The Section 230 hearing was a sad, dangerous sham
Republican senators could have asked the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, and Google how reforming Section 230 would fundamentally change the internet.
Instead, less than a week before Election Day, lawmakers tried to bully them into letting Donald Trump spread misinformation.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testified remotely on Wednesday in front of the Senate Commerce Committee.
There are a lot of hard questions that need be asked about Section 230, which protects tech companies from being liable for content posted by their users (unless they post something illegal).
Instead, here is what Republican senators talked about. Mississippi's Roger Wicker complained about "selective censorship" of conservatives. Several talked about so-called shadowbans. John Thune of South Dakota, in a bizarre attempt to disprove claims Republicans were working the refs by pressuring tech companies not to limit the reach of right-wing misinformation, asked each CEO, "Are you the ref?"
Ted Cruz screamed about the New York Post, at one point accusing Twitter of "working as a Democratic super PAC." Utah's Mike Lee repeatedly accused Twitter and Facebook of banning more posts from conservatives than progressives. (That might be because right-wing websites and politicians are spreading misinformation about — to cite a few recent examples — COVID-19 and mail-in voting, and their progressive counterparts are not.)
Tennessee's Marsha Blackburn (sitting in front of copies of her book, on sale now!) asked Dorsey repeatedly why he was censoring the president. Dorsey replied, "We have not censored the president."
It doesn't matter that Dorsey was telling the truth. The senators got their viral moments. They will spread on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, ironically disproving the senators' claims that they are being censored on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
Their goal has always been to put pressure on tech CEOs to let right-wing misinformation run rampant. And to make false equivalencies between the dangerous lies of Donald Trump and Breitbart, and the statements of Joe Biden and the reporting of respected newsrooms.
One party is trying to suppress the vote with lies about voter fraud. One party backs a president who is the single largest driver of coronavirus misinformation on the internet. The other party does neither. That's why only one party is being hit with warning labels and fact-checks. But the GOP is happy to claim otherwise, and watch their message spread freely online.
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Keith Wagstaff is an assistant editor at Mashable and a terrible Settlers of Catan player. He has written for TIME, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, NBC News, The Village Voice, VICE, GQ and New York Magazine, among many other reputable and not-so-reputable publications. After nearly a decade in New York City, he now lives in his native Los Angeles.
