![]() They include liabilities for fraud, for defamation, for violating contract terms. The techniques include eliminating or reducing the immunity currently granted under the Communications Decency Act, which has a section, Section 230, that treats platform companies differently from any other media and specifically immunizes them from liabilities that apply to all these other entities. MINOW: When it comes to holding the platform companies responsible for conveying, amplifying, even escalating hateful communications, misinformation, disinformation, there are some techniques, but we have to be careful because if the government is involved, then the First Amendment is front and center. GAZETTE: What are a few of the measures that could effectively hold tech firms to account for what is published and shared on their platforms? But that’s all enabled by private providers and the private providers are not restricted by the First Amendment in what they remove or amplify. So, we’re living in an unprecedented time of lowered barriers to communicating to mass audiences - almost anybody can have access to a mass audience. That’s much less edited than broadcast or cable or print media. They’re the ones that control what is communicated and what’s not. We sign terms-of-service agreements with platform companies. But that kind of informal conversation about “I have First Amendment freedom” may be a metaphor on a social media platform, but it is not a legal right. And one of the ways that’s really evolved is how we talk about rights as if it’s a cultural phenomenon or it’s part of our identities. We in America are very fond of rights, and rights maybe are what hold us together more certainly than shared traditions, shared identities. Indeed, private companies have First Amendment freedoms against any government intervention. ![]() Private companies are entitled to edit, elevate, suppress, remove, whether it’s in broadcast, cable, or on a social media platform. Most of the sources of communications are private, and private communications are not governed by the First Amendment. It’s conventional media, particularly cable news, but also some broadcast news. Certainly, one big dimension of this context is some people are calling infodemic: the flood of information that is enabled by the internet, and particularly social media. MINOW: I wrote a book to examine the challenges and decline of the news industry during a time of exploding misinformation and disinformation, a global pandemic, and great challenges to democracies in the United States and elsewhere. Can you clarify how the First Amendment applies and doesn’t apply to social media platforms, like Twitter or Facebook, and online generally? ![]() Underlying “cancel culture” and complaints about “deplatforming” is a belief that people should not be penalized for saying things online that others find objectionable or that are inaccurate or even false because of their right to freely express themselves. GAZETTE: There seems to be broad misunderstanding about what speech is protected by the First Amendment and what is not. Minow spoke with the Gazette about some of the ways to potentially clean up social media and bankroll local news, and why arguing on Twitter isn’t a First Amendment right. In a new book, “Saving the News: Why the Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve Freedom of Speech” (Oxford University Press, 2021), Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard Law School, says the First Amendment not only does not preclude the federal government from protecting a free press in jeopardy, it requires that it do so. ![]() Given the vital role a free and responsible press plays in American democracy and the unique protections the Constitution provides for it under the First Amendment, is it time for the government to get involved? Is it government’s place to do so? And how could that happen without infringing on that freedom? Amid the closing or shrinking of newspapers, magazines, and other legacy news outlets, Americans have increasingly turned to social media and heavily partisan websites and cable networks as their main sources of news and information, which has led to a proliferation of disinformation and misinformation and fueled polarization. The mainstream news industry has been in sharp decline since the 1990s, owing to a series of financial and cultural changes brought by the rise of the internet.
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