The left is trying to steer Facebook into doing more censorship.
Sen. Ron Wyden, (D-OR) proclaimed that Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg should face dire consequences for how he has chosen to run the platform. However, he also calls for more censorship of the internet as a whole.
Wyden also hammered the First Amendment, saying that “A lot of people don't realize the First Amendment is what creates the biggest opportunity for hate speech.” He then noted by contrast that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act “provides an opportunity to address hate speech without the bad guys going off to the Dark Web.”
Wyden was one of the authors of 230, which protects social media companies from being prosecuted for illegal activity that happens on their platforms on the condition they behave as open platforms for public conversation
In a Willamette Week article titled “Ron Wyden Doesn’t Apologize for Helping Build the Internet—But He’s Interested in Sending Mark Zuckerberg to Prison,” Wyden elaborated on the perils of the modern internet. He spoke of Section 230’s impact, which “allowed the net to grow from being a niche tool for academics and well-off folks to creating enormous opportunities for people without clout.”
Wyden specifically hammered Big Tech, though not for the reasons conservatives would. “Your companies have done practically everything wrong since the 2016 election,” he wrote. He later added, “If you don't get serious on moderation, you're going to have a lot of people coming after you. And they're going to be in a very strong position."
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He has a particularly venomous appraisal of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who he claimed:
has repeatedly lied to the American people about privacy. I think he ought to be held personally accountable, which is everything from financial fines to—and let me underline this—the possibility of a prison term. Because he hurt a lot of people.
He has called for better moderation, particularly against “all the hatemongers,” which, to free speech advocates, is a step down the slippery slope to censorship. On the other hand, Wyden mentioned that when “Barack Obama said you had to give up 10 percent of your liberty to have security,” he “wanted to throw a rock at my television set.”
In a statement posted on his government website, Wyden said “tech companies certainly need to continue to be far more vigorous about identifying, fingerprinting and blocking content and individuals who incite hate and violence.” Big Tech, he said, should be doing far more to “clean up their platforms” on their own.
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