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There is a compelling reason that the Supreme Court has regularly ruled that falsehoods are protected speech. The Court openly recognizes that falsehoods can be harmful and may sometimes be quite harmful, but the Court also recognizes that efforts to determine which information is true and which is false are far more harmful to our democracy. The line between whether content can be labeled true or false, or whether it is simply viewpoint disagreement can be blurry and very much in the eye of the beholder. This is especially true of political content and policy debates. This is also the fundamental premise of the First Amendment, which protects free speech and free press. //
Those who wish for regulatory power to ensure “politically correct” content moderation need to answer these fundamental questions: Should the political party who temporarily runs the government be allowed to act as arbiter of what’s true or false, ... //
How will such regulatory power work if the governing political party in the White House switches every four or eight years and the rules dramatically change when a new political party wins? Today, private companies acting as news organizations have their own free speech rights to publish and label their own opinions as true and opposing opinions as false. This works as long as there are multiple competing news companies... //
Rather than attempting to legislate definitions of online safety and viewpoint neutrality, which seems exceedingly difficult in the current deeply divided partisan environment of Washington, D.C., there is another simpler solution.
The simple solution is to mandate full and detailed transparency of:
- All enforcement actions taken by the online platforms...
... //
Such transparency would allow the online platforms to be compared on a peer-to-peer basis for online safety and viewpoint neutrality. Such transparency would also shine the harsh light of publicity on all government efforts to influence online platforms, ...
