Modern Book Burning vs. Section 230 — Thank You President Trump

Article by Art Harman in "RedState":

Internet censorship is modern day book burning

A free society relies upon the free flow of ideas, philosophies and opinions. Those who increasingly control the transmission of those are abusing their power.

There’s a huge difference between offering an internet platform for a diversity of views which takes care to block violent, racist and obscene behavior, and one that claims to respect all views but manipulates search results for partisan political advantage or falsely censors, ‘jails,’ ‘shadow bans,’ de-monetize, and hides content for the same reasons–essentially modern book-burning. 

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was intended to shield from liability platforms from the former but not the latter. It is an artificial restraint on liability, but one that has served well to protect the free flow of information and opinions on the internet. But those who claim to be ‘platforms,’ rather than ‘publishers,’ are violating the law with their censorship.

Oh, Twitter, you showed your bias by putting a CCP-connected Chinese “advisor” on your board. 

President Trump’s executive order will put on notice the tech giants to shape up, and encourage the victims to seek redress. By making it easier for people to sue violators of freedom of speech, this is promoting liberty, for the Section 230 law constrains legal redress for internet censorship.

By the way, ‘fact checking’ is usually done by highly partisan and opaque groups who ‘pass’ or ignore lies by their allies and ‘fail’ truth from their opponents. Yea, that’s how it works in practice.

 

Before the days of ‘fact checkers,’ people did this themselves by double checking and questioning sources, reading from multiple sources, asking questions, maintaining a sceptical attitude to astonishing news, and for goodness sakes, using their own common sense and judgement. 

You don’t want to live in a world where you are spoon-fed pre-digested ‘facts’ and forbidden to see what someone decided is ‘fake’ based on their biases and hidden agenda. 

That’s the reality of life in China and every other dictatorship, and where censorship leads those who surrender their judgement and reasoning abilities to a powerful authority. Thre’s little difference between the Chinese government censoring a story, and an effective monopoly like Google or Facebook from similarly censoring and blocking your efforts to learn or share the truth.

If you need someone to tell you what you should believe, buy a pacifier first.

Oh, the executive order is working already, with Twitter and Facebook backing down on censorship, at least rhetorically.

Judge for yourself; read President Trump’s executive order to help reduce online censorship by the self-appointed censors of digital information.:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/ 


https://www.redstate.com/diary/artharman/2020/05/29/modern-book-burning-vs.-section-230-thank-you-president-trump-art-harman/