Former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Saturday that if social media companies don’t moderate content on their various platforms, “we lose total control.”
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Days before the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent Big Tech lawyers scrambling by upending three decades of judicial precedents on Section 230 immunity from liability, its West Coast counterpart warned platforms their immunity had limits, too.
While far smaller in scope than the 3rd Circuit’s ruling that TikTok could be held liable for a little girl’s death by algorithmically recommending the video she fatally copied, likely to provoke Supreme Court intervention, the 9th Circuit ruling Aug. 22 against third-party Snapchat app developer Yolo also suggests judges are growing skeptical of maximalist views of the 1996 law.
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Big Tech is back at the Supreme Court.
Appealing from a big loss they suffered at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, social media platforms are challenging Texas’ social media law that prohibits those companies from engaging in viewpoint discrimination when curating their platforms.
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The Senate shot down a bipartisan bill Wednesday aimed at stripping legal liability protections for artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and Democratic Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal first introduced their No Section 230 Immunity for AI Act in June and Hawley put it up for an unanimous consent vote on Wednesday. The bill would have eliminated Section 230 protections that currently grant tech platforms immunity from liability for the text and visual content their AI produces, enabling Americans to file lawsuits against them.
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The Senate could soon take up a bipartisan bill defining the liability protections enjoyed by artificial intelligence-generated content, which could lead to considerable impacts on online speech and the development of AI technology.
Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and Democratic Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal in June introduced the No Section 230 Immunity for AI Act, which would clarify that liability protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act do not apply to text and visual content created by artificial intelligence. Hawley may attempt to hold a vote on the bill in the coming weeks, his office told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael and Davidson County Republican Party Regional Vice Chair Jackie Colbeth in studio to weigh in on Utah’s recent legislation preventing the use of social media apps of children under the age of 18.
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Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California said Sunday that Section 230 protections should be repealed if tech companies do not do more to combat “hate and loathing” on their platforms.
“I’m particularly concerned about the practice some of the large tech companies have of, whenever there is a budding, promising new entrant into the market, they buy them out because they don’t necessarily want to develop that product line themself, but they don’t want the competition,” Schiff told CNN host Jake Tapper on State of the Union. “We should absolutely take aim at that and other anti-competitive actions of Big Tech, and I think we’ve got a big problem right now with social media companies and their failure to moderate content and the explosion of hate on Twitter, the banning of journalists on Twitter.”
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Pennsylvania State Senators Doug Mastriano (R-Gettysburg) and Scott Hutchinson (R-Oil City) Thursday announced they would reintroduce a bill proposed in the last legislative session designed to prevent social media platforms from censoring Pennsylvanians.
Mastriano and Hutchinson introduced the original measure in May 2021. They secured the cosponsorship of four other senators, all Republicans, but the bill did not receive a vote in the Senate Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure Committee. The two lawmakers said new developments impelled them to try again in the new session. They cited the recently released “Twitter files,” internal documents pertaining largely to the social-media company’s decision in late 2020 to deny users access to a New York Post story concerning Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s personal computer.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti announced Tuesday that he has led a coalition of 25 States and the District of Columbia in filing an amicus brief at the United States Supreme Court in Gonzalez v. Google.
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Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has sued numerous big players throughout his two terms, including the Biden administration, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, Arizona State University, and the City of Tucson. Perhaps the biggest entity he sued was Google in 2020, for “deceiving consumers” by tracking their location on smartphones without their knowledge and then selling the information. After over two years of litigation, the tech giant capitulated, settling for $85 million, more than the country of Australia snagged in a similar settlement with Google, $60 million.
The first attorney general in the country to sue Google over the practice, Brnovich told The Arizona Sun Times that what prompted him in part to file the complaint was the shocking extent of how much personal information was obtained. “Google knew more about where you were going and who you hung out with, more than your travel agent or spouse,” he said. He found out about the practice after a news article revealed that Google was tracking users through its app preloaded on Android smartphones even after they’d disabled their “Location History” setting. Google was told to stop and did not.
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On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear a case that challenges Big Tech companies’ broad protections against lawsuits regarding the content they host, as a result of a policy known as Section 230.
Politico reports that the case will mark the first time that the nation’s highest court will hear any challenge to Big Tech’s immunity under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which forbids legal action against such platforms over third-party content that is hosted on their sites. The case, Gonzalez vs. Google LLC, will see the court determine if these protections go too far when it comes to such content as terrorist videos being allowed on YouTube, the video-sharing platform that is owned by Google.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, guest host Aaron Gulbransen welcomed Senator Marsha Blackburn to the newsmaker line to discuss her recent op-ed that addresses how to get them to abide by rules, regulations, privacy and reforms for Section 230.
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Google has offered to break apart in a bid to avoid greater punishment for antitrust violations from federal regulators, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
The tech giant has raised the prospect of separating a major business operation off from Google—the auctioning and placing of online advertisements—to form a separate entity also under the umbrella of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, people close to Google reportedly told the WSJ. It was unclear if the offer would satisfy the Department of Justice (DOJ), which declined to comment on the story, according to the WSJ.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Tennessee State Representative Dennis Powers to the newsmakers line to explain in further detail HB2639 and the regulation of Big Tech.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Kalev Leetaru of the Real Clear Foundation to the newsmakers line to discuss Section 230 transparency and the First Amendment.
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A Minnesota senator is cosponsoring a bill that would punish social media companies for allowing the spread of “medical misinformation.”
“These are some of the biggest, richest companies in the world and they must do more to prevent the spread of deadly vaccine misinformation,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said. “The coronavirus pandemic has shown us how lethal misinformation can be and it is our responsibility to take action.”
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Big Tech and First Amendment New York Attorney Akiva Cohen to the newsmakers line to explain the mechanics of Former President Trump’s lawsuit.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Maury County Mayor Ogles and AFP’s Grassroots Director Henry to the studio to discuss Big Tech, censorship, and public utility.
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Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tennessee State Senator Mike Bell to the newsmakers line to discuss Section 230 reform, Trump’s social media lawsuit, and the momentum it’s created.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, guest host Ben Cunningham welcomed Chief Technology Officer for the Star News Media Network Christina Botteri in studio to discuss social media platforms’ censorship and the role as platform or publisher.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to discuss Section 230.
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Vanderbilt School of Law Professor Gautam Hans opined that social media companies should be on the offensive when it comes to regulating speech. In a spotlight series called “Ask an Expert” curated by Vanderbilt University, the assistant clinical professor suggested that these platforms ought to modify their approaches to content moderation.
In the brief video, Hans asserted that proactive approaches could improve the current dissatisfaction shared across party lines.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio and took calls from listeners that questioned Big Tech, Section 230, and the right of free speech.
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For nearly two decades, Silicon Valley made net neutrality its highest policy priority. Under the banner of a “free and open” internet, Google, Facebook, and Twitter sought regulations to ensure the uninterrupted flow of information by treating every bit equally. Or so they said.
Beginning last Friday night, these firms and others executed an unprecedented digital purge of the social media and video accounts of their political rivals. After several years of accelerating suspensions and suppressions, this time YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter permanently banned a number of high-profile conservatives and deplatformed thousands of others, at least temporarily. Many of these accounts had nothing to do with last Wednesday’s heinous events at the Capitol. Yet their histories are erased.
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Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to discuss Section 230 and the one-party that is using a back door of Big Tech companies to thwart their agenda.
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Many Twitter users are vowing to leave the platform after President Donald J. Trump was permanently banned from using the service Friday evening.
“Twitter bans Trump, but won’t check communist Chinese propaganda defending brainwashing & forced sterilizations of minorities,” the Georgia Log Cabin Republicans said, adding the hashtag #twexit.
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced legislation authorizing direct cash payments of $2,000 Tuesday, but with a catch to which Democrats will likely object.
The bill combines $2,000 payments with a repeal of Section 230, a provision that grants social media companies liability protections against content users post on their platforms, and the establishment of a commission to study allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
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President Trump on Wednesday followed through on his threat to veto the National Defense Authorization Act, calling it a “gift” to China and Russia that also lacks the reforms he sought to rescind legal liability shields for technology companies provided by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
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The Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF) has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) against the U.S. Department of Commerce seeking access to communication records of conservative individuals and groups that are fighting to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Their FOIA request with Department of Commerce sub-agency, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) targets “emails, text messages, and other communications from NTIA Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce Adam Candeub, who was recently named to a senior position at the Department of Justice, and others.”
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In the wake of allegations of big tech companies suppressing political speech and news stories on their platforms, Republican senators and congressmen introduced legislation to amend Section 230, part of a federal code that regulates third-party content on the internet.
Federal Communication Communications (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai also weighed in on Thursday after senators announced they were subpoenaing Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey.
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U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told reporters during a Zoom conference call Tuesday that she and other senators are working to address online censorship — an issue that she said affects musicians, authors, and Christian entertainers.
“Online censorship is an issue that a lot of Tennesseans are talking about,” Blackburn said.
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Amazon, Twitter, and other major tech companies are facing intense criticism on antitrust issues and censorship claims in the months since government officials reportedly began asking for help from Silicon Valley on ways to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.
The president and lawmakers have turned their sights on Twitter and Amazon, respectively, while Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other attorneys general are reportedly ratcheting up their antitrust investigation targeting Google’s business model. The White House asked them in March to fight coronavirus disinformation while also assisting the government in its virus response.
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