Big tech is playing with fire

 Shipwreckedcrew:

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Today the Democrats have probably the weakest incoming President in … maybe forever (Jimmy Carter?), the Senate is evenly divided 50-50, and the Democrats just lost 10 seats in the House while winning the Presidency, with the GOP House candidates running 3% better in the popular vote than they did in 2018.

And this is the party that the Big Tech companies think will protect them WHEN the GOP regains power in Washington???

It would be easy to fall back on the idea that Big Tech, through political contributions, has “purchased” enough support from some in the GOP that when combined with Democrat support they will be able to head off any legislative or regulatory challenges.

I believe that calculation can no longer be relied upon. Big Tech has not just taken up the political views of Democrats, Big Tech has now used its market dominance in social media in a move to silence political opposition from a large segment of the GOP needed by GOP legislators to get elected.

That’s an existential threat to GOP elected representatives that has likely earned a legislative response — which they might be able to avoid as long as a Democrat is in the White House to veto such legislation. But a unified GOP Congress — maybe as soon as 24 months from now — could make life very difficult for a Democrat White House by attaching some form of Big Tech regulation as a part of some “must-pass” legislation.

But maybe, more importantly, Big Tech might have finally earned a concerted effort to challenge their conduct in court.

It is a bit of an esoteric legal issue, so it is not surprising that many misunderstand or have their eyes glaze over when issues involving “Section 230” get mentioned. In 1996 there was no “Facebook” or “Twitter”, to use the two most well-known platforms of social media. When Section 230 was passed, it was intended to afford protection from serial defamation suits against Internet Service Providers by third parties aggrieved by content published by such services — mostly early search engines like Yahoo which did not “screen” search results for defamatory information. Web hosting of individual blog-type web pages wasn’t even a “thing” yet.
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What Big Tech should fear is not necessarily a move by Congress or the courts to create grounds for liability that don’t already exist, but rather a much simpler step making clear that “immunity” from suit doesn’t extend as afar as the courts have stretched the application of Section 230.

That would require that Big Tech defend itself and its actions under circumstances where the adverse party will have access through discovery to internal communications and documents that might not be consistent with the public statements made by Big Tech in defense of itself.

GOP elected officials have now faced the reality that Big Tech wants the GOP to cease being an effective political opposition. Big Tech actively suppressed true and significant facts in the NY Post story on Hunter Biden, and at the same time willingly hosted and promoted fascist rhetoric and calls to violence by groups like BLM and Antifa with no content controls It is unequivocally a threat to the GOP as a political opposition to the Democrats which Big Tech supports.

Barack Obama needed the cover of darkness, a weekend, and a congressional procedural maneuver using a budget reconciliation bill to pass Obamacare on a party-line vote when he had 59 Senators and a 79 seat majority in the House.

Big Tech is now in the position of relying on the Democrats in Congress for protection when they have a 50 senators and a 10 seat majority in the House, all while staring at a mid-term election which history says will be won by GOP candidates in greater numbers than the outcome two months ago.

All of that may not matter ultimately, as the Supreme Court could get there first.

I think Parler will be bringing a case for damages within the week.  It is a case that will be working its way through the courts in the next two years.  Parler also has a good chance of getting an injunction because it will not be too hard to show irreparable harm and an existential threat to their business.  This overreach by big tech will also become a political liability eventually.