Sen Ron Wyden is considered one of the fathers of the internet because of Section 230 which exempted internet companies from the rules that normally guide publisher liability.
But that has turned out to be a very bad thing because it allows Twitter, Amazon, and Facebook to censor political speech that they don’t like.
Wyden believes that they should be moderating hate speech which is, of course, conservative ideology and not true hate speech.
Facebook allows all kinds of hate speech including death threats from the left while censoring conservative sights who print the truth. Freedom of speech has served the country well for over 200 years but is quickly dying with the tech giants in charge.
Wyden is mostly concerned with privacy and he sees the lies told by Mark Zuckerberg to be a major assault on privacy and he believes Zuckerberg should face serious jail time for those lies and manipulations.
Mark Zuckerberg 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. And, by the way, there is a precedent for this: In financial services, if the CEO and the executives lie about the financials, they can be held personally accountable. [Editor’s note: University of Oregon journalism professor Tim Gleason, who teaches communications law, says such a prosecution is theoretically possible, but “the likelihood of criminal action is rather slim.”]
If you had known then what you know now about Facebook, would you have written the law differently?
Sure. I still think the basic frame of the shield—particularly for the little guy—is essential. And I’m looking very aggressively for ways to shore up the sword, to get at the slime.
A lot of people don’t realize the First Amendment is what creates the biggest opportunity for hate speech. 230 provides an opportunity to address hate speech without the bad guys going off to the Dark Web.