderation  completely unrelated to any purported anti-conservative bias. Any time a YouTuber was aggrieved about a video being pulled down as too sexually explicit, for example, they could file suit and demand that Youtube release information on whether all other similarly situated users were treated the same way. Any time a post was flagged on Facebook, for example for engaging in online bullying or for spreading false information, it could similarly lead to the same situation. 

This would end up requiring courts to act as the arbiter of decency and truth in order to even determine whether online platforms are “selectively enforcing” their terms of service.

Threatening liability for all third-party content is designed to force online platforms to give up moderating content on a perceived political basis. The result will be far less content moderation on a whole range of other areas. It is precisely this scenario that Section 230 was designed to prevent, in order to encourage platforms to moderate things like pornography that would otherwise proliferate on their sites, without exposing themselves to endless legal challenge.

It is likely that this would be unconstitutional as well. Forcing online platforms to choose between exercising their First Amendment rights to editorial discretion and retaining the benefits of Section 230 is exactly what the “unconstitutional conditions” jurisprudence is about. 

This is why conservatives have long argued the government has no business compelling speech. They opposed the “fairness doctrine” which required that radio stations provide a “balanced discussion”, and in practice allowed courts or federal agencies to determine content  until President Reagan overturned it. Later, President Bush appointee and then-FTC Chairman Tim Muris rejected a complaint against Fox News for its “Fair and Balanced” slogan, stating:

I am not aware of any instance in which the Federal Trade Commission has investigated the slogan of a news organization. There is no way to evaluate this petition without evaluating the content of the news at issue. That is a task the First Amendment leaves to the American people, not a government agency.

And recently conservatives were arguing businesses like Masterpiece Cakeshop should not be compelled to exercise their First Amendment rights against their will. All of these cases demonstrate once the state starts to try to stipulate what views can and cannot be broadcast by private organisations, conservatives will be the ones who suffer.

Senator Hawley’s bill fails to acknowledge this. Worse, it fails to live up to the Constitution, and would trample over the rights to freedom of speech that it gives. Conservatives should reject it.

In Constitutional Law, Facebook, Federal Trade Commission, First Amendment, Platforms, Truth on the Market, Twitter , , , , , , , , ,
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First Amendment Conflict of Visions Redux: The Case of Facebook’s Oversight Board and the Threat of Antitrust Action

Ben Sperry —  12 May 2020

In the wake of the launch of Facebook’s content oversight board, Republican Senator Josh Hawley and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, among others, have taken to Twitter to levy criticisms at the firm and, in the process, demonstrate just how far the Right has strayed from its first principles around free speech and private property. For his part, Commissioner Carr’s thread makes the case that the members of the board are highly partisan and mostly left-wing and can’t be trusted with the responsibility of oversight. While Senator Hawley took the approach that the Board’s very existence is just further evidence of the need to break Facebook up. 

Both Hawley and Carr have been lauded in rightwing circles, but in reality their positions contradict conservative notions of the free speech and private property protections given by the First Amendment.  

This blog post serves as a sequel to a post I wrote last year here at TOTM explaining how There’s nothing “conservative” about Trump’s views on free speech and the regulation of social media. As I wrote there:

I have noted in several places before that there is a conflict of visions when it comes to whether the First Amendment protects a negative or positive conception of free speech. For those unfamiliar with the distinction: it comes from philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who identified negative liberty as freedom from external interference, and positive liberty as freedom to do something, including having the power and resources necessary to do that thing. Discussions of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech often elide over this distinction.

With respect to speech, the negative conception of liberty recognizes that individual property owners can control what is said on their property, for example. To force property owners to allow speakers/speech on their property that they don’t desire would actually be a violation of their liberty — what the Supreme Court calls “compelled speech.” The First Amendment, consistent with this view, generally protects speech from government interference (with very few, narrow exceptions), while allowing private regulation of speech (again, with very few, narrow exceptions).

Commissioner Carr’s complaint and Senator Hawley’s antitrust approach of breaking up Facebook has much more in common with the views traditionally held by left-wing Democrats on the need for the government to regulate private actors in order to promote speech interests. Originalists and law & economics scholars, on the other hand, have consistently taken the opposite point of view that the First Amendment protects against government infringement of speech interests, including protecting the right to editorial discretion. While there is clearly a conflict of visions in First Amendment jurisprudence, the conservative (and, in my view, correct) point of view should not be jettisoned by Republicans to achieve short-term political gains.

The First Amendment restricts government action, not private action

The First Amendment, by its very text, only applies to government action: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” This applies to the “State[s]” through the Fourteenth Amendment. There is extreme difficulty in finding any textual hook to say the First Amendment protects against private action, like that of Facebook. 

Originalists have consistently agreed. Most recently, in Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, Justice Kavanaugh—on behalf of the conservative bloc and the Court—wrote:

Ratified in 1791, the First Amendment provides in relevant part that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” Ratified in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment makes the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause applicable against the States: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . .” §1. The text and original meaning of those Amendments, as well as this Court’s longstanding precedents, establish that the Free Speech Clause prohibits only governmental abridgment of speech. The Free Speech Clause does not prohibit private abridgment of speech… In accord with the text and structure of the Constitution, this Court’s state-action doctrine distinguishes the government from individuals and private entities. By enforcing that constitutional boundary between the governmental and the private, the state-action doctrine protects a robust sphere of individual liberty. (Emphasis added).

This was true at the adoption of the First Amendment and remains true today in a high-tech world. Federal district courts have consistently dismissed First Amendment lawsuits against Facebook on the grounds there is no state action. 

For instance, in Nyawba v. Facebook, the plaintiff initiated a civil rights lawsuit against Facebook for restricting his use of the platform. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas dismissed the case, noting 

Because the First Amendment governs only governmental restrictions on speech, Nyabwa has not stated a cause of action against FaceBook… Like his free speech claims, Nyabwa’s claims for violation of his right of association and violation of his due process rights are claims that may be vindicated against governmental actors pursuant to § 1983, but not a private entity such as FaceBook.

Similarly, in Young v. Facebook, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California rejected a claim that Facebook violated the First Amendment by deactivating the plaintiff’s Facebook page. The court declined to subject Facebook to the First Amendment analysis, stating that “because Young has not alleged any action under color of state law, she fails to state a claim under § 1983.”

The First Amendment restricts antitrust actions against Facebook, not Facebook’s editorial discretion over its platform

Far from restricting Facebook, the First Amendment actually restricts government actions aimed at platforms like Facebook when they engage in editorial discretion by moderating content. If an antitrust plaintiff was to act on the impulse to “break up” Facebook because of alleged political bias in its editorial discretion, the lawsuit would be running headlong into the First Amendment’s protections.

There is no basis for concluding online platforms do not have editorial discretion under the law. In fact, the position of Facebook here is very similar to the newspaper in Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, in which the Supreme Court considered a state law giving candidates for public office a right to reply in newspapers to editorials written about them. The Florida Supreme Court upheld the statute, finding it furthered the “broad societal interest in the free flow of information to the public.” The U.S. Supreme Court, despite noting the level of concentration in the newspaper industry, nonetheless reversed. The Court explicitly found the newspaper had a First Amendment right to editorial discretion:

The choice of material to go into a newspaper, and the decisions made as to limitations on the size and content of the paper, and treatment of public issues and public officials — whether fair or unfair — constitute the exercise of editorial control and judgment. It has yet to be demonstrated how governmental regulation of this crucial process can be exercised consistent with First Amendment guarantees of a free press as they have evolved to this time. 

Online platforms have the same First Amendment protections for editorial discretion. For instance, in both Search King v. Google and Langdon v. Google, two different federal district courts ruled Google’s search results are subject to First Amendment protections, both citing Tornillo. 

In Zhang v. Baidu.com, another district court went so far as to grant a Chinese search engine the right to editorial discretion in limiting access to democracy movements in China. The court found that the search engine “inevitably make[s] editorial judgments about what information (or kinds of information) to include in the results and how and where to display that information.” Much like the search engine in Zhang, Facebook is clearly making editorial judgments about what information shows up in newsfeed and where to display it. 

None of this changes because the generally applicable law is antitrust rather than some other form of regulation. For instance, in Tornillo, the Supreme Court took pains to distinguish the case from an earlier antitrust case against newspapers, Associated Press v. United States, which found that there was no broad exemption from antitrust under the First Amendment.

The Court foresaw the problems relating to government-enforced access as early as its decision in Associated Press v. United States, supra. There it carefully contrasted the private “compulsion to print” called for by the Association’s bylaws with the provisions of the District Court decree against appellants which “does not compel AP or its members to permit publication of anything which their `reason’ tells them should not be published.”

In other words, the Tornillo and Associated Press establish the government may not compel speech through regulation, including an antitrust remedy. 

Once it is conceded that there is a speech interest here, the government must justify the use of antitrust law to compel Facebook to display the speech of users in the newsfeeds of others under the strict scrutiny test of the First Amendment. In other words, the use of antitrust law must be narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest. Even taking for granted that there may be a compelling government interest in facilitating a free and open platform (which is by no means certain), it is clear that this would not be narrowly tailored action. 

First, “breaking up” Facebook is clearly overbroad as compared to the goal of promoting free speech on the platform. There is no need to break it up just because it has an Oversight Board that engages in editorial responsibilities. There are many less restrictive means, including market competition, which has greatly expanded consumer choice for communications and connections. Second, antitrust does not even really have a remedy for free speech issues complained of here, as it would require courts to engage in long-term oversight and engage in compelled speech foreclosed by Associated Press. 

Note that this makes good sense from a law & economics perspective. Platforms like Facebook should be free to regulate the speech on their platforms as they see fit and consumers are free to decide which platforms they wish to use based upon that information. While there are certainly network effects to social media, the plethora of options currently available with low switching costs suggests that there is no basis for antitrust action against Facebook because consumers are unable to speak. In other words, the least restrictive means test of the First Amendment is best fulfilled by market competition in this case.

If there were a basis for antitrust intervention against Facebook, either through merger review or as a standalone monopoly claim, the underlying issue would be harm to competition. While this would have implications for speech concerns (which may be incorporated into an analysis through quality-adjusted price), it is inconceivable how an antitrust remedy could be formed on speech issues consistent with the First Amendment. 

Conclusion

Despite now well-worn complaints by so-called conservatives in and out of the government about the baneful influence of Facebook and other Big Tech companies, the First Amendment forecloses government actions to violate the editorial discretion of these companies. Even if Commissioner Carr is right, this latest call for antitrust enforcement against Facebook by Senator Hawley should be rejected for principled conservative reasons.

In Amazon, China, Constitutional Law, Facebook, First Amendment, Google, International, Law & Economics, Platforms, Truth on the Market, Twitter , , , , , , , ,
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The Unconstitutionality of the FCC’s Leased Access Rules

Ben Sperry —  24 July 2019

Monday July 22, ICLE filed a regulatory comment arguing the leased access requirements enforced by the FCC are unconstitutional compelled speech that violate the First Amendment. 

When the DC Circuit Court of Appeals last reviewed the constitutionality of leased access rules in Time Warner v. FCC, cable had so-called “bottleneck power” over the marketplace for video programming and, just a few years prior, the Supreme Court had subjected other programming regulations to intermediate scrutiny in Turner v. FCC. 

Intermediate scrutiny is a lower standard than the strict scrutiny usually required for First Amendment claims. Strict scrutiny requires a regulation of speech to be narrowly tailored to a compelling state interest. Intermediate scrutiny only requires a regulation to further an important or substantial governmental interest unrelated to the suppression of free expression, and the incidental restriction speech must be no greater than is essential to the furtherance of that interest.

But, since the decisions in Time Warner and Turner, there have been dramatic changes in the video marketplace (including the rise of the Internet!) and cable no longer has anything like “bottleneck power.” Independent programmers have many distribution options to get content to consumers. Since the justification for intermediate scrutiny is no longer an accurate depiction of the competitive marketplace, the leased rules should be subject to strict scrutiny.

And, if subject to strict scrutiny, the leased access rules would not survive judicial review. Even accepting that there is a compelling governmental interest, the rules are not narrowly tailored to that end. Not only are they essentially obsolete in the highly competitive video distribution marketplace, but antitrust law would be better suited to handle any anticompetitive abuses of market power by cable operators. There is no basis for compelling the cable operators to lease some of their channels to unaffiliated programmers.

Our full comments are here. 

In Constitutional Law, First Amendment, Google, Platforms, Telecommunications, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , ,
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The Third Circuit’s Oberdorf v. Amazon opinion offers a good approach to reining in the worst abuses of Section 230

Gus Hurwitz —  15 July 2019

[Note: A group of 50 academics and 27 organizations, including both myself and ICLE, recently released a statement of principles for lawmakers to consider in discussions of Section 230.]

In a remarkable ruling issued earlier this month, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals held in Oberdorf v. Amazon that, under Pennsylvania products liability law, Amazon could be found liable for a third party vendor’s sale of a defective product via Amazon Marketplace. This ruling comes in the context of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which is broadly understood as immunizing platforms against liability for harmful conduct posted to their platforms by third parties (Section 230 purists may object to myu use of “platform” as approximation for the statute’s term of “interactive computer services”; I address this concern by acknowledging it with this parenthetical). This immunity has long been a bedrock principle of Internet law; it has also long been controversial; and those controversies are very much at the fore of discussion today. 

The response to the opinion has been mixed, to say the least. Eric Goldman, for instance, has asked “are we at the end of online marketplaces?,” suggesting that they “might in the future look like a quaint artifact of the early 21st century.” Kate Klonick, on the other hand, calls the opinion “a brilliant way of both holding tech responsible for harms they perpetuate & making sure we preserve free speech online.”

My own inclination is that both Eric and Kate overstate their respective positions – though neither without reason. The facts of Oberdorf cabin the effects of the holding both to Pennsylvania law and to situations where the platform cannot identify the seller. This suggests that the effects will be relatively limited. 

But, and what I explore in this post, the opinion does elucidate a particular and problematic feature of section 230: that it can be used as a liability shield for harmful conduct. The judges in Oberdorf seem ill-inclined to extend Section 230’s protections to a platform that can easily be used by bad actors as a liability shield. Riffing on this concern, I argue below that Section 230 immunity be proportional to platforms’ ability to reasonably identify speakers using their platforms to engage in harmful speech or conduct.

This idea is developed in more detail in the last section of this post – including responding to the obvious (and overwrought) objections to it. But first it offers some background on Section 230, the Oberdorf and related cases, the Third Circuit’s analysis in Oberdorf, and the recent debates about Section 230. 

Section 230

“Section 230” refers to a portion of the Communications Decency Act that was added to the Communications Act by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, codified at 47 U.S.C. 230. (NB: that’s a sentence that only a communications lawyer could love!) It is widely recognized as – and discussed even by those who disagree with this view as – having been critical to the growth of the modern Internet. As Jeff Kosseff labels it in his recent book, the key provision of section 230 comprises the “26 words that created the Internet.” That section, 230(c)(1), states that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” (For those not familiar with it, Kosseff’s book is worth a read – or for the Cliff’s Notes version see here, here, here, here, here, or here.)

Section 230 was enacted to do two things. First, section (c)(1) makes clear that platforms are not liable for user-generated content. In other words, if a user of Facebook, Amazon, the comments section of a Washington Post article, a restaurant review site, a blog that focuses on the knitting of cat-themed sweaters, or any other “interactive computer service,” posts something for which that user may face legal liability, the platform hosting that user’s speech does not face liability for that speech. 

And second, section (c)(2) makes clear that platforms are free to moderate content uploaded by their users, and that they face no liability for doing so. This section was added precisely to repudiate a case that had held that once a platform (in that case, Prodigy) decided to moderate user-generated content, it undertook an obligation to do so. That case meant that platforms faced a Hobson’s choice: either don’t moderate content and don’t risk liability, or moderate all content and face liability for failure to do so well. There was no middle ground: a platform couldn’t say, for instance, “this one post is particularly problematic, so we are going to take it down – but this doesn’t mean that we are going to pervasively moderate content.”

Together, these two provisions stand generally for the proposition that online platforms are not liable for content created by their users, but they are free to moderate that content without facing liability for doing so. It recognized, on the one hand, that it was impractical (i.e., the Internet economy could not function) to require that platforms moderate all user-generated content, so section (c)(1) says that they don’t need to; but, on the other hand, it recognizes that it is desirable for platforms to moderate problematic content to the best of their ability, so section (c)(2) says that they won’t be punished (i.e., lose the immunity granted by section (c)(1) if they voluntarily elect to moderate content). 

Section 230 is written in broad – and has been interpreted by the courts in even broader – terms. Section (c)(1) says that platforms cannot be held liable for the content generated by their users, full stop. The only exceptions are for copyrighted content and content that violates federal criminal law. There is no “unless it is really bad” exception, or a “the platform may be liable if the user-generated content causes significant tangible harm” exception, or an “unless the platform knows about it” exception, or even an “unless the platform makes money off of and actively facilitates harmful content” exception. So long as the content is generated by the user (not by the platform itself), Section 230 shields the platform from liability. 

Oberdorf v. Amazon

This background leads us to the Third Circuit’s opinion in Oberdorf v. Amazon. The opinion is remarkable because it is one of only a few cases in which a court has, despite Section 230, found a platform liable for the conduct of a third party facilitated through the use of that platform. 

Prior to the Third Circuit’s recent opinion, the best known previous case is the 9th Circuit’s Model Mayhem opinion. In that case, the court found that Model Mayhem, a website that helps match models with modeling jobs, had a duty to warn models about individuals who were known to be using the website to find women to sexually assault. 

It is worth spending another moment on the Model Mayhem opinion before returning to the Third Circuit’s Oberdorf opinion. The crux of the 9th Circuit’s opinion in the Model Mayhem case was that the state of Florida (where the assaults occurred) has a duty-to-warn law, which creates a duty between the platform and the user. This duty to warn was triggered by the case-specific fact that the platform had actual knowledge that two of its users were predatorily using the site to find women to assault. Once triggered, this duty to warn exists between the platform and the user. Because the platform faces liability directly for its failure to warn, it is not shielded by section 230 (which only shields the platform from liability for the conduct of the third parties using the platform to engage in harmful conduct). 

In its opinion, the Third Circuit offered a similar analysis – but in a much broader context. 

The Oberdorf case involves a defective dog leash sold to Ms. Oberdorf by a seller doing business as The Furry Gang on Amazon Marketplace. The leash malfunctioned, hitting Ms. Oberdorf in the face and causing permanent blindness in one eye. When she attempted to sue The Furry Gang, she discovered that they were no longer doing business on Amazon Marketplace – and that Amazon did not have sufficient information about their identity for Ms. Oberdorf to bring suit against them.

Undeterred, Ms. Oberdorf sued Amazon under Pennsylvania product liability law, arguing that Amazon was the seller of the defective leash, so was liable for her injuries. Part of Amazon’s defense was that the actual seller, The Furry Gang, was a user of their Marketplace platform – the sale resulted from the storefront generated by The Furry Gang and merely hosted by Amazon Marketplace. Under this theory, Section 230 would bar Amazon from liability for the sale that resulted from the seller’s user-generated storefront. 

The Third Circuit judges had none of that argument. All three judges agreed that under Pennsylvania law, the products liability relationship existed between Ms. Oberdorf and Amazon, so Section 230 did not apply. The two-judge majority found Amazon liable to Ms. Oberford under this law – the dissenting judge would have found Amazon’s conduct insufficient as a basis for liability.

This opinion, in other words, follows in the footsteps of the Ninth Circuit’s Model Mayhem opinion in holding that state law creates a duty directly between the harmed user and the platform, and that that duty isn’t affected by Section 230. But Oberdorf is potentially much broader in impact than Model Mayhem. States are more likely to have broader product liability laws than duty to warn laws. Even more impactful, product liability laws are generally strict liability laws, whereas duty to warn laws are generally triggered by an actual knowledge requirement.

The Third Circuit’s Focus on Agency and Liability Shields

The understanding of Oberdorf described above is that it is the latest in a developing line of cases holding that claims based on state law duties that require platforms to protect users from third party harms can survive Section 230 defenses. 

But there is another, critical, issue in the background of the case that appears to have affected the court’s thinking – and that, I argue, should be a path forward for Section 230. The judges writing for the Third Circuit majority draw attention to

the extensive record evidence that Amazon fails to vet third-party vendors for amenability to legal process. The first factor [of analysis for application of the state’s products liability law] weighs in favor of strict liability not because The Furry Gang cannot be located and/or may be insolvent, but rather because Amazon enables third-party vendors such as The Furry Gang to structure and/or conceal themselves from liability altogether.

This is important for analysis under the Pennsylvania product liability law, which has a marketing chain provision that allows injured consumers to seek redress up the marketing chain if the direct seller of a defective product is insolvent or otherwise unavailable for suit. But the court’s language focuses on Amazon’s design of Marketplace and the ease with which Marketplace can be used by merchants as a liability shield. 

This focus is unsurprising: the law generally does not allow one party to shield another from liability without assuming liability for the shielded party’s conduct. Indeed, this is pretty basic vicarious liability, agency, first-year law school kind of stuff. It is unsurprising that judges would balk at an argument that Amazon could design its platform in a way that makes it impossible for harmed parties to sue a tortfeasor without Amazon in turn assuming liability for any potentially tortious conduct. 

Section 230 is having a bad day

As most who have read this far are almost certainly aware, Section 230 is a big, controversial, political mess right now. Politicians from Josh Hawley to Nancy Pelosi have suggested curtailing Section 230. President Trump just held his “Social Media Summit.” And countries around the world are imposing near-impossible obligations on platforms to remove or otherwise moderate potentially problematic content – obligations that are anathema to Section 230 as they increasingly reflect and influence discussions in the United States. 

To be clear, almost all of the ideas floating around about how to change Section 230 are bad. That is an understatement: they are potentially devastating to the Internet – both to the economic ecosystem and the social ecosystem that have developed and thrived largely because of Section 230.

To be clear, there is also a lot of really, disgustingly, problematic content online – and social media platforms, in particular, have facilitated a great deal of legitimately problematic conduct. But deputizing them to police that conduct and to make real-time decisions about speech that is impossible to evaluate in real time is not a solution to these problems. And to the extent that some platforms may be able to do these things, the novel capabilities of a few platforms to obligations for all would only serve to create entry barriers for smaller platforms and to stifle innovation. 

This is why a group of 50 academics and 27 organizations released a statement of principles last week to inform lawmakers about key considerations to take into account when discussing how Section 230 may be changed. The purpose of these principles is to acknowledge that some change to Section 230 may be appropriate – may even be needed at this juncture – but that such changes should be careful and modest, carefully considered so as to not disrupt the vast benefits for society that Section 230 has made possible and is needed to keep vital.

The Third Circuit offers a Third Way on 230 

The Third Circuit’s opinion offers a modest way that Section 230 could be changed – and, I would say, improved – to address some of the real harms that it enables without undermining the important purposes that it serves. To wit, Section 230’s immunity could be attenuated by an obligation to facilitate the identification of users on that platform, subject to legal process, in proportion to the size and resources available to the platform, the technological feasibility of such identification, the foreseeability of the platform being used to facilitate harmful speech or conduct, and the expected importance (as defined from a First Amendment perspective) of speech on that platform.

In other words, if there are readily available ways to establish some form of identify for users – for instance, by email addresses on widely-used platforms, social media accounts, logs of IP addresses – and there is reason to expect that users of the platform could be subject to suit – for instance, because they’re engaged in commercial activities or the purpose of the platform is to provide a forum for speech that is likely to legally actionable – then the platform needs to be reasonably able to provide reasonable information about speakers subject to legal action in order to avail itself of any Section 230 defense. Stated otherwise, platforms need to be able to reasonably comply with so-called unmasking subpoenas issued in the civil context to the extent such compliance is feasible for the platform’s size, sophistication, resources, &c.

An obligation such as this would have been at best meaningless and at worst devastating at the time Section 230 was adopted. But 25 years later, the Internet is a very different place. Most users have online accounts – email addresses, social media profiles, &c – that can serve as some form of online identification.

More important, we now have evidence of a growing range of harmful conduct and speech that can occur online, and of platforms that use Section 230 as a shield to protect those engaging in such speech or conduct from litigation. Such speakers are clear bad actors who are clearly abusing Section 230 facilitate bad conduct. They should not be able to do so.

Many of the traditional proponents of Section 230 will argue that this idea is a non-starter. Two of the obvious objections are that it would place a disastrous burden on platforms especially start-ups and smaller platforms, and that it would stifle socially valuable anonymous speech. Both are valid concerns, but also accommodated by this proposal.

The concern that modest user-identification requirements would be disastrous to platforms made a great deal of sense in the early years of the Internet, both the law and technology around user identification were less developed. Today, there is a wide-range of low-cost, off-the-shelf, techniques to establish a user’s identity to some level of precision – from logging of IP addresses, to requiring a valid email address to an established provider, registration with an established social media identity, or even SMS-authentication. None of these is perfect; they present a range of cost and sophistication to implement and a range of offer a range of ease of identification.

The proposal offered here is not that platforms be able to identify their speaker – it’s better described as that they not deliberately act as a liability shield. It’s requirement is that platforms implement reasonable identity technology in proportion to their size, sophistication, and the likelihood of harmful speech on their platforms. A small platform for exchanging bread recipes would be fine to maintain a log of usernames and IP addresses. A large, well-resourced, platform hosting commercial activity (such as Amazon Marketplace) may be expected to establish a verified identity for the merchants it hosts. A forum known for hosting hate speech would be expected to have better identification records – it is entirely foreseeable that its users would be subject to legal action. A forum of support groups for marginalized and disadvantaged communities would face a lower obligation than a forum of similar size and sophistication known for hosting legally-actionable speech.

This proportionality approach also addresses the anonymous speech concern. Anonymous speech is often of great social and political value. But anonymity can also be used for, and as made amply clear in contemporary online discussion can bring out the worst of, speech that is socially and politically destructive. Tying Section 230’s immunity to the nature of speech on a platform gives platforms an incentive to moderate speech – to make sure that anonymous speech is used for its good purposes while working to prevent its use for its lesser purposes. This is in line with one of the defining goals of Section 230. 

The challenge, of course, has been how to do this without exposing platforms to potentially crippling liability if they fail to effectively moderate speech. This is why Section 230 took the approach that it did, allowing but not requiring moderation. This proposal’s user-identification requirement shifts that balance from “allowing but not requiring” to “encouraging but not requiring.” Platforms are under no legal obligation to moderate speech, but if they elect not to, they need to make reasonable efforts to ensure that their users engaging in problematic speech can be identified by parties harmed by their speech or conduct. In an era in which sites like 8chan expressly don’t maintain user logs in order to shield themselves from known harmful speech, and Amazon Marketplace allows sellers into the market who cannot be sued by injured consumers, this is a common-sense change to the law.

It would also likely have substantially the same effect as other proposals for Section 230 reform, but without the significant challenges those suggestions face. For instance, Danielle Citron & Ben Wittes have proposed that courts should give substantive meaning to Section 230’s “Good Samaritan” language in section (c)(2)’s subheading, or, in the alternative, that section (c)(1)’s immunity require that platforms “take[] reasonable steps to prevent unlawful uses of its services.” This approach is problematic on both First Amendment and process grounds, because it requires courts to evaluate the substantive content and speech decisions that platforms engage in. It effectively tasks platforms with undertaking the task of the courts in developing a (potentially platform-specific) law of content moderations – and threatens them with a loss of Section 230 immunity is they fail effectively to do so.

By contrast, this proposal would allow, and even encourage, platforms to engage in such moderation, but offers them a gentler, more binary, and procedurally-focused safety valve to maintain their Section 230 immunity. If a user engages in harmful speech or conduct and the platform can assist plaintiffs and courts in bringing legal action against the user in the courts, then the “moderation” process occurs in the courts through ordinary civil litigation. 

To be sure, there are still some uncomfortable and difficult substantive questions – has a platform implemented reasonable identification technologies, is the speech on the platform of the sort that would be viewed as requiring (or otherwise justifying protection of the speaker’s) anonymity, and the like. But these are questions of a type that courts are accustomed to, if somewhat uncomfortable with, addressing. They are, for instance, the sort of issues that courts address in the context of civil unmasking subpoenas.

This distinction is demonstrated in the comparison between Sections 230 and 512. Section 512 is an exception to 230 for copyrighted materials that was put into place by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It takes copyrighted materials outside of the scope of Section 230 and requires platforms to put in place a “notice and takedown” regime in order to be immunized for hosting copyrighted content uploaded by users. This regime has proved controversial, among other reasons, because it effectively requires platforms to act as courts in deciding whether a given piece of content is subject to a valid copyright claim. The Citron/Wittes proposal effectively subjects platforms to a similar requirement in order to maintain Section 230 immunity; the identity-technology proposal, on the other hand, offers an intermediate requirement.

Indeed, the principal effect of this intermediate requirement is to maintain the pre-platform status quo. IRL, if one person says or does something harmful to another person, their recourse is in court. This is true in public and in private; it’s true if the harmful speech occurs on the street, in a store, in a public building, or a private home. If Donny defames Peggy in Hank’s house, Peggy sues Donny in court; she doesn’t sue Hank, and she doesn’t sue Donny in the court of Hank. To the extent that we think of platforms as the fora where people interact online – as the “place” of the Internet – this proposal is intended to ensure that those engaging in harmful speech or conduct online can be hauled into court by the aggrieved parties, and to facilitate the continued development of platforms without disrupting the functioning of this system of adjudication.

Conclusion

Section 230 is, and has long been, the most important and one of the most controversial laws of the Internet. It is increasingly under attack today from a disparate range of voices across the political and geographic spectrum — voices that would overwhelming reject Section 230’s pro-innovation treatment of platforms and in its place attempt to co-opt those platforms as government-compelled (and, therefore, controlled) content moderators. 

In light of these demands, academics and organizations that understand the importance of Section 230, but also recognize the increasing pressures to amend it, have recently released a statement of principles for legislators to consider as they think about changes to Section 230.

Into this fray, the Third Circuit’s opinion in Oberdorf offers a potential change: making Section 230’s immunity for platforms proportional to their ability to reasonably identify speakers that use the platform to engage in harmful speech or conduct. This would restore the status quo ante, under which intermediaries and agents cannot be used as litigation shields without themselves assuming responsibility for any harmful conduct. This shielding effect was not an intended goal of Section 230, and it has been the cause of Section 230’s worst abuses. It was allowed at the time Section 230 was adopted because the used-identity requirements such as proposed here would not have been technologically reasonable at the time Section 230 was adopted. But technology has changed and, today, these requirements would impose only a moderate  burden on platforms today

In Amazon, Antitrust & Competition, Constitutional Law, Copyright, Facebook, Federal Trade Commission, First Amendment, Google, Intellectual Property, Platforms, Regulation, Section 5, Telecommunications, Truth on the Market, Twitter, Tying , , , , , , , ,
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There’s nothing “conservative” about Trump’s views on free speech and the regulation of social media

Ben Sperry —  12 July 2019

Yesterday was President Trump’s big “Social Media Summit” where he got together with a number of right-wing firebrands to decry the power of Big Tech to censor conservatives online. According to the Wall Street Journal: 

Mr. Trump attacked social-media companies he says are trying to silence individuals and groups with right-leaning views, without presenting specific evidence. He said he was directing his administration to “explore all legislative and regulatory solutions to protect free speech and the free speech of all Americans.”

“Big Tech must not censor the voices of the American people,” Mr. Trump told a crowd of more than 100 allies who cheered him on. “This new technology is so important and it has to be used fairly.”

Despite the simplistic narrative tying President Trump’s vision of the world to conservatism, there is nothing conservative about his views on the First Amendment and how it applies to social media companies.

I have noted in several places before that there is a conflict of visions when it comes to whether the First Amendment protects a negative or positive conception of free speech. For those unfamiliar with the distinction: it comes from philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who identified negative liberty as freedom from external interference, and positive liberty as freedom to do something, including having the power and resources necessary to do that thing. Discussions of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech often elide over this distinction.

With respect to speech, the negative conception of liberty recognizes that individual property owners can control what is said on their property, for example. To force property owners to allow speakers/speech on their property that they don’t desire would actually be a violation of their liberty — what the Supreme Court calls “compelled speech.” The First Amendment, consistent with this view, generally protects speech from government interference (with very few, narrow exceptions), while allowing private regulation of speech (again, with very few, narrow exceptions).

Contrary to the original meaning of the First Amendment and the weight of Supreme Court precedent, President Trump’s view of the First Amendment is that it protects a positive conception of liberty — one under which the government, in order to facilitate its conception of “free speech,” has the right and even the duty to impose restrictions on how private actors regulate speech on their property (in this case, social media companies). 

But if Trump’s view were adopted, discretion as to what is necessary to facilitate free speech would be left to future presidents and congresses, undermining the bedrock conservative principle of the Constitution as a shield against government regulation, all falsely in the name of protecting speech. This is counter to the general approach of modern conservatism (but not, of course, necessarily Republicanism) in the United States, including that of many of President Trump’s own judicial and agency appointees. Indeed, it is actually more consistent with the views of modern progressives — especially within the FCC.

For instance, the current conservative bloc on the Supreme Court (over the dissent of the four liberal Justices) recently reaffirmed the view that the First Amendment applies only to state action in Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck. The opinion, written by Trump-appointee, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, states plainly that:

Ratified in 1791, the First Amendment provides in relevant part that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” Ratified in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment makes the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause applicable against the States: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . .” §1. The text and original meaning of those Amendments, as well as this Court’s longstanding precedents, establish that the Free Speech Clause prohibits only governmental abridgment of speech. The Free Speech Clause does not prohibit private abridgment of speech… In accord with the text and structure of the Constitution, this Court’s state-action doctrine distinguishes the government from individuals and private entities. By enforcing that constitutional boundary between the governmental and the private, the state-action doctrine protects a robust sphere of individual liberty. (Emphasis added).

Former Stanford Law dean and First Amendment scholar, Kathleen Sullivan, has summed up the very different approaches to free speech pursued by conservatives and progressives (insofar as they are represented by the “conservative” and “liberal” blocs on the Supreme Court): 

In the first vision…, free speech rights serve an overarching interest in political equality. Free speech as equality embraces first an antidiscrimination principle: in upholding the speech rights of anarchists, syndicalists, communists, civil rights marchers, Maoist flag burners, and other marginal, dissident, or unorthodox speakers, the Court protects members of ideological minorities who are likely to be the target of the majority’s animus or selective indifference…. By invalidating conditions on speakers’ use of public land, facilities, and funds, a long line of speech cases in the free-speech-as-equality tradition ensures public subvention of speech expressing “the poorly financed causes of little people.” On the equality-based view of free speech, it follows that the well-financed causes of big people (or big corporations) do not merit special judicial protection from political regulation. And because, in this view, the value of equality is prior to the value of speech, politically disadvantaged speech prevails over regulation but regulation promoting political equality prevails over speech.

The second vision of free speech, by contrast, sees free speech as serving the interest of political liberty. On this view…, the First Amendment is a negative check on government tyranny, and treats with skepticism all government efforts at speech suppression that might skew the private ordering of ideas. And on this view, members of the public are trusted to make their own individual evaluations of speech, and government is forbidden to intervene for paternalistic or redistributive reasons. Government intervention might be warranted to correct certain allocative inefficiencies in the way that speech transactions take place, but otherwise, ideas are best left to a freely competitive ideological market.

The outcome of Citizens United is best explained as representing a triumph of the libertarian over the egalitarian vision of free speech. Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, articulates a robust vision of free speech as serving political liberty; the dissenting opinion by Justice Stevens, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, sets forth in depth the countervailing egalitarian view. (Emphasis added).

President Trump’s views on the regulation of private speech are alarmingly consistent with those embraced by the Court’s progressives to “protect[] members of ideological minorities who are likely to be the target of the majority’s animus or selective indifference” — exactly the sort of conservative “victimhood” that Trump and his online supporters have somehow concocted to describe themselves. 

Trump’s views are also consistent with those of progressives who, since the Reagan FCC abolished it in 1987, have consistently angled for a resurrection of some form of fairness doctrine, as well as other policies inconsistent with the “free-speech-as-liberty” view. Thus Democratic commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel takes a far more interventionist approach to private speech:

The First Amendment does more than protect the interests of corporations. As courts have long recognized, it is a force to support individual interest in self-expression and the right of the public to receive information and ideas. As Justice Black so eloquently put it, “the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public.” Our leased access rules provide opportunity for civic participation. They enhance the marketplace of ideas by increasing the number of speakers and the variety of viewpoints. They help preserve the possibility of a diverse, pluralistic medium—just as Congress called for the Cable Communications Policy Act… The proper inquiry then, is not simply whether corporations providing channel capacity have First Amendment rights, but whether this law abridges expression that the First Amendment was meant to protect. Here, our leased access rules are not content-based and their purpose and effect is to promote free speech. Moreover, they accomplish this in a narrowly-tailored way that does not substantially burden more speech than is necessary to further important interests. In other words, they are not at odds with the First Amendment, but instead help effectuate its purpose for all of us. (Emphasis added).

Consistent with the progressive approach, this leaves discretion in the hands of “experts” (like Rosenworcel) to determine what needs to be done in order to protect the underlying value of free speech in the First Amendment through government regulation, even if it means compelling speech upon private actors. 

Trump’s view of what the First Amendment’s free speech protections entail when it comes to social media companies is inconsistent with the conception of the Constitution-as-guarantor-of-negative-liberty that conservatives have long embraced. 

Of course, this is not merely a “conservative” position; it is fundamental to the longstanding bipartisan approach to free speech generally and to the regulation of online platforms specifically. As a diverse group of 75 scholars and civil society groups (including ICLE) wrote yesterday in their “Principles for Lawmakers on Liability for User-Generated Content Online”:

Principle #2: Any new intermediary liability law must not target constitutionally protected speech.

The government shouldn’t require—or coerce—intermediaries to remove constitutionally protected speech that the government cannot prohibit directly. Such demands violate the First Amendment. Also, imposing broad liability for user speech incentivizes services to err on the side of taking down speech, resulting in overbroad censorship—or even avoid offering speech forums altogether.

As those principles suggest, the sort of platform regulation that Trump, et al. advocate — essentially a “fairness doctrine” for the Internet — is the opposite of free speech:

Principle #4: Section 230 does not, and should not, require “neutrality.”

Publishing third-party content online never can be “neutral.” Indeed, every publication decision will necessarily prioritize some content at the expense of other content. Even an “objective” approach, such as presenting content in reverse chronological order, isn’t neutral because it prioritizes recency over other values. By protecting the prioritization, de-prioritization, and removal of content, Section 230 provides Internet services with the legal certainty they need to do the socially beneficial work of minimizing harmful content.

The idea that social media should be subject to a nondiscrimination requirement — for which President Trump and others like Senator Josh Hawley have been arguing lately — is flatly contrary to Section 230 — as well as to the First Amendment.

Conservatives upset about “social media discrimination” need to think hard about whether they really want to adopt this sort of position out of convenience, when the tradition with which they align rejects it — rightly — in nearly all other venues. Even if you believe that Facebook, Google, and Twitter are trying to make it harder for conservative voices to be heard (despite all evidence to the contrary), it is imprudent to reject constitutional first principles for a temporary policy victory. In fact, there’s nothing at all “conservative” about an abdication of the traditional principle linking freedom to property for the sake of political expediency.

In Amazon, Antitrust & Competition, Constitutional Law, Facebook, First Amendment, Google, Platforms, Regulation, Truth on the Market, Twitter, Tying , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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