Billionaires Are Running Social Media Companies Like The 'Wild West'

Social media companies have been operating with little oversight and virtually no regulations for far too long, and it is past time that we start holding them accountable for what they do both on their sites and behind the scenes. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Social media companies have been operating with little or no oversight and virtually no regulations for way too long. And it's past time that we start holding them accountable. 230 sucks. 230 is a disaster and nobody seems to understand why. You understand why, you've done a lot of stories on it, let's talk about it.

Yeah. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, going back to the nineties, says that, listen, if you're a social media or if you're a website at all, you are not held liable for something that somebody else puts on your website. Now, if I am a news organization that has a TV station, if I'm CNN and I bring on a guest and the guest says something completely defamatory, me, even though I didn't say it as the network, I get sued for defamation and I lose, and I pay out the nose pretty big for that because of what somebody else said. Social media websites take advantage of the fact that they know they can't get in trouble. So they allow basically this wild west mentality of anything goes, we're not responsible, so y'all just go out there and do whatever.

This was a Bill Clinton deal. Okay. Bill Clinton believed, his media, this press was so bad, he thought, if I make this deal with social media, they're gonna take care of me. They're gonna take care of Hillary. Didn't work out like that, but that's where 230 came from. It is, yeah, we're gonna let you do whatever the hell you want to do, and you're gonna be bulletproof. There's only one exception and that has to do with copyright law. And truthfully, they could do the same thing, they could do the same thing across the board. Look, kids are at risk here. It's not just kids, the truth is at risk, democracy is at risk when you really look at the fact of how a system can be so turned up on its head with factual stories that are way beyond being factual and all of the things that they're doing. Nobody has called them and said, and really made 'em answer the question. Now they've been called before Congress several times. And every time they go, this is their line. We take user safety seriously. If I have to hear that one more time after the number of suicides that have taken place from bullying, after the attacks, personal attacks that people have to front all the time because nobody's held responsible. This is a system outta control. They're multi, multi-billionaires who don't wanna spend the money to monitor. That's what it's about. We don't wanna spend the money to properly monitor. They can, but they won't.

Right. And these people who created these social media websites are now among the richest people in this country. So they have the money to do the oversight. They just don't wanna part with any of it. But I will say too, section 230, as you said, is terrible. They cannot enjoy blanket immunity. So I'm not agreeing with the folks who say it needs to be repealed.

No, I'm not either.

It needs, right, it needs to be rewritten. Because if we get rid of it, then what do we see at that point? We see the overreaction of social media sites. So they say, okay, if you talk about politics, you're gone, because politics is ripe for slander and defamation. So we don't want to run the risk. So all politics is gone, left, right, center, doesn't matter. And that's a real threat. Obviously, it's a threat to what we do. It's a threat to what so many people in this country now do.

It can't be absolute.

Exactly. You've gotta, almost to paraphrase Obama from back in the day, you gotta come at it with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer to figure out. But it's gotta be done.

Right now, maybe it is a sledgehammer.