Repeal Section 230 for Child Porn | Opinion
InEDC Forward: I have been in the Online Publishing Industry since July 1984 and know first-hand of many perverts in the Industry! Some people I worked with early on later went on to Break Into Sandia Labs [Lawrence Livermore Labs out of U. C. Berkley] to store and distribute Pornography via the Lab’s ARPANET trunk line. Some of that crew were later convicted of Child Pronography. Others I worked with later went on to develop a hard-core pornography website called Pornhub and relocated it to Canada to avoid U.S. laws. From day-1 the value of an online enterprise is growth predicated on User Generated content as “Content is King” in the industry. Ergo the success of companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and the such. Since I was in early I understood this but I also understood how perverts used “forums” to contact others so I never allowed such forums without full human review and approval of user generated content. I know this Industry is replete with perverts! Not only do they hide behind a keyboard but they reach out physically and destroy lives of innocents. Please read this story and consider helping repeal “Section 230” that allows Big Tech to turn a blind eye to these perverts and their evil deeds. Cris Alarcon.
MIKE WACKER, Newsweek.
(PLACERVILLE, CALIFORNIA) Sept 6, 2022 — In a previous era, the American tech industry was the golden child who could do no wrong. If it had to face down a serious problem like child pornography, you could find tech talks showcasing the innovative ways companies were using technology to solve the problem. And these tech talks weren’t just dog-and-pony shows; these technologies actually worked, and data existed to prove their effectiveness.
The Verge‘s report about Twitter’s child porn problem, however, tells a very different story. It is not the tale of a golden company, but of one whose response to child porn is “woefully inadequate—largely manual.” Where it did use software, Twitter relied on “a legacy, unsupported tool” named RedPanda. “RedPanda is by far one of the most fragile, inefficient, and under-supported tools we have on offer,” one Twitter engineer said. And those tech talks have now been replaced by PR talks. Twitter’s spokesperson told The Verge, “Twitter has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation.”
Apparently, “zero tolerance” amounts to nearly zero progress. Twitter’s working group issued a series of recommendations, but “aside from enabling in-app reporting of [child sexual exploitation], there appears to have been little progress on the group’s other recommendations.”
At Twitter, the rot goes straight up to the top: “Executives are apparently well-informed about the issue, and the company is doing little to fix it.” The rot also extends beyond Twitter, to companies like Reddit and TikTok. In 2019, a New York Times podcast revealed that both the FBI and LAPD had to prioritize reports of child porn for infants and toddlers (and anyone in immediate danger); they are “essentially not able to respond to reports of anybody older than that.” A problem that overwhelming points to a systemic failure by the tech industry, not just a failure of one company.
This systemic failure requires action from Congress. And by action, I don’t mean another memo or another hearing. The tech industry is (in)famous for listening to its own while thumbing its nose at D.C. But if Twitter is not even listening to its own employees here, then what makes anyone think that another harshly worded letter from Congress will turn the tide?
By action, I mean passing legislation. The only option left is to the change the legal incentive structure for the tech industry, so Congress must target the industry’s most sacred legal immunity: Section 230, the law that removes almost all of tech companies’ existing liability for the third-party content on their platforms. Repeal Section 230 for child porn.
This legislation is not designed as a punitive measure, although such punishment is certainly warranted in Twitter’s case. This measure is designed to benefit victims. Twitter’s negligence has produced too many child porn victims, but when these victims sue, one law repeatedly blocks their lawsuits: Section 230.
In Doe v. Twitter, the victims’ lawyers basically threw the book—nay, the whole bookshelf—at Twitter, but Twitter used Section 230 to swat away nearly every problem, including an alleged violation of federal child porn laws. One lone exception did exist there: Twitter could not swat away an alleged violation of federal sex trafficking laws. A law known as FOSTA had carved that law out of Section 230—one of only a few such carveouts.
To that narrow list of laws that are carved out of Section 230, we should add federal (and state) child porn laws. A bill known as EARN IT would do exactly that. But what if the child porn was also revenge porn? Could a state revenge porn law also be used here? Nearly every state has such a law, though a federal law about it does not yet exist. And what about privacy laws that could apply here as well?
Instead of carving out a few select laws and leaving Section 230 in place for the many laws not on that list, we should apply a content-based rule: if the content is child porn, then Section 230’s legal immunity does not apply to any law. Let the lawyers throw the bookshelf, just like they already can in the offline world.
Normally, offering legal immunity to one type of content but not another type of content would raise serious First Amendment issues. According to New York v. Ferber, however, child porn is unprotected content. If you stick to the federal definition of that term, then it has no First Amendment protection.
Do members of Congress want Twitter to continue to neglect its child porn problem, relying on unsupported legacy tools like RedPanda? Or do they want Twitter to declare a “Code Red” and build out infrastructure that actually stamps out this problem? Whether by passing EARN IT or repealing Section 230 for child porn, to change the world, Congress must act and change the legal incentives.
Mike Wacker is a software engineer and technologist who has previously served as tech fellow in Congress.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
See Video Report Here: https://www.newsweek.com/repeal-section-230-child-porn-opinion-1739141
Our Congressman is Tom McClintock and can be contacted at:
Roseville District Office
Phone: 916-786-5560
Fax: 916-786-6364
My bonafides: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2589189/mindspring-site-exposes-password-files.html