Senator Amy Klobuchar Says She Has A Bill To Hold Facebook Responsible For Vaccine Disinfo; But What Would The Cause Of Action Be?
from the that's-not-how-any-of-this-works dept
Earlier this week, appearing on The View, Senator Amy Klobuchar was asked about COVID disinformation, and gave a pretty bizarre answer. Responding to a question about how fighting COVID has been politicized by Fox News, Klobuchar said we should make Facebook responsible. It's really quite an incredible disconnect. The question specifically highlighted how Fox News was the main vector of COVID misinformation, and Klobuchar said this:
And at the same time, the misinformation on the internet, which is something I'm personally taking on is outrageous. These are the biggest richest companies in the world that control these platforms, and they've got to take this crap off. We're in a public health crisis -- we still are -- we've seen major improvement thanks to the vaccines, the ingenuity of people, Biden administration getting this out, but this is holding us back. Two thirds of the people that are not vaccinated believe something that they read on the internet. That's all the facts I need. That's from a Kaiser Foundation Report.
So I'm going to introduce a bill to limit the misinformation on vaccines by saying you guys are liable if you don't take it off your platforms.
The next speaker then joked that Facebook is "more likely to remove a breastfeeding shot than some misinformation" which... um... is not even remotely true. It may have been true a decade ago but old talking points are obsolete.
But, the larger point here is make Facebook liable for what exactly? Whether we like it or not, vaccine misinformation is still protected speech under the 1st Amendment. And no bill that Klobuchar can introduce can change the 1st Amendment. So, if you make them "liable," there still is no cause of action because the misinformation itself does not (and cannot) violate any law in the US.
And, as has been pointed out over and over again, it's not as easy as everyone makes it out to be for these sites to just snap their fingers and make such misinformation disappear. Everyone thinks it is because they've never had to do it themselves, especially not at the scale of a Facebook. First, you need clear, easily understood definitions of what qualifies as vaccine misinformation that are easily explained to tens of thousands of human moderators. Then you need to train them how to recognize what is actually misinformation -- and not someone just commenting about vaccines (including by people who might not be experts, and might get some small things wrong). Then you need to set parameters for what kinds of misinformation should actually lead to what responses. Do you shut down accounts entirely? Do you give people warnings? Do you make them delete specific content? Then you have to deal with levels of misinformation. How do you deal with someone who presents something that is technically factual, but placed in a warped context, such that it implies something false? How about someone who presents incomplete information? Or someone who presents factual information, but their interpretation of it is incorrect? How do you know who is doing it deliberately and who is just unclear?
Then you have to deal with the false positives (of which there will be many -- including people trying to spread counter-info to respond to those spreading disinformation). Then you have to recognize how disinformation strategies will continue to evolve over time, and how those with a vested interest in spreading such information will change their tactics, so whatever worked yesterday won't work tomorrow. Then you have to recognize that you're still going to miss a massive amount of the content, because you have 2.8 billion users around the globe, and no company, no matter how big, and with however many AI bots and human content moderators, can ever possibly review all of it... and you're putting companies in an impossible position.
Demanding the impossible is not good policy.
Can Facebook do a better job of all of this? Of course. Has the company been flippant and silly in the past in responding to controversies over content moderation. Absolutely. But demanding the impossible and threatening unconstitutional regulatory responses for failing seems... counterproductive?
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Filed Under: 1st amendment, amy klobuchar, cause of action, content moderation, disinformation, section 230, vaccine disinformation
Companies: facebook
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False Positives
There are also false positives of people making fun of the mis- and disinformers, such as saying "I got my COVID vaccine shot, and now I have 5G WiFI! Yay! I'm superhuman!" It's obvious satire but a social network has far too much on its plate to make a snap judgment like that so it could be flagged.
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This? This is actual planned censorship
Don't like people being wrong or lying on the internet go after them directly... except that would also be unconstitutional. Trying to force a platform to do your dirty work like this not only doesn't magically make it constitutional because the government isn't directly giving people the boot it's something that anyone who lived through four years of 'if I don't like it it's fake news' should really know better about.
If she's concerned about people being misinformed or not informed then great, support government efforts at informing people, tv spots, ads online and off, calling out people lying about vaccines directly, there are a whole number of things that she could do or propose done that wouldn't violate the constitution and risk making things much worse online so drop PR stunt and maybe consider some of those instead.
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Re: actual planned censorship
yeah, the basics here are easy to understand and were in play for thousands of years.
Governments really like to control the public narrative as a tool of power retention over the general population.
Feed the public positive information about their existing government -- and restrict negative information about that government.
Very simple and commonplace, but varies in how far specific government are willing to go with it.
"Public Relations" is the polite term for benign forms of this (US Government has legions of full-time public-relations employees to make it look good).
Outright Censorship is the more extreme form of this power tool, and has been extremely popular through the ages.
The current power structure in WashingtonDC is aggressively pursuing a more subtle censorship approach by using intermediary media platforms to do the actual dirty work of censorship.
Klobuchar is merely a bit player in this.
Biden on 15 July issued FACEBOOK executives a specific list of Facebook accounts he wanted banned for spreading “misinformation” about the Covid vaccine.
Biden's WH Press Secretary Jen Psaki later emphasized that all people who circulate such materials online should be banned from not just Facebook but from all social media platforms.
Pretty brazen stuff from someone solemnly sworn to uphold the 1st Amendment.
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Re: Re: actual planned censorship
Biden on 15 July issued FACEBOOK executives a specific list of Facebook accounts he wanted banned for spreading “misinformation” about the Covid vaccine.
Oh, and do you happen to have a specific citation for that because from what I've heard it was more a question as to why certain accounts were banned on one service but not another. An indication perhaps that the WH isn't happy with how Facebook is handling things but hardly an order and even if it was it seemed to slide right off Facebook as they basically told the WH to get bent.
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Re: Re: actual planned censorship
You mean this?
'The White House has repeatedly flagged “problematic posts” that contain disinformation and pushed Facebook for more transparency in its data on who this COVID-19 disinformation is reaching, Psaki said on July 15.'
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Re: This? This is actual planned censorship
"If she's concerned about people being misinformed or not informed then great, support government efforts at informing people..."
I can see where she's coming from - GWB and Trump both fired a passle of torpedoes right under the waterline of government credibility which means that to a significant proportion of the citizenry the biggest indication that what they hear and read is a lie is that it came from government. After four years of Trump's assorted press secretaries that's understandable.
That said trying to compel a private entity to fact-check is as bad as the alt-right demanding FB stops throwing them out.
One thing is Biden et al. openly calling social platforms to do their part, by pleading for it. That's no more controversial than any time when government calls upon The *People to do their part.
A bill to the same effect, however, is government censorship and a direct 1A violation.
"... so drop PR stunt and maybe consider some of those instead."
It's always been a risk that since fraudulent "bills-for-show" have become the standard operation of republicans, democrats would start to follow suit. It's logical; battles are fought with the weapons first deployed by the least scrupulous.
But with democrats already struggling to keep and hold moral high ground this is the sort of shit likely to topple the last vestiges of US democracy. Because for that system to work you need at least one party invested in upholding the rules.
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For Harmful Speech
The strategy of SJWs is recent years is to classify any speech that they don't agree with as inherently harmful. Now, they believe the camel has its nose in he tent thanks to the coronavirus. Anyone saying anything other than the official government bullet points that were issued this week (and subject to change next week) is guilty of some kind of medical harm in the aggregate. Some percentage of medical death or medical injury can then be assigned to a speaker, which is not protected by the first amendment.
And from there, it can be expanded to other topics. If government can identify an injury in the aggregate, then government can co-opt a tech company into shutting down disagreement. War against terrorism?
War against poverty? Whatever. The government flags it, and the corporation bans it.
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Re: For Harmful Speech
You might have had a point, but i couldn't nake it through the first sentence. Fail.
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Re: For Harmful Speech
Please define SJW, not what the acronym means, but what you believe it to mean w.r.t claiming that speech with which they disagree is harmful.
Please be specific in your response so that we can all determine that you have any valid points to discuss, or you are just pulling shit out of your ass while following the GQP talking points playbook.
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'Oh, you know...'
The strategy of SJWs is recent years is to classify any speech that they don't agree with as inherently harmful.
Which speech would that be again that people are 'disagreeing' with? As always with this question be specific in your answer.
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Re: 'Oh, you know...'
They immediately shift to the 'other' should be banned from ever speaking again.
Little precious fweelies hurt:
1st they whine
2nd they want to violate the 1st Amend rights of everyone in opposition - to them
3rd they wait for someone else to disturb their Broflake life
And they do it all over again.
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Re: Re: 'Oh, you know...'
I would like to highlight your lack of any specifics, instead gesturing to a vague pattern of behavior that is supposedly general knowledge.
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Re: For Harmful Speech
“Anyone saying anything other than the official government bullet points that were issued this week (and subject to change next week) is guilty of some kind of medical harm in the aggregate. Some percentage of medical death or medical injury can then be assigned to a speaker, which is not protected by the first amendment“
So do you get exact talking points from St Petersburg or do they allow you to take a bit of creative license?
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Re: Re: For Harmful Speech
The government of Russia is in Moscow, not St. Petersburg. Unless you're talking about the city in Florida…
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Re: Re: Re: For Harmful Speech
The Internet Research Agency is based in St Petersburg.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: For Harmful Speech
Ah, thank you!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: For Harmful Speech
the best 100.000 dollars ever spent by anyone on Facebook advertising, according to the official govt and internal facebook investigation.
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Re: For Harmful Speech
"The strategy of SJWs is recent years is to classify any speech that they don't agree with as inherently harmful. "
...he says, deeming the speech of "SJW"'s (whatever that may be in his mind) inherently harmful.
"If government can identify an injury in the aggregate, then government can co-opt a tech company into shutting down disagreement. War against terrorism? War against poverty? Whatever. The government flags it, and the corporation bans it."
This bit is actually somewhat correct; The GOP started blatantly using this heavy-handed method with GWB and Trump. It's no good to see Klobuchnar, of all people, picking up the same weapon. It was unacceptable when Trump used it and it is unacceptable now.
Government pleading to the citizenry is no more than calling upon the people to "do their part". That's as kosher as it gets.
Government proposing bills to compel the same is censorship.
That said, Koby, just because you had a point here doesn't mean you get to shoehorn it into private entities being similarly compelled to host people they don't want to host.
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Re: For Harmful Speech
Anyone saying anything other than the official government bullet points that were issued this week (and subject to change next week) is guilty of some kind of medical harm in the aggregate.
I love the part I bolded. If only science didn't change we could just push all of you morons off the edge of the planet and be done with your stupidity.
Since that's not an option, I anxiously await the spread of more vaccine disinformation so that primarily, you're happy - but as it seems to be fucking over the unvaccinated, I am also happy that the gene pool will be getting a much needed cleaning. I'm all out of fucks for you morons at this point - if north of 600k deaths isn't convincing enough, then you deserve what you get.
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Re: Re: For Harmful Speech
The problem is what the rest of us will get too: more virus mutations, some of which might not be handled by the vaccines we have.
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Re: Re: For Harmful Speech
"I'm all out of fucks for you morons at this point - if north of 600k deaths isn't convincing enough, then you deserve what you get."
I think most sane people have found themselves at this point. To "own the libs and the other" the republican base is willing to die out of spite. They'll let themselves and other people die, rather than accord everyone else the respect of peers.
It's fucking sad, but it's beyond fixing. And with some 20-30% of the US citizenry being infected with that facetious bullshit there's no living with it either.
Beau of the fifth column made a video; "Let's talk about Pelosi's decision to veto republican picks..." where he describes the current situation emerging like a carbon copy of the old irish Sinn Fein/IRA template - with a political body supporting, covering for and fundraising for an emerging cadre of domestic terrorists. It rings too true for comfort, because while the asshat insurrectionists from jan 6th are being rounded up there are militias emerging all over the USA eager to push the "good old days" of authoritarian racism down everyone's throat at force of arms while the GOP has reduced itself to being a ministry of PR for that base.
The US may not be facing a second civil war but the threat of an emerging group of terrorists akin to the Basques or the IRA is real enough. And will be given an extended lifespan courtesy of political apologists in senate and congress.
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know whats worse?
Is finding out who is posting it.
Its getting hard to track these, as well as faked accounts and so forth.
Its as bad as it USED to be.
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Define Misinformation
Who gets to decide what is and is not misinformation?
Is it misinformation to dispute the CDC or WHO? https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/31/824560471/should-we-all-be-wearing-masks-in-pub lic-health-experts-revisit-the-question
Is it misinformation to dispute the duly-elected head of government?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-misinformation.html
htt ps://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/youtube-pulls-florida-governor-s-video-says-his-panel-spread-n1263 635
In a world where everybody lies, for good and bad reasons, "I know it when I see it," is not acceptable policy.
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Re: Define Misinformation
Which is the subject matter expert?
Institutions of medicine or a failed used Bible salesman?
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Re: Define Misinformation
"Who gets to decide what is and is not misinformation?"
Science.
The core method of which is to only deliver facts which can be similarly derived by any party performing the same analysis and using verifiable data.
"Is it misinformation to dispute the CDC or WHO?"
Depends on whether anyone using stringent methods of number crunching and analysis can shoot a hole in the method employed by the CDC and WHO to produce the information they deliver.
"Is it misinformation to dispute the duly-elected head of government?"
Same as the above.
Whether it's misinformation or not never depends fully on the agent of delivery; it's primarily about the method employed to reach the conclusion which was delivered.
Thus you can generally trust medical advice which has a quorum of concensus from multiple agencies with expertise in the field which you know not to be on the same political chain of command and thus not under the same pressure.
You can generally never trust medical advice which only comes from a few facebook pages or lobbying groups. Get a second opinion, and from the US pov, at this point I'd argue getting the advice from organizations who don't have a dog in the fight within US borders - like the WHO or expert panels in other countries, if you want to be paranoid.
Unfortunately GWB and Trump produced precedent evidence that government information may not just be partisan but outright harmful lying, as 500k needlessly dead americans can attest to. The CDC was, under Trump, gutted.
The WHO may be skewed to exculpate China's failures but is still goodf enough to produce sensible advice on the US situation...and failing all else, get an expert panel of US independent epidemiologist researchers to pitch in.
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What about my uncle
And who is going to stop my uncle at the dinner table from spreading this nonsense?? What does your bill do to stop that Amy?!?!? I hope they start requiring moderators at dinner tables...
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Re: What about my uncle
"...And who is going to stop my uncle at the dinner table from spreading this nonsense??"
Well, he'll be talking nonstop about government censorship instead. And unfortunately he'd be right. It's one thing for government to say "Please, people. Do your part. We can't do it alone", like Biden did when he called on social platforms to try to not misinform people.
It's another thing entirely for government to say "We'll make a law to get you to do your part!".
Amy dun goofed there. Badly. She picked up the dirty weaponry used by GWB and Trump rather than stick to principles.
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If the platform is outside the United States, they will not be subject to this law.
For example, VKontakte in Russia, or DailyMotion in France, are not subject to any US laws.
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Re:
No, they are already subject to a whole lot of other nonsense. This would be flat-out under-redundant wrt VK.
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I wish a judge that smacks this crap down would also say "If you think it's so easy, show us how."
But her main reasoning is "These are the biggest richest companies in the world".
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Re:
"But her main reasoning is "These are the biggest richest companies in the world"."
Ironically one of the few issues democrats and republicans are now in full bipartisan agreement on is that the american success story merits punishment.
Not over monopolies or cartels. Not over unfair practices. Not over grifting, pork barrel projects, or regulatory capture. Just over services being too popular.
Meanwhile shady banks, brokers and insurance companies are deemed "Too Big To Fail" if they have their tendrils deep enough in the common man's 401(k) to harm the citizenry as a whole should they get penalized with anything other than wrist slaps.
Facebook and Google should just link their business model to banking. No politician from either side of the aisle would ever question them again.
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Re: Re:
if the "american success story" is based on giving fraud loans to people and getting bailed out by the citizenry (2008), or going to space with the money collected by online sales while half local shops are closed and struggling (2021), or monopolistic practices, or privacy violations... I find it increasingly difficult to be supportive of such "success"
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Re: Re: Re:
The problem is that those who enjoy such extravagant levels of success fuel their enterprise with the efforts of those beneath them - by promising them the suggestion of a seat at their "big boy" table. Works every time.
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Re: Re: Re:
"if the "american success story" is based on giving fraud loans to people and getting bailed out by the citizenry (2008)..."
Ah. You see the problem then. To a large degree this is also about the citizenry being too enamored with political ideology. The likes of Lehman-Sachs and AIG were given carte blanche by Reagan and as a result AIG at least could hold the pension funds of half the US hostage to their survival.
And no one dared question that at high enough level because regulations curb national growth the same as a sensible diet curbs weight gain.
"...I find it increasingly difficult to be supportive of such "success""
No one is. It's just that that "success" was sold to the citizenry under the promise of an extra 100 bucks a month in their paycheck or a larger possible credit line. "We The People" couldn't metaphorically say no to a bag of Twinkies a day for decades and are now whining about their recurrent heart problems, obesity, mood swings and mental instability caused by the lifestyle of their economy.
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Re: Re: Re:
So you have a problem with consumers having choice and not being assigned local shops to keep in business? Seriously that criticism made no fucking sense when it was being made about big box stores.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
"So you have a problem with consumers having choice..."
Which is the exact opposite of what the US model provides. You can have any of two dozen brands - all owned by the same two corporations. You can have any brand of US-made car. All owned by GM. For "choice" you increasingly have to look for asian or european imports because you can't pick out ten different types of pet food without the ultimate owner being Nestlé.
Or with two major banks and an insurance company owning so much stock in US pension funds both GWB and Obama had to eat crow and consider them "Too Big To Fail".
The US consumer has the illusion of choice. And that's been the case ever since Reagan decided to push the idea that the market will fix everything down every americans throat with all existing evidence showing otherwise.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Your general point is right but GM does not own Ford or Tesla, so there are three major US auto makers (Chrysler is European owned).
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The cause of action would be grandstanding by another Senator...
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“I’m going to introduce a bill”
Tools can’t introduce workable bills Amy.
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Nobody should want Facebook moderators to be held as the arbiters of truth and science in the world. The quality of medical advice given by internet randos is not significantly improved by having an underpaid office drone pass quick judgment on it.
What Facebook should do, is remind people they shouldn't be taking medical advice from randos on Facebook.
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