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Joe Biden Also Wants to Revoke Section 230, the Backbone of the Internet

Danielle from Leaf and Core
Reading Time: 8 minutes.
Joe Biden leaning on a desk, arms crossed, smiling.

Photo: David Lienemann/White House

 

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is the backbone of the internet. It makes everything you do on the internet possible. Yes, even this article you’re reading right now. Both presidential candidates claim they want to revoke Section 230, yet neither say how they would keep the internet working without it. While Joe Biden and Donald Trump have very different reasons for wanting to revoke Section 230, the end result would be the collapse of the internet as we know it.

Just what is Section 230, and why is this something that Donald Trump and Joe Biden agree on?

What is Section 230?

Section 230 is the shorthand term for Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. This law makes the internet possible. But how? The section states that businesses can operate websites where they are not liable for the content of users’ posts, with a few exceptions. It’s why you can say “Mark Zuckerberg is a robot who’s empathy chip has become dislodged,” and no one can sue Twitter for you tweeting it. Twitter employees may choose to remove it anyway, but they’ll likely just agree. The Zuckerbot could sue you, but he couldn’t sue Twitter.

Without that removal of liability, websites would have to monitor and moderate everything that’s posted on their websites. Otherwise someone might sue them for libel. The effort required to moderate so many users would be insurmountable. It would require fact checkers, AI, researchers, follow-up company representatives, interviewers, and more. Even with their vast resources, companies like Facebook and Twitter simply couldn’t exist.

But that’s just the surface level. We could do without social networks, right? But we call this the backbone of the internet for a reason. Twitter and Facebook are just services, after all. They sit on top of servers. They rely on content delivery networks (CDNs). Their services are carried over services provided by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). ISPs aren’t considered utilities, they wouldn’t be free of liability without Section 230.

Thankfully, Section 230 protects everyone, making only the person writing the libel liable for it.

Exceptions

There are exceptions to Section 230 already, and, predictably, they’ve hurt the very people they were supposed to help. SESTA-FOSTA was supposed to limit sex trafficking. In many ways, it has. It forces companies to pull down anything remotely suggestive of sex trafficking. It’s far from perfect. Facebook still has had some, but most sites are free of it. Because of that, the presumption is that we’ve cut off a method for traffickers to sell women and girls into sex slavery. The truth, however, is that we’ve just forced them onto the dark web.

The dark web, that is, a series of websites accessible only through a Tor or similar browser, makes everything difficult if not impossible to trace. Ownership of servers, where traffic is coming from, and who’s doing anything is obfuscated in ways that are nearly impossible to track. Criminals enterprises have moved here, making their ventures more hidden from investigators.

However, individual sex workers have found they can no longer verify clients online. It means they can’t communicate to one another, warn each other about dangerous clients, or filter their requests. They could actually get pulled into sex trafficking, or face an abusive client. SESTA-FOSTA’s limitations of Section 230 protections has put sex workers in danger.

“Whenever laws are passed to put the government in control of speech, the people who get hurt are the least powerful in society.”

– Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), one of the authors of Section 230

Sex workers deserve better. They deserve safety. Section 230 protects everyone. Even chipping away at it in small ways has hurt people.

Biden’s Plans for Section 230

Remember when Donald Trump was impeached? I know, it’s hard to remember, but despite the disaster this country has been since then, it wasn’t that long ago. Donald Trump withheld money from Ukraine unless they said they were investigating Joe Biden’s son for corruption. It was extortion, plain and simple, and it got him impeached. Despite the fact that Ukraine didn’t comply, Trump stuck with the narrative. He released campaign ads with false claims about Joe Biden and his son. Not just false in the sense that it hadn’t been proven, but demonstrably false. Facebook ran the ads anyway. Many found Facebook’s decision disappointing.

Angry Joe

Mark Zuckerberg has not endorsed Donald Trump. But he may as well have by allowing him to lie.

This made Joe Biden very upset. He wrote an open letter to Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, in October of 2019, asking his company to take Trump’s ad on Facebook down. Facebook refused, stating that it didn’t want to be an arbiter of truth. It would allow Trump to lie in political ads. In fact, any politician could lie in Facebook ads. While Biden reacted in anger, Elizabeth Warren called Zuckerberg out with a snarky ad claiming Mark Zuckerberg was announcing his support for Donald Trump. It wasn’t true, but it might as well have been true.

In an interview with The New York Times, Joe Biden escalated his complaints about Facebook and its CEO. Besides stating that he’s “never been a big Zuckerberg fan,” he stated that he wanted to completely revoke Section 230. The interviewer even pressed him, pointing out that Section 230 is known as the backbone of the internet, but Biden persisted.

“The idea that it’s a tech company is that Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms.”

– Joe Biden

Joe’s Leap

Joe Biden went on to explain his stance further. To put it simply, he wanted to treat Facebook, and all of its users, the same way one of the New York Times’ journalists would be treated. That is, forcing Facebook to filter posts because it’s liable for them. They’d be the like the editors for hundreds of millions of journalists.

“I’ve been in the view that not only should we be worrying about the concentration of power, we should be worried about the lack of privacy and them being exempt, which you’re not exempt. [The Times] can’t write something you know to be false and be exempt from being sued. But he [Mark Zuckerberg] can.”

– Joe Biden

Here’s the thing, Joe Biden’s wrong. I mean that. He’s factually, flat-out wrong. If Mark Zuckerberg posts a libelous statement on Facebook, the target of his libel could sue him. However, Facebook could not be sued, at least not for hosting the comment. We can enforce libel and slander laws. The fact that they’re on a social network doesn’t change anything, and we don’t need to revoke Section 230 for that.

The situation involving a Facebook employee does make the legality a little sketchy. If he, for example, used company resources as part of his duties as CEO, then Facebook, as his employer, could be liable. But that’s true of any business where its employee commits a crime as part of their duties for that company. If Mark Zuckerberg posted it on his own time, without direction from Facebook employees, its board, or through his duties as his CEO, then, no, Facebook would not be liable. But Zuckerberg still would be.

It’s easier to think of a situation in which a non-employee posted something. Let’s say you went to a restaurant. You find the food unsatisfactory and post a review on Yelp. Without Section 230, the restaurant could potentially sue Yelp for libel, skipping over you. Since Yelp has more money than you do, this is the smart bet. Of course, they could sue you, Yelp, Yelp’s CDN, their hosting, the ISP, and more. If Joe has his way, that’s what the internet would look like. But right now? They could only sue the person who shared the libel.

Joe’s Animosity Towards Tech

This isn’t the first time Joe Biden has seemed off-put by the tech sector. Not because he wants to break up large companies, like Elizabeth Warren, but because he doesn’t see its inherent value.

“As I added up the seven outfits, everyone’s there but Microsoft. I said, you have fewer people on your payroll than all the losses that General Motors just faced in the last quarter, of employees. So don’t lecture me about how you’ve created all this employment.”

– Joe Biden

When hit with complaints that Biden’s proposals could dismantle the internet, he reacts like an angry bear, swinging its large paws around without thinking its actions through. Inadvertently, he’ll likely swat a bee’s nest. Silly old bear.

For example, tech is the future of the American economy. It just is. It’s not manufacturing, oil production, coal, or even steel. It’s tech. Thanks to slow internet, a lack of STEM education, and a misunderstanding of tech’s role, the United States is falling behind in important areas like artificial intelligence. Still, its companies, like Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Microsoft, Google, IBM, Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm, are world-renown. Not only do they supply the tech the world relies on, they power the technology that builds cars at General Motors’ plants.

Employment at General Motors, Facebook, Intel, water treatment plants, solar power farms, and delivery services all rely on America’s tech sector. It’s all built on tech. Joe Biden’s anger at tech reflects a miserable dearth of knowledge about anything that’s happened in the past three decades of American industry.

Fortunately, Joe Biden seems to stand alone. His own colleagues in the Democratic Party have stood up for Section 230. While they’ve agreed that some fact checking may be necessary in situations like political advertising, they otherwise want to leave the internet backbone intact. Therefore, if Biden becomes president, his own party could tie his hands as he tries to side with Republicans like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

Biden vs Trump on Section 230

Twitter fact checked Trump, leading to a meltdown.

 

Trump, on the other hand, has support within his party. To be fair, his party would support his decision to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York, so that shouldn’t come as a surprise. Republicans have shown support of dismantling Section 230 for what they claim is bias against Republicans. They point to sites banning hate speech targeting racial minorities and LGBTQ people as proof that companies are left-leaning. By the same logic, police must be left-leaning, for not allowing people to harass and stalk people in real life. Twitter’s policies against harassment are to protect people from abuse, nothing more. The fact that it’s mostly Republicans breaking those rules isn’t a show of bias, it’s a comment on the lack of even a shred of moral fiber in the Republican Party.

To put it basically, Biden is mad at Facebook because it allows Trump to lie, so he wants to revoke Section 230 so he can hold Facebook responsible for that libel, forcing them to remove it. Trump is mad that Twitter fact checked him and bans people for abusing minorities and trans people, so he wants to revoke Section 230 so he can pass laws saying what Twitter can and cannot do with its own platform. It’s funny, when it comes to allowing private businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ people, Trump has no problem, but the moment they suggest that they’ll fact check everyone, which disproportionately hurts Republicans due to the lies their platform relies on, he’s miffed.

To point out the hypocrisy of this administration would take a book, not a blog post.

Biden and Trump may have different reasons for wanting to repeal Section 230. Trump’s ultimate goal may be far more dystopian, the controlling of businesses and free speech. However, the first step is the same, revoking Section 230, and that first step would be enough to break the internet as we know it.

The Path Forward

You’re not going to like this. If you want to support Section 230, the best course of action here is to get Trump out of office, as his ultimate goals regarding the internet go much further than Biden’s and he has the support of his own party. However, electing Biden isn’t all you’d have to do. You’d also have to ensure he’s up against a large number of Democrats who oppose his viewpoints on Section 230 in the House and Senate. It’s possible that, after Trump is out of office, a few Republicans may switch sides. Stranger things have happened. Senator Lindsey Graham, for example, has held three different views on smartphone encryption over the past four years. He’s due for another switch soon.

If we want to protect Section 230, we’ll have to do our best to educate voters, educate Joe Biden, and ensure that our more local representatives are willing to stand up to the president. The truth is, both presidential candidates want to dismantle the backbone of the internet, but only one can be reasoned with, and only one can take a “no” answer from his party without firing off a Twitter temper tantrum.

Joe Biden’s goals can be realized without dismantling Section 230, by creating an exemption for political advertising, requiring third party fact checking services. However, even this gets into nasty First Amendment Rights territory. It suggests that a government could control what ads people see about politics. That’s dangerously close to tyranny. And, while an independent third party would do the fact checking, who’s to say the government won’t select that third party? A Republican may require that Fox News approves all Democrat ads. We wouldn’t have a democracy anymore if that happened.

The best solution is to hope we can reason with either candidate. It’s obvious that it’ll be easier with Biden, though he seems staunch in his stance.

Section 230 is between a rock and a hard place, but that’s 2020 in a nutshell, isn’t it?

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