babylon bee – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers And Deeply Unfunny ‘Satirist’ Seek To Remove Website 1st Amendment Rights To ‘Protect Free Speech’

from the that-doesn't-seem-right dept

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who heads something called the “House Republican Big Tech Task Force” has teamed up with Seth Dillon, the CEO of the deeply unfunny “conservative” Onion wannabe, The Babylon Bee, to whine in the NY Post about “how to end big tech censorship of free speech.” The answer, apparently, is to remove the 1st Amendment. I only wish I were joking, but that’s the crux of their very, very confused suggestion.

Let’s start with the basics: Dillon’s site regularly posts culture-war promoting satire. Because Republican culture wars these days are about shitting on anyone they dislike, or who dares to suggest that merely respecting others is a virtue, many of those stories are not just deeply unfunny, but often pretty fucked up. None of this is surprising, of course. But, the thing about the modern GOP and its culture wars is that it’s entirely based around pretending to be the victim. It’s about never, not once, being willing to take responsibility for your own actions.

So, when the Babylon Bee publishes something dumb that breaks a rule, and they get a minor slap on the wrist for it, they immediately flop down on the ground like a terrible soccer player and roll around about how their free speech has been all censored. It hasn’t. You’re relying on someone else’s private property. They get to make the rules. And if they decide that you broke their rules, they get to show you the door (or whatever other on-site punishment) they feel is appropriate. This is pretty basic stuff, and actually used to be conservative dogma: private property rights, the rights to freely associate — or not — with whoever you want under the 1st Amendment, and accepting personal responsibility when you fuck around, were things we were told were core to being a conservative.

No longer (it’s arguable, of course, if they were ever actually serious about any of that).

There is no free speech issue here. The Babylon Bee has 1st Amendment rights to publish whatever silly nonsense it wants on its own site. It has no right to demand that others host its speech for it. Just as the Babylon Bee does not need to post my hysterically funny satire about Seth Dillon plagiarizing his “best” jokes by running Onion articles three times through GPT3 AI with the phrase “this, but for dumb rubes.” That’s freedom of association, Seth. That’s how it works.

Perhaps its no surprise that the CEO of a “what if satire were shitty” site doesn’t understand the 1st Amendment, but you’d think that a sitting member of Congress, who actually swore to protect and uphold the Constitution, might have a better idea. Not so for Rep. McMorris Rodgers, who once actually was decent on tech, before apparently realizing that her constituents don’t like elected officials from reality, and prefer them to be culture warriors as well.

Anyway, after whining about facing a tiny bit of personal responsibility — including, I shit you not, having to be fact checked by Facebook (note to the two of you: fact checking is more speech, it’s not censorship, you hypocritical oafs) — they trot out their “solutions.”

Big Tech must be held accountable. First, we propose narrowing Section 230 liability protections for Big Tech companies by removing ambiguity in the law — which they exploit to suppress and penalize constitutionally protected speech. Our proposal ensures Big Tech is no longer protected if it censors individuals or media outlets or removes factually correct content simply because it doesn’t fit its woke narrative.

I mean, holy fuck. There is no excuse in the year 2022 to still be so fucking ignorant of how Section 230 works. Especially if you’re in Congress. Narrowing Section 230’s liability protections won’t lead to less moderation. It will lead to more. The liability protections are what allow websites to feel comfortable hosting 3rd party content. The case that caused Section 230 in the first place, involved Prodigy being held liable for comments in a forum. If you make sites more liable, they are less likely to host whatever nonsense content you want to share on their website.

Second, removing “factually correct content” whether or not it “fits its woke narrative” (and, um, no big tech company has a “woke narrative”) is… protected by the 1st Amendment. Content moderation is protected by the 1st Amendment. Dillon doesn’t have to publish my unfunny piece. Twitter doesn’t need to publish his unfunny piece. Facebook can fact check all it wants — even if it gets the facts wrong. It’s all thanks to the 1st Amendment.

Taking away 230 protections doesn’t change that — it just makes websites even LESS likely to host is culture war nonsense.

But McMorris Rodgers and Dillon aren’t done yet.

Second, we propose requiring quarterly filings to the Federal Trade Commission to keep Big Tech transparent about content moderation. This will allow Congress, the FTC and Americans to know when and why these companies censor content to determine whether it’s justified. We’d also sunset Section 230 protections after five years, so Congress can reevaluate them if necessary and incentivize Big Tech to treat all content fairly or have their protections revoked.

Again, this is almost certainly unconstitutional. I know some people struggle with the idea of why transparency requirements are an affront to the 1st Amendment, but it’s pretty straightforward. If Congress ordered Seth Dillon to file his site’s editorial policies, including details about what stories they reject and which they promote “to determine whether its justified” for the site to make those editorial decisions, pretty much everyone would recognize the 1st Amendment concerns.

Demanding anyone justify editorial decisions by filing reports with the government to “determine whether [those editorial decisions are] justified” is just a blatant attack on free speech and the 1st Amendment.

Sunsetting Section 230 just takes us back to the issue we noted above. Without liability protections, websites are MORE likely to remove content to avoid liability, not less.

This isn’t like some big secret. Perhaps Dillon and McMorris Rodgers only get their news from sites like the Babylon Bee, and that helps them not understand how anything works. But, really, that’s no excuse.

Third, our proposal requires Big Tech to improve appeals processes for users to challenge moderation decisions and enables people to petition their state’s attorney general to bring legal action against Big Tech, enhancing users’ power to challenge censorship. Twitter would be required to notify a user, like the Babylon Bee, through direct communication before taking any censorship action. Big Tech would also be required to give users the option to challenge any censorship decisions with a real person — not a bot — to disincentivize Big Tech from completely automating its censorship process.

Right, so again, all of that is an affront to the 1st Amendment. Should I be able to petition my state’s attorney general to bring legal action against the Babylon Bee for failing to publish my truly hilarious article about how Cathy McMorris Rodgers hates the internet so much, she pushed legislation banning communities from building their own broadband networks (really funny stuff, because it’s true).

Of course not. The 1st Amendment protects websites and their editorial decisions. There is no constitutional cause of action any attorney general could take against a website for their moderation decisions.

As for the appeals process — most websites have one. But mandating one would, again, raise serious constitutional issues, as it’s the government interfering with the editorial process.

And, note, of course, that none of these complaints address the fact that the social media sites that people like Dillon like, including Parler, Gettr, and Truth Social, have far more arbitrary and aggressive content moderation policies (even as they pretend otherwise).

It’ll be hilarious — even Babylon Bee worthy, if I say so myself — if this bill passes, and woke liberals use it to sue Truth Social for taking down truthful content about the January 6th hearings. C’mon, Seth, let me publish that as an article on your site! Or you hate freedom of speech!

Free speech must be cherished and preserved. It’s time Big Tech companies uphold American values and become fair stewards of the speech they host.

But the Babylon Bee remains free to be as shitty as before? How is that fair?

Filed Under: 1st amendment, cathy mcmorris rodgers, content moderation, editorial discretion, free speech, section 230, seth dillon
Companies: babylon bee

Content Moderation Case Study: Understanding Cultural Context To Detect Satire (2020)

from the she's-a-witch,-burn-her dept

Summary: During the somewhat controversial Senate confirmation hearings for the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, there were a few moments that gained extra attention, including a confrontation between Senator Mazie Hirono and the nominee concerning statements regarding LGBTQ rights that Barrett had made in the past. Hirono, who had separately called the hearings themselves illegitimate, was then criticized by traditionally right-leaning media for what they felt was overly aggressive questioning.

The satirical site The Babylon Bee, which frequently targets Democrats for satirization, published a piece roughly parodying a famous Monty Python sketch in which villagers in a medieval town try to determine if someone is a witch, including by weighing them to see if they weigh the same as a duck. The Babylon Bee took that sketch?s premise and ran a satirical article claiming that Hirono demanded that Barrett be weighed against a duck.

Facebook had the article removed, saying that it was ?inciting violence.? The Babylon Bee appealed the decision, only to be told that upon a further ?manual? review, Facebook had decided that its original analysis stood, and that the article ?incites violence.?

Decisions to be made by Facebook:

Questions and policy implications to consider:

Resolution: As the tweet from The Babylon Bee?s CEO started to go viral, leading to another round of news coverage in traditionally right-wing focused publications, Facebook eventually apologized and said that the moderation decision (and the manual review) were a mistake.

“This was a mistake and we apologize that it happened. Satire can be difficult for our systems to identify, but we’ve restored the article and their ability to monetize,” a Facebook spokesperson told Fox News.

As often happens in these situations, the CEO of the Babylon Bee insisted that this response was implausible, apparently believing that everyone would recognize the cultural references his site?s article was making use of for satire.

“Why did it have to take getting the media involved to fix this? And why did it happen in the first place?” Dillon asked in response to Facebook. “This was not just an algorithm flagging an article in error. Yes, that happened. But then a manual review took place and the ruling to penalize us was upheld. I notice they left that part out.”

Originally posted to the Trust & Safety Foundation website.

Filed Under: amy coney barrett, content moderation, mazie hirono, monty python, satire
Companies: babylon bee, facebook