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@REPLYADDR Leroy N. Soetoro
<democrat-criminals@mail.house.gov>
@REPLYTO 2:5075/128 Leroy N. Soetoro
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https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/4195558-elon-musk-has-shattered-
the-myth-social-media-platforms-are-mere-space-providers/
Social media platforms have long argued that they are simply providers of
a public forum in which others comment, and thus should not be held liable
for what people say there. Elon Musk has single-handedly blown a massive
hole in that bogus argument.
A new report today suggests that Elon Musk has unprecedented control over
content moderation, and personally decided to re-platform Kanye West to X,
formerly known as Twitter. It also reveals that Musk ordered his team to
make his own posts among the platform?s most visible. The report further
details how he told his engineers to tweak the feed of his top venture
capitalist pal directly at his request ? a feature not available to any of
the millions of other users of the platform.
With these acts of direct editorial control, Musk has made clear his
platform is not a neutral ?public forum? and should be held to the same
rules as any other newspaper, publisher or broadcast network.
For over two decades, social media companies have hidden behind the legal
protections conferred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
1996. This legislation, passed before social media companies existed, was
designed to make the early ?interactive? web manageable. It conferred
protections on early web and news sites so they did not have to bear legal
responsibility for the content posted on bulletin boards or comment
sections, even if they engaged in some content moderation. It was a
specific law designed before anyone ever imagined a Facebook, Reddit or
TikTok.
Nearly a decade later, social media took off as a business in earnest ?
dispensing with original content and turning the aforementioned ?comments?
into a business. Social media companies aggregate these posts and
repackage them into a tailored news feed designed to be as entertaining
and addictive as possible. By interspersing advertisements with comments,
they monetize these endless newsfeeds. This simple business model has
proven hugely lucrative ? 98 percent of Meta?s revenues come from ads and
has made Mark Zuckerberg a hundred billion dollars in personal wealth.
Hate and disinformation have an advantage in this environment. The
repackaging, done by artificial intelligence, is designed to benefit the
company by being as addictive as possible, exploiting psychological
triggers ? benefitting content that enrages or makes us want to react by
posting more content ourselves.
The algorithms are also tailored to promote the owners of these companies
and the values, politics and ideas that benefit them the most, as Musk has
so explicitly demonstrated through his actions.?
Others have done the same. For example, Mark Zuckerberg reportedly
approved an internal initiative ? Project Amplify ? to promote positive
stories about Facebook. They are unequivocally, therefore, publishing
companies, and what the user consumes is a result of decisions taken by
executives for their own benefit ? economically or politically.
And yet thanks to the ?get out of jail free? card of Section 230, enacted
eight years before Facebook was even started, these companies cannot be
held liable as publishers in any way for the hate, antisemitism, and
disinformation that they push to billions. No other person or company in
America is free from accountability or responsibility for its core product
in such a way.
It is clear from the research my organization, the Center for Countering
Digital Hate, publishes, that social media can be harmful. Extremists
openly proselytize, recruit, finance and plan operations on these
platforms with little intervention. Algorithms promote dangerous eating
disorders and self-harm content to teenagers. Algorithms cross-fertilize
conspiracist movements, giving QAnon followers anti-vaxx content and vice
versa. Trolling and abuse are rife on these platforms, forcing women,
minorities and LGBTQ+ people to restrict their own posts so as to avoid a
torrent of abuse.
In 2022, we gathered lawmakers from the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and the European Union to talk about how we might develop a set
of laws that would allow us to hold these companies accountable.
We all agreed that social media companies quite clearly have a significant
impact on our psychology, especially that of our children, our
communities, our politics and even the values that underpin our democracy.
At the end of the conference, we published our STAR Framework, which
provided a comprehensive set of minimum standards for an effective
regulatory framework that balances free speech with human rights. The
framework demands Transparency of algorithms, decisions on how companies
enforce their ?community standards,? and how commercial advertising shapes
the content it presents, which would allow for meaningful Accountability
to the public. It also requires companies to take Responsibility for
avoidable, predictable harms they failed to deal with, which we hope will
lead to a culture of Safety by Design.?
Since that meeting, the European Union has passed a Digital Services Act,
and the United Kingdom is shortly expected to pass an Online Safety Act
that seeks to balance corporate rights with human and civil rights. The
United States is unique in having failed to do so.?
It is time Congress stops vacillating and starts acting. Our kids? mental
health and body image, the safety of our communities, the rights of
vulnerable and minority groups, and even our democracy itself demand
better. Hiding behind the notion that these vast companies are simply
?free speech? platforms rather than publishers who shape public knowledge
to their agenda is simply untenable in the face of reality. Elon Musk,
through his brazen stewardship of X, has ironically, made the best
possible case for the STAR Framework than we could ever have done alone.
--
We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won`t be offended.
Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem. It has none.
No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.
Officially made Nancy Pelosi a two-time impeachment loser.
Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.
Under Barack Obama`s leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.
President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed
dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.
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