Press Release

January 17, 2020

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Timothy Karr, 201-533-8838

Free Press Action: Joe Biden Gets Section 230 Wrong

WASHINGTON — In an interview with the New York Times Editorial Board published Friday, former Vice President Joe Biden called for Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to be revoked.

The measure protects online intermediaries like Facebook and Twitter, which host or republish content, against a range of actions to hold them legally responsible for what others say or do on their platforms. “Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms,” Biden told editorial-board members.

“It should be revoked because [Facebook] is not merely an internet company,” he said. “It is propagating falsehoods they know to be false, and we should be setting standards not unlike the Europeans are doing relative to privacy.”

Free Press Action Senior Policy Counsel Gaurav Laroia made the following statement:  

“Former Vice President Biden is right to be concerned about the very real issues concerning the concentration of power in the big tech platforms, the surveillance-and-tracking system they’ve built to violate our privacy, and the increasing visibility of those platforms in disseminating misinformation. But he has it wrong in almost every way when it comes to his criticism of Section 230.

“Section 230 immunizes platforms from liability for what users or ‘third parties’ say on those platforms. It also explicitly allows platforms to moderate those spaces as they wish. It doesn’t prevent an injured party from going after the original speaker for defamation or harassment. And, as numerous cases have made clear, it doesn’t shield companies from liability for falsehoods they themselves publish, or from violations of other laws, like our civil-rights protections.  

“Repealing Section 230 as Biden recommends would return us to the world of the early and mid ’90s, when the law gave internet companies a choice — either allow nearly all speech and posts, including hate speech and falsehoods, with few rules and nearly no moderation, or assume editorial and legal responsibility for every single post or utterance on their sites.

“Removing Section 230 would require platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to individually vet each and every post and assume responsibility for anything that made it past their censors.

“Internet platforms would have to either become the most rigorous speech police ever created or step back entirely and allow an unfiltered stream of the kinds of ruinous libel, hate speech and falsehoods that the former vice president is understandably concerned about.

“The current system allows internet companies to set their own standards and policies regarding the kinds of content on their sites. It also helps the companies fight hate speech and misinformation by giving them the legal shield to institute those standards as they see fit.

“Any fixes to Section 230 should be undertaken carefully and cautiously with an eye to protecting marginalized and vulnerable communities — and with an understanding that it’s the First Amendment, not Section 230, that allows individuals to engage in the speech of their choosing, for good and for ill.”

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Free Press Action is a nonpartisan organization fighting for people’s rights to connect and communicate. Free Press Action does not support or oppose any candidate for public office.