ICYMI: our thread last night about the many waays Republicans are wrong about #Section230, the First Amendment, and basically everything about free speech online

The hearing is live now, so we'll respond in real-time to the many bad takes on 230 from both sides today... https://twitter.com/TechFreedom/status/1321240721400254466

Wicker: "Google threatened to cut off the Federalist from their ad platform. Google is more zealous in policing conservative sites than YouTube"

Fact: The Federalist wouldn't remove openly racist comments, so Google wouldn't show ads next to that

Like this

We debunked the fake controversy over the Federalist being "censored" in our reply comments on NTIA's petition https://techfreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/NTIA-230-Petition-Reply-Comments-9.17.2020.pdf#page-230

Wicker says Google treats conservative sites more harshly, but Google applies the same rules to YouTube: no racist

The Federalist wouldn't clean up that in its comments, & refused to move its comments to a separate page (with no ads)

Only option left: no comments section

Rs claim narrowing of #Section230 protections for content moderation won't make it harder to stop election interference because that's illegal

Fact: current law bars foreigners ONLY from express advocacy of specific candidates

So most election interference is NOT illegal...

So, no, it's not enough for Republicans to say that #Section230 would still protect moderation of illegal content

Their bill would allow lawsuits to be sued for moderating the bulk of foreign election interference: "issue advocacy" that doesn't mention a specific candidate

. @SundarPichai: "At the end of the day, we all share the same goals"

If only that were true!

Republicans' goal here is to do everything possible to stop moderation of hate speech, misinformation, and yes, foreign election interference (that doesn't mention specific candidates)

We explained why Republicans' proposed legislation would discourage tech companies from moderating hate speech, misinformation and most foreign election interference in this letter to the @SenateCommerce committee last night
https://techfreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Letter-Big-Tech-Hearing-on-230-10.28.20.pdf

So, Wicker's complaint is that... Twitter will let world leaders "sabre-rattle" against other countries but not incite violence against their own citizens

And that is somehow unfair to Trump

Cory Gardner is outraged that Twitter hasn't moderated Iran's Grand Ayatollah's tweets denying the Holocaust

Wait to he finds out that Republican amendments of #Section230 would allow websites to be sued for moderating exactly that kind of misinformation!