Ever since I started reporting on Section 230, the law that shields tech platforms from liability for content posted on their sites, I’ve been waiting for a clarion call, a way to rally the troops.
And on Friday, while doing an interview with Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Jake Auchincloss, I finally got what I was hoping for.
Near the end of the interview, he laid out clear instructions on how all of us can help move Section 230 onto the Congressional agenda.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce is expected to hold a hearing on kids’ online safety on December 2. They plan to release a slate of bills to protect kids from harmful content. Right now, Section 230 is not up for debate. But you can change that.
Auchincloss told me, “If every single one of your listeners would call the office of Congressman Brett Guthrie of Kentucky, and say that they want Section 230 reform, that would help a lot.”
Guthrie is the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, so he has the power to add 230 to the hearing.
You can reach out to Guthrie by calling 202-225-3501, or you can email him at guthrieassistance@mail.house.gov. Ask him to add Section 230 reform to the Online Kids Safety hearing.
A bunch of you have been writing to ask how you can help with Section 230 reform: here’s a concrete way to do that, straight from the mouth of a Congressman.
In my full interview with Rep. Auchincloss, he talks about his proposed Section 230 reform bill, how his kids inspired him to take on Section 230, and the power of the big tech lobby. You’ll also hear him wrestle with some of the thornier potential consequences of a Section 230 carve out. Check out some choice excerpts from our conversation below.
On Kids and Social Media
“I go to a lot of middle schools and high schools. I’ll ask young people. Oftentimes when I’m speaking to them, I’ll say, ‘Hey, put your heads down. Close your eyes. Raise your hand if you wish TikTok and Insta[gram] and Snap[chat] had never been invented. And you know, Brian, not all the time, but most of the time, most of the hands will go up… They know that they’re being treated like products, and they know that they’re locked into the prisoner’s dilemma of FOMO where they’re on because everybody else is on. And if there’s one thing that adolescents care about, understandably, is they wanna be where their friends are at. I get that. It’s really unfair to make them… be the lone person who’s not where everyone else is at.”
Kids as Inspiration
“ As a dad, I feel like I’m in a race against time here. I got a couple more years before these things swamp my kids, and I feel powerless against these tech companies. But then as a member of Congress on the Committee of Jurisdiction, I don’t feel powerless. And in fact, I feel empowered because I know how many of my fellow parents, how many students in my district, how many Americans more broadly can see — even if they don’t know the terminology around Section 230 — can see that these are the most wealthy, powerful corporations in the history of the world. That they hold themselves above accountability to the American public, either through law or through taxation, and that they have to be humbled.”
Fighting the Lobbyists
“ The most important thing to me is to crack the door open on Section 230. Reform it. It’s difficult for me to convey how hard that is. How ferociously the tech lobby lobbies against it. I mean, they will come in… they’ll be like, ‘If you touch Section 230, America will lose to China. We’re all gonna be speaking Mandarin. And that’s it. That’s the game… The argument from the tech lobby 100%, particularly to Republicans, but on both sides of the aisle, is if you regulate us, if you do one stitch of regulation on Section 230 reform, we will lose to China.”
The Big 3 Controlling the Internet
“We now have created a system, a very brittle command and control system, where there are really three gatekeepers to news, media, and opinion globally. There’s Mark Zuckerberg, there’s Elon Musk, and there’s the Chinese Communist Party. Those are the three that have like by orders of magnitude the most control. [They] have more control over the kind of content that your child consumes than your child’s teacher does. Okay. That is a problem. That is not an acceptable state of affairs, and we have to operate with a sense of urgency to fix things.”
Brian
