WASHINGTON — Jack Dorsey, the chief executive officer of Twitter, Inc., told a group of investors that he views that potentially stricter rules for Section 230 could be harmful to the survival of the open-internet and digital-first industries.
“Content moderation is a practice that is not new to the Internet,” Dorsey said while delivering the keynote to a Goldman Sachs virtual investors’ conference.
“What’s different is how centralized it is right now and that puts a lot of burden on us as a company, as a team, and definitely goes to outcomes that may not look great to every single person involved,” he said, according to Deadline Hollywood.
Right-wing and left-wing politicos have companies like Twitter in their sights as both sides are calling for the U.S. government to strictly regulate social media. As a part of this push, both sides wish to push for their approaches to regulating Section 230 — the landmark law that has made the internet what it is today.
In the eyes of many pro-Trump politicians and Republicans, Dorsey and his company should be held accountable for supposedly suppressing conservative voices on their platform. Former President Donald Trump was banned permanently from the platform after years of inflammatory posts and the peddling of far-right conspiracy theories. According to the House of Representatives and most Americans, his posts also incited the deadly insurrection and raid of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by far-right rioters.
Many conservatives also take issue with Dorsey because of Twitter’s decision to temporarily suspend the accounts for the New York Post and their Page Six tabloid insert before the election in November of 2020. In that case, the Post — if you don’t recall — published a “scoop” alleging that then-candidate Joe Biden’s son acted unlawfully. However, this story was quickly disputed and was revealed to be a political ploy orchestrated by pro-Trump surrogates and the ex-president’s former personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
Because this political stunt failed, Twitter temporarily suspended the conservative tabloid’s accounts for circulating falsified information and violating the platform’s terms and conditions. Nonetheless, Dorsey’s sentiment behind his remarks follows the same belief behind his remarks made before Congress last year.
“If there are changes to it, it will impact all of the Internet, not just social media,” he said.
Naturally, Dorsey refers to how strict Section 230 reforms could threaten all sorts of web platforms, including adult-content websites, camming media, streaming platforms, payment processors, and gaming platforms like Nutaku.
Section 230 reform is, once more, a hot topic these days. Last week, YNOT discussed the SAFE TECH Act’s intention to amend the law to reflect the necessary liability requirements proponents will hold web platforms criminally and civilly liable for their users’ actions.
Jack Dorsey photo by cellanr, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. It has been resized and cropped.
