How To Fight Big Tech Censorship – by Michael Shellenberger
Thank you Chairman Latta, Ranking Member Matsui, and members of the Subcommitee on Communications and Technology for inviting me to testify today. Here are events that actually happened.
Twitter suspended a woman for saying women aren t men.
Facebook censored accurate information about covid vaccine side effects.
Twitter censored a Harvard professor of epidemiology for expressing his opinion that children did not need the covid vaccine.
Facebook censored speculation that the coronavirus came from a lab.
Facebook censored a journalist for saying accurately that natural disasters were getting better not worse.
Twitter permanently suspended a sitting president of the United States, even Twitter s censors had decided he had not violated its terms of service.
Maybe that kind of censorship doesn t bother you, because people were doing their best to prevent real world harm with the knowledge they had at the time. But what if the shoe were on the other foot? Consider how you would feel if:
Twitter suspended a woman for saying trans women are women.
Facebook censored accurate information about covid vaccine benefits.
Twitter censored a Harvard professor for saying children needed to be covid-vaxxed annually.
Facebook censored speculation that the coronavirus came from nature.
Facebook censored a member of Congress for saying the world is going to end in 12 years because of climate change.
Twitter permanently suspended President Biden, even though he had not violated its terms of service.
It s true that private media companies are allowed by law to censor whoever they want. And it would violate the First Amendment of the United States for the government to try to prevent them from doing so.
But Internet platforms including Twitter, Facebook, and Google only exist thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which exempts them from legal liabilities that burden traditional media companies. If Congress simply eliminated Section 230, Internet search and social media platforms would no longer exist.