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We& #39;ve been here before. In 1961, President Kennedy was concerned about the rise of right-wing radio hurting his legislative agenda / reelection plans. So he looked about for a policy tool he could leverage into suppressing political dissent from his administration. 1/ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1303301563868479490">https://twitter.com/realDonal...
One of his surrogates found a set of FCC regulations called the Fairness Doctrine, which had been created by well-intentioned reformers a few years earlier but had never really been enforced. And after all, who could be opposed to keeping the airwaves "fair"? 2/
This would be the leverage (along with targeted IRS audits) that JFK would use to impose the most successful episode of government censorship in America of the last half century. 3/
Broadcasting "fairness" became a selectively enforced cudgel for browbeating radio stations (JFK & LBJ) into dropping conservative programming and, later, tv networks into giving Nixon better coverage. 4/
How do I know this? I wrote the book on it! https://www.amazon.com/Radio-Right-Broadcasters-Government-Conservative/dp/0190073225">https://www.amazon.com/Radio-Rig...
And we find ourselves in a similar moment with a new mass media form, the internet. @realDonaldTrump is annoyed by criticism of his administration/allies on social media and in the press. What regulatory tools might be lying around that he can use as a cudgel? 6/
Well, when it comes to traditional media outlets like @washingtonpost, he can threaten the other profitable businesses of the owner, Jeff Bezos, w/ higher postage prices for Amazon packages and encourage the DoJ to probe them for antitrust violations. 7/
This is, of course, similar to how Richard Nixon& #39;s FCC tweaked its cross-media ownership rules to make the then owner of the Post, Katharine Graham, have to divest herself of some of her profitable television stations. A less brave person might& #39;ve caved. Graham didn& #39;t. 8/
In going after social media platforms that allow criticism of the regime, Trump has backed the efforts of one of his lackeys, @HawleyMO, to remove a key legal protection for internet companies. 9/
Hawley& #39;s proposal hinges on a relatively obscure policy rule known as Section 230. (For that matter, it& #39;s about as obscure and accidental in origin as the Fairness Doctrine once was.) 230 protects platforms from being legally responsible for users& #39; posts. 10/
Without Section 230, the internet would be very different, less free, and less open. Social media would be either strictly controlled walled gardens or free-for-all arenas. See @jkosseff& #39;s book on the reason for 230 if you want to know more. 11/
In any case, Hawley& #39;s bill proposed giving the FTC power to extend 230 protection only to internet platforms that proved that they had been "neutral" in regards to content.
It would be a revived Fairness Doctrine for the internet, and just as open to partisan abuse. 12/
It would be a revived Fairness Doctrine for the internet, and just as open to partisan abuse. 12/
How do I know this? Well, I co-wrote the paper on it w/ @JohnSamplesCato for @knightcolumbia. 13/ https://knightcolumbia.org/content/social-media-regulation-in-the-public-interest-some-lessons-from-history">https://knightcolumbia.org/content/s...
But Trump is policy agnostic. He& #39;s not calling for these things out of some long-held, principled beliefs in proper postal rates, antitrust policy, and legal safe harbors.
He wants to win at any cost. These are tools of convenience just like w/ JFK/Nixon in the & #39;60s. 14/
He wants to win at any cost. These are tools of convenience just like w/ JFK/Nixon in the & #39;60s. 14/
Which also means, that just as the abuse of the Fairness Doctrine in the & #39;60s exposed the well-meaning naïveté of its authors and advocates (which, coincidentally, included the @ACLU)... 15/
...so too today are well-meaning, naive antitrust hawks finding their cause coopted in order to repress political dissent and gain partisan advantage. 16/
If there is a sweeping moral to this squalid little sequel to a sordid older story, it& #39;s that imposing content regulations on the internet--even if done with the best of intentions-- will have terrible, horrible, no good, very bad consequences for free speech in America. 17/
And given traditional (if fading) American dominance of the internet economy, our regulatory decisions are amplified across the world. The internet is the closest we& #39;ve come w/ any mass media technology in human history to it being truly "born free," to channel @AdamThierer. 18/
