The CEOs of Facebook and Twitter agree with lawmakers on one thing: Congress should consider updating Section 230, a law that protects them from being held liable for what users post on their services.
Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey reiterated their stances at Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, where they were grilled for several hours over everything from elections to misinformation to censorship. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the executives’ suggestions for Section 230 reform sound a lot like what they already do or have been planning to do.
Zuckerberg said companies should be required to report on the harmful content on their services as well as what they did to address it. But, as he said on Tuesday, Facebook already does this in its quarterly transparency reports, the latest of which will be published on Thursday. Dorsey said companies should have to provide more transparency around why they make decisions to label or remove specific posts as well as provide users with the choice to switch on or off certain algorithms—but Twitter already does that to an extent too.
“They’re under political and public relations pressure to say they’re willing to entertain more government involvement in their businesses,” said Paul Barrett, deputy director of the New York University Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. “They’re talking mostly about transparency, which is good, but it won’t necessarily require these companies to do business in a different way.”
Barrett thinks companies should go even further and explain why algorithms are flagging, amplifying, or removing specific content, even if that’s somewhat hard to trace. “These guys always say these algorithms don’t favor sensationalist material,” he said. “Then what does it favor, and how does it favor it?”
Anurag Lal, formerly a member of a task force at the Federal Communications Commission, believes that Section 230 reform should also include some kind of penalty to hold companies accountable for failures. Industry leaders, he suggested, should work with lawmakers to determine best practices and accountability measures for large companies like Facebook and Twitter.
“Today, it’s everything goes,” he said. “Where the platform has been abused … there has to be some kind of liability.”
But Lal added Section 230 was created for a reason, and it should still exist for that very same reason: innovation. To avoid stifling the creation and growth of new Internet companies, lawmakers should limit new requirements to large companies and refrain from the knee-jerk reaction of revoking it all together.
“We cannot let it get politicized and torn down,” he said. “It’s not a zero-sum game.”
Danielle Abril
@DanielleDigest
danielle.abril@fortune.com
***
In this episode of Fortune‘s Brainstorm podcast, our own Robert Hackett argues the cryptocurrency is approaching bubble territory. CoinShare’s Meltem Demirors says otherwise. But the two agree on one thing: More and more investors are turning to cryptocurrency as a means of diversifying their portfolios. Listen to the episode here.
NEWSWORTHY
COVID concerns. More than 200 of Facebook’s contract content moderators criticized the social media company and their respective employers for requiring a return to the office amid the coronavirus pandemic. The contractors on Wednesday sent a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, and executives of their respective firms arguing that their health is being sacrificed for Facebook’s business. They also asked the companies for the ability to work from home, hazard pay, and better healthcare and mental health services.
Deepfakes bare all. Law enforcement authorities and regulators are investigating messaging app Telegram after an A.I. bot on its service continues to generate fake nude images of women. The news comes one month after researchers discovered the bot on Telegram that uses a tool to create deepfake images of real women without their clothes. The researchers reported the bot to the app, which has already posted digitally altered images of more than 100,000 women, but it still remains.
Slow burn. Apple has agreed to pony up $113 million to settle an investigation of its previous practice of slowing the speeds of older iPhones to preserve battery life. More than 30 states were investigating Apple’s the claim that the company throttled the speeds when it released new phones. Apple also is required to disclose how it's managing the battery life of its devices, as part of the agreement.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
"Even as they say they suffer headaches, poor sleep, and exhaustion, teens feel the consequences of being 'addicted' to their phones and social media as too mild to matter or warrant a change in behavior. However, these times of instability and emotional frailty can be breeding grounds for the development of destructive habits," the report reads.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Marissa Mayer launches her first startup By Lucinda Shen
Why Biden must rely on innovation to rejuvenate the economy By Joe Crowley
Google revamps Google Pay app, adds 11 bank partners By Robert Hackett
‘Challenger banks’ are on track for a record year even as business model remains uncertain By Jeff John Roberts
EV startup Arrival goes public at $5.4 billion valuation in SPAC deal By David Z. Morris
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
Though watching Charlie Brown classics was never really a tradition in my family, there has always been something comforting about randomly finding them on TV during the holidays.
So I was a little saddened when I heard Apple+ bought the rights to Peanuts content earlier this year, since I don't have the service. Luckily for all of us, a new deal between Apple and PBS means A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and A Charlie Brown Christmas will be headed to public television again this year. Hooray! Christmas is saved!
