Trump is right on big tech, social media and Section 230 – The Star Democrat

President Donald Trump has threatened to veto a massive U.S. military spending bill unless it includes a repeal of legal protections for Big Tech social media giants.

Trump wants to get rid of Section 230 which protects Facebook, Twitter and Google from being sued for content posted on their powerful platforms.

The argument is that the social media giants are already acting like publishers by restricting, moderating and sometimes censoring content they do not like.

Most of the restricted content tends to come from conservative and controversial voices. Twitter and Facebook, for example, restricted sharing of the New York Posts coverage of Hunter Bidens foreign business deals while his father, Joe Biden, was vice president.

The Section 230 debate goes beyond the broad legal protections afforded social media and internet giants.

Facebook (which also owns Instagram), Twitter and Google (which also owns YouTube) already hold an incredible amount of power in the marketplace and more importantly the marketplace of free speech and ideas.

Section 230 adds to that power and influence social media companies and their billionaire CEOS have over free speech as well as commerce.

They have increasingly used that influence to promote certain politically progressive viewpoints and silence others, mostly conservatives.

Twitter and Facebook could be poised to ban Trump after projected President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in next month.

If they can do it to Trump, they will do it to small businesses and others who do not toe the line or retweet the wrong Breitbart story or politically incorrect Candace Owens post.

We know 2020 is rough but lets not turn it into 1984. We continue to see many parallels to George Orwells warnings..

We always believe more speech even the uncomfortable and dissenting speech is better than less. The media landscape continues to change and a healthy diversity of voices including ones we may vehemently disagree with are important for our democracy and freedom of expression.

Eliminating the sweeping legal protections will bring social media companies along with Apple more to the table. We also like to see more teeth put into legitimate antitrust cases involving the most powerful companies in the country and world. That extends to e-commerce and other technology giants.

Right now, they have all the cards it seems.

Right now, social media firms also have it both ways. They have been increasingly politically motivated in how they moderate and sometimes censor content, but they cling to legal protections that they operate simply as technology platforms.

Their relations with China are also troublesome. We are also concerned about how cozy a Biden-Harris administration will be with Silicon Valley. They certainly did not hurt his presidential campaign and a number of his top appointments so far have had some links to the technology titans.

President Trump is right, they should not have it both ways. We need to see new systems with more balance and a better focus on protecting free speech. Big Tech has gotten way too big.

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Trump is right on big tech, social media and Section 230 - The Star Democrat