The SAFE Tech Act Wouldn't Make the Internet Safer for Users

Deeplinks 2021-02-25

Summary:

Section 230, a key law protecting free speech online since its passage in 1996, has been the subject of numerous legislative assaults over the past few years. The attacks have come from all sides. One of the latest, the SAFE Tech Act, seeks to address real problems Internet users experience, but its implementation would harm everyone on the Internet. 

The SAFE Tech Act is a shotgun approach to Section 230 reform put forth by Sens. Mark Warner, Mazie Hirono and Amy Klobuchar earlier this month. It would amend Section 230 through the ever-popular method of removing platform immunity from liability arising from various types of user speech. This would lead to more censorship as social media companies seek to minimize their own legal risk. The bill compounds the problems it causes by making it more difficult to use the remaining immunity against claims arising from other kinds of user content. 

Addressing Big Tech’s surveillance-based business models can’t, and shouldn’t, be done through amendments to Section 230—but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done at all. 

The act would not protect users’ rights in a way that is substantially better than current law. And it would, in some cases, harm marginalized users, small companies, and the Internet ecosystem as a whole. Our three biggest concerns with the SAFE Tech Act are: 1) its failure to capture the reality of paid content online, 2) the danger that an affirmative defense requirement creates and 3) the lack of guardrails around injunctive relief that would open the door for a host of new suits that simply remove certain speech.

Section 230 Benefits Everyone

Before considering what this bill would change, it’s useful to take a look at the benefits that Section 230 provides for all internet users. The Internet today allows people everywhere to connect and share ideas—whether that’s for free on social media platforms and educational or cultural platforms like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive, or on paid hosting services like Squarespace or Patreon. Section 230’s legal protections benefit Internet users in two ways. 

Section 230 Protects Intermediaries That Host Speech: Section 230 enables services to host the content of other speakers—from writing, to videos, to pictures, to code that others write or upload—without those services generally having to screen or review that content before being published. Without this partial immunity, all of the intermediaries who help the speech of millions and billions of users reach their audiences would face unworkable content moderation requirements that inevitably lead to large scale censorship. The immunity has some important exceptions, including for violations of federal criminal law and intellectual property claims. But the legal immunity’s protections extend to services far beyond social media platforms. Thus everyone who sends an email, makes a Kickstarter, posts on Medium, shares code on Github, protects their site from DDOS attacks with Cloudflare, makes friends on Meetup, or posts on Reddit, benefits from Section 230’s immunity for all intermediaries. 

Section 230 Protects Users Who Create Content: Section 230 directly protects Internet users who themselves act as online intermediaries from being held liable for the content created by others. So when people publish a blog and allow reader comments, for example, Section 230 protects them. This enables Internet users to create their own platforms for others’ speech, such as when an Internet user created the Shitty Media Men list that allowed others to share their own experiences involving harassment and sexual assault. 

The SAFE Tech Act Fails to Capture the Reality of Paid Content Online

In what appears to be an attempt to limit deceptive advertising, the SAFE Tech Act would amend Section 230 to remove the service’s immunity for user-generated content when that content is paid speech. According to the senators, the goal of this change is to stop Section 230 from applying to ads, “ensuring that platforms cannot continue to profit as their services are used to target vulnerable consumers with ads enabling frauds and scams.” 

Link:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/safe-tech-act-wouldnt-make-internet-safer-users

From feeds:

Fair Use Tracker » Deeplinks
CLS / ROC » Deeplinks

Tags:

230

Authors:

Aaron Mackey, India McKinney, Jason Kelley

Date tagged:

02/25/2021, 19:36

Date published:

02/25/2021, 19:17