Lindsey Graham Says We Need To Get Rid Of Section 230 To Sue 'Batshit Crazy' QAnon. That's Not How Any Of This Works.

from the no,-just-no dept

As various Republicans in Congress have tried to tap dance around the fact that they're the political party of the batshit crazy QAnon conspiracy theory cult, it's actually nice to see Senator Lindsey Graham -- who had become a consistent Trump kissass over the past few years -- speak up in a Vanity Fair interview and call out QAnon for actually being "batshit crazy." He didn't tiptoe around it like some others:

On the topic of QAnon, This is a group that the FBI has classified as a domestic terror threat. They’ve been involved in kidnappings and killings. Do you think tech platforms in this country should monitor, track, and censor QAnon in the same way they do radical Islamic terrorist groups?

Can you say batshit crazy on your show?

You just did.

Well, QAnon is batshit crazy. Crazy stuff. Inspiring people to violence. I think it is a platform that plays off people’s fears, that compels them to do things they normally wouldn’t do. And it’s very much a threat.

So that's all good. Kudos to you, Senator Graham for saying what needs to be said. But... then he immediately goes off the rails and seems to... blame Section 230 for QAnon. And he seems to think QAnon is... a website? And that we need to get rid of Section 230... to sue QAnon?

But there are a lot of websites out there. How do you live in this world? So under Section 230 of our law [the Communications Decency Act], a social media company can’t be sued for the content that they carry. I get slandered all the time on Twitter and other outlets. If the New York Times printed an article, I could sue them. If CNN said something about me that wasn’t true, I could sue them. But Twitter and all these other sites can pass on the most scandalous information, you have no recourse. So how to fix this? I would like to remove Section 230 liability. That if you’re going to have a social media site like QAnon or anything else, you spread this stuff at your own peril. So when this guy went into the pizza restaurant in Washington, because they alleged that Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile ring out of a pizza place in Washington. This guy took it seriously, went in with an AR-15 and started shooting up place. Thank God nobody got killed. But the pizza owner under my theory, could sue QAnon for passing along garbage. That’s a pretty dramatic step. But the only way I know to make people more responsible who run these websites is allow lawsuits when they go too far.

So... what? How is this a person in charge of writing laws when he seems so totally confused about 230 and intermediary liability? The whole point of intermediary liability protections like Section 230 is that it protects the conduits from being sued for the statements of users. So, yes, he can sue the NY Times or CNN for something that they said because they said it. And he can already sue whoever was saying defamatory stuff (if it's actually defamatory) even if it was posted on Twitter. He just can't sue Twitter -- because that's not who said it. But in this rambling answer, Graham seems to shift back and forth between QAnon and Twitter as if they're the same thing... and they're not.

QAnon is not "a social media site" and it's also not a company or a person. I mean, there's some asshole (or multiple assholes behind it -- with the latest rumors being that it's actually the dude behind 8chan/8kun), but if any Q believer says something that violates a law, there is nothing in Section 230 that stops that person from being sued. Nothing at all. So I have no idea what the fuck Lindsey Graham thinks is going on, and why getting rid of Section 230 would change anything regarding QAnon. Getting rid of 230 might mean that... people could sue Twitter about the bullshit QAnon believers say, but even that would likely fail because of the 1st Amendment that Lindsey Graham swore an oath to protect and uphold.

So, kudos to Graham for calling out QAnon, but it's only a very minor kudos because he seems so confused about QAnon (it's not a social media site) and how Section 230 works.

Filed Under: cda 230, intermediary liability, lindsey graham, qanon, section 230