A few years ago, Twitter ignored our pleas after BizNews and I were targeted by Gupta social media mercenaries. Apart from spewing bile about us all over the platform, the trolls made unbelievable mischief by creating a near duplicate of my account called @allechogg. Part of me is thus delighted the chickens are coming home to roost. Because, for years, social media giants like Jack Dorsey’s creation have played both sides, blatantly ignoring the KYC (Know Your Client) regulations other businesses must live by. This hands-off approach allowed media manipulators like the Gupta staff to run amok. After the Capital invasion, however, everything is now changing. Twitter and Co are being forced to accept responsibility and address their anonymous parasites. That introduces new challenges as we read in this piece from our partners at The Wall Street Journal. – Alec Hogg
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___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Online speech wars are here to stay
Both left and right want to regulate social media, but their ‘fixes’ would break the web.
Jan. 24, 2021 5:14 pm ET
Ding dong, he’s gone, but Donald Trump’s bans from Facebook, Twitter, Google, Reddit, Snapchat, Grindr (wait, what?), Pinterest, TikTok and others mostly persist. Don’t bans on Mr. Trump and others violate the First Amendment? Actually, it’s private companies invoking their own First Amendment right to bar things they don’t like. But even Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey called it “a failure.” That’s also true of Parler’s decapitation. Never mind that these actions seem partisan and hypocritical; the bans will continue until morale improves. Democrats may cheer but the precedent is scary—soon they’ll be silencing their own. Vive la guillotine electronique.
Expect the siren calls for regulation to become deafening—mostly focused on “updating” Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, the provision that limits social-media companies’ liability for things users say. A year ago Joe Biden said it should be “revoked, immediately.” The law states that except for illegal materials like child pornography, companies can host everything and employ their own community standards to take down what they consider offensive.
This mess was all predicted by a comic strip (really!) in 2004, when only Harvard dorm residents knew about TheFacebook—and Twitter was two years away. John “Gabe” Gabriel—the alter ego of one of the creators of Penny Arcade, a web comic—came up with the Greater Internet [Jerkwad] Theory (obscenity deleted). The theory is spelled out on a green chalkboard: “Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total [Jerkwad]” while interpreters note that “normal, well-adjusted people may display psychopathic or antisocial behaviors when given both anonymity and a captive audience on the Internet.” It’s no longer a theory, is it?
In our new slushy, snowflake-soaked society, some folks are offended by just about anything, and are quick to deploy torches and pitchforks to silence and cancel anything not currently considered politically correct. It’s worth reiterating: social media and all its benefits (ask small businesses) wouldn’t exist without Section 230. Instead of hiring hundreds of thousands of coders, Facebook and Twitter would instead be giant law firms forever fighting lawsuits.
Still, Facebook ran ads all fall practically begging for regulation. But any attempt to “fix” Section 230 would surely kill it. Legislation would be a bicameral camel—a horse designed by committee—trying to define community standards, hate speech, what “incites” riots, what constitutes “systemic” racism and on and on, with the inevitable loopholes for certain politicians and favored groups.
Lost in the hysteria of Section 230 is the fact that it doesn’t currently stop anyone from suing social media users. But that can be hard since so many are anonymous or almost impossible to identify. Just who is @barronjohn1946? Big Tech has all the money, so it would be easier to sue them—but you can’t.
Twitter tried to quash the unmasking of an anonymous user, @whysprtech, who in 2016 had released forged FBI documents concerning the death of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. Last fall, courts ruled that Twitter had to release that information when Rich’s brother wanted to sue for defamation.
In many ways, that’s the solution—end anonymity. On Wall Street it’s called “Know your customer”: Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat talks about the bank’s KYC rule all the time.Goldman Sachs forgot about KYC when it did deals with the swindlers at 1MDB. Know your customer is mandated to stop money laundering. Maybe it can work for rhetoric laundering and put an end to Gabe’s theory.
Sure, there’s value to spontaneous users speaking freely about everything, but no one really knows how many fake accounts spewing fake news exist. Truth is elusive. So why not impose know-your-customer on social-media companies. Facebook and Twitter don’t want to know their customers simply because it would be expensive. Too bad. Yes, it would be hard and their user counts would drop, maybe halve, but advertisers would rejoice. It might be cheaper than today’s band-aid of hiring tens of thousands of content moderators.
How to do it? Require a credit card, like Apple does to use its app store? Maybe. A driver’s license? Passport? A trip to the post office or DMV (yikes!) to be identified? Require showing your voter ID? Oh that’s right, there is no voter ID. Any way you choose, identify posters.
Let’s face it, Twitter can be a cesspool of snark. Of course, that’s what attracts many of us. Will that change? Maybe. But I like a world in which someone can be sued when he posts threatening language. If someone libels you, you can sue him. Post about buying zip ties and invading the Capitol, and the FBI knocks on your door. This would put an immediate damper on today’s worst offenders.
Every social-media company would complain but secretly agree with a know-your-customer mandate. The alternative is mindless legislators fatally rewriting Section 230 and vengeful swampers continuing their gung-ho quest to break up everything in sight.
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Appeared in the January 25, 2021, print edition.
