Mark Zuckerberg Told the Truth—and That’s a Good Thing
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has now admitted publicly that moderators at Facebook and Instagram faced vast pressure from the federal government to take down contrarian COVID-19 content, election-related content—including jokes and satire—as well as the New York Post‘s Hunter Biden laptop story. This led the platforms to make moderation decisions that Zuckerberg now regrets. “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” wrote Zuckerberg in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating the suppression of speech on social media. “We’re ready to pushback if something like this happens again.”
This is a welcome development, although not everyone who previously complained about the company’s moderation policies is happy about it. Venture capitalist Eric Weinstein, for instance, opined that Zuckerberg’s wealth should be “distributed to those he targeted and wronged” as recompense for what occurred under his watch.
Mark Zuckerberg owes a lot of people a lot of money in damages. Lost lives. Lost elections. Losses in reputation.
I’m delighted that he is turning around.
But those he hurt deserve deep financial compensation/exoneration.
We should not be having to say this on our own behalf.… https://t.co/Rnysmv3kbs pic.twitter.com/VDNIsxGTZp
— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) August 27, 2024
That’s some serious victim-blaming. Zuckerberg’s critics like to pretend that standing up to the federal government would have been an easy choice; obviously, it wasn’t. President Joe Biden accused Facebook of “killing people” and implied that he would call for Congressional action to punish the company if it did not fall in line. Kate Bedingfield, a member of Biden’s communications team, explicitly told MSNBC that the administration would target Meta’s Section 230 protection if the platforms did not heed the government’s requests.
It wasn’t as if Republicans had been offering incentives for Zuckerberg and other tech CEOs to act bravely. On the contrary: many in the Republican Party are just as eager to abolish Section 230 as their Democratic counterparts. Former President Donald Trump, current Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.), and many others have all inveighed against the law. This is foolishness.
230 Reasons Why
As a reminder, Section 230 is the federal statute that makes social media possible. Enacted in 1996 as part of the Communications Decency Act, the law establishes that internet websites are not generally liable for content generated by third parties. In a nutshell, this means that if a user writes something libelous on Facebook, that person can be sued—Facebook cannot be sued. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of this legal protection; if websites were held liable for all content, they would become significantly more restrictive.
It’s no surprise, then, that prominent Democrats are universally in support of removing Section 230 pr
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