Big Tech ubiquity threatens democracy on multiple fronts, privacy violations, misinformation loops and political polarization increases violence

As most people would likely agree based on the staggering figures previously mentioned for the numbers of users, “there’s no denying that the prevalence and importance of social media have grown in the last 15 years, and it’s now vital for business owners who hope to stay competitive, friends who hope to stay connected, and political figures who hope to get elected.”150 He postulates and asks readers to imagine a life without access, and to “[i]magine you were a campaign manager but you were forbidden from using any social media: it would be a massive handicap[,]” because so “many of us probably check Twitter more often than we turn on a faucet in our homes. Yet for something so commonplace in our lives, it is completely devoid of regulatory oversight approaching anywhere near the other utilities we take for granted.”151 Many may think that social media is not a necessity, with which the author agrees, but contends that “neither was electricity 100 years ago, and that became a public utility. I don’t think it’s too much of an imaginative stretch to envision a world where social media become even more essential to daily life[.]”152 His answer, however, is “to bust up Zuckerberg’s monopoly and treat social media as the services they were meant to be: platforms where all are treated equally and fairly, and communities can grow organically[,]”153 where this writer would be more comfortable with amending section 230, finding it liable as a publisher, or judicial precedent in labeling social media as a public forum, but would not disagree with the de-monopolization of such companies. Whether any of these remedies or all should apply in the future, something must change in the law because Emerson and Mill’s prophetic wisdom that speech cannot be barred from the public forum as it would go underground and become more violent and more radical154 has shown to be true: Months of civil unrest have coincided with a significant rise in social media posts critical of police that sometimes are laced with violent themes, including calls to destroy property and attack officers[] . . . report, by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), which previously has studied right-wing violence from groups such as the “boogaloo boys,” warns that some left-wing groups have embraced similar social media tactics, including memes and humorous catchphrases, to spread their messages and possibly help coordinate offline activity. . . . Comments using anti-police slogans surged nearly 300 percent on Reddit and more than 1,000 percent on Twitter during the unrest triggered by the killing of George Floyd in May, according to the report. It also described the growth of left-wing networks on Facebook, with such groups as Redneck Revolt and the Socialist Rifle Association boasting about 50,000 and 40,000 members, respectively — numbers that still pale in comparison to right-wing communities online. . . . [R]esearchers examined unrest that unfolded in a handful of cities on July 25 to assess how social media might have helped fuel the simultaneous conflict. They found that avowedly anarchist groups posted about the planned protests, organized in solidarity with ongoing demonstrations in Portland, Ore., using such hashtags as #J25, short for July 25. A frequency analysis performed by the researchers found the hashtag in only a small number of tweets, but several of the posts proved influential and had hundreds or thousands of likes, retweets and comments. Some of the left-wing youth collectives that sought to build support for the actions enlisted some of the profane slogans, such as “ACAB,” in their posts on social media. The same groups also helped map out routes and provided real-time alerts about police activity. 155 What is worse, is that the companies know about this trend: “Twitter spokesman Trenton Kennedy said, ‘We welcome the chance to collaborate with external stakeholders on identifying and taking action on attempts to manipulate the conversation on Twitter.’”156. However, Twitter is not alone Facebook spokeswoman Sarah Pollack said, “We’ve taken action against a number of the entities identified in this report through updated policies we announced this summer. We continuously study new trends in terminology, symbols, and memes for connections to offline violence and review organizations to determine whether they should be banned from our platform.”157 IV. REMEDY: HOW TO REPAIR THE ROAD This author is not alone in seeing the hailstorm of articles as necessitating change “with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle saying its liability protections should be pared back. However, they are divided on what reform would look like, with Republicans focusing their criticisms on alleged censorship and Democrats seeking to hold the companies more responsible for misinformation and other harmful content.”158 Both sides of the aisle would seem to understand that this is an issue and worry about online content in the context of free speech,159 which suggests one way to remedy this issue would be to amend section 230. Congress could do something similar to what the UK government has done and write legislation that imposes “a statutory Duty of Care on tech companies to prevent their algorithms [from] harming people.”160 This would allow negligence suits against the companies, which, as noted above, section 230 currently disallows.161 This amendment would allay both fears: protection from censorship and protection from misinformation by allowing the public to bring suit against these private companies for negligence. Such suits would likely satisfy both contentions because, should the public fear information being withheld by private companies, they could bring suit and hold these private companies liable as publishers holding them accountable for any misinformation. One drawback to such an amendment would be what would no doubt result: an onslaught of litigation from those wishing to profit from the deep-pocketed companies. As a result, another remedy would be much simpler: concede that online platforms have become the modern-day public square and shall be treated as a public forum, affording such rights and remedies. Any of these remedies— amending section 230 and creating a duty for these companies, treating them as publishers, or finding the online world to be a public forum—would ensure equal treatment under the law, regardless of one’s perspective—be it wrong, ill-conceived, uninformed, stemming from willful blindness, ignorance, hatred, or the like—because anything else denies the freedom to be wrong— a freedom inherent in the freedom of speech—and, more importantly, the ability to learn from those wrongs as a society. Imagine how different the world would be if people were not allowed to be wrong and to learn and grow: would we have seen the evolution of Dred Scott to Brown v. Board? V. CONCLUSION The First Amendment has limitations. The recent whistleblower, the election controversy, the former President’s lawsuit, the use of platforms to abduct and violate children, and the use to organize city-wide violence, all show that these platforms need reform because they are used as a conduit for the type of violence that would otherwise be limited under Brandenburg, 162 which limits the freedom of speech to the likelihood of inciting imminent illegal activity. The listed examples have such a likelihood. The solution could be to view these platforms as public forums, Congress amending section 230, or holding platforms liable as publishers, but interference must happen before the ideological divide erupts into something catastrophic and irreparable. This need has been realized but not actualized.163 Social media companies cannot escape liability and pervasively control the conversation. Suppression denies growth of thought, allows violence, and disrupts the marketplace of ideas.164 As has been shown throughout, the internet and social media are wildly available and widely relied on. Given the ubiquitous presence of social media, all voices and perspectives should be a part of the conversation, if only to learn from ignorance and to help to erase hate. Controlling information is a dangerous breeding ground for extremist beliefs, which can lead to extremist behavior. If we are truly the land of the free, our policies and conversations must diligently reflect such notions.