PEORIA, Ill. — Users on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter most likely noticed messages on posts last week during the election.
On Twitter, many of President Donald Trump’s tweets even contained a notice saying “some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.”
Social media was once viewed by many as a place where anyone could say anything, but sites like Facebook and Twitter have taken greater responsibility lately in making other users aware of false information.
This comes after the sites were blamed for not doing enough to stop misinformation during the 2016 election.
However, it is nearly impossible for sites to monitor everything posted on them, which is why they are protected under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Section 230 says “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
Essentially, Facebook cannot be held liable for anything a Facebook user says on their site.
So, why has Facebook taken such interest lately in flagging posts that contains false information?
Attorney Ambrose McCall says that even though they may not be legally liable, they don’t want to be blamed.
“It appears that the social media platforms have worried the most about being blamed for circulating false data about COVID-19 and voting by mail,” said McCall.
“Their interest in correcting misinformation [on mail-in voting] may have sprung from their concern that such data would undermine each of their respective get out and vote drives.”
Some Facebook and Twitter users have voiced their concerns with social media platforms infringing on free speech and are even considering moving to new platforms that they say won’t remove their posts.
“They are not governed by the First Amendment,” said McCall. “The First Amendment governs the government trying to say what should or should not be published or censored.”
McCall said different platforms are within their rights to police what is posted on their sites because of terms and conditions that each user must agree to when signing up for an account.
“I would tell anyone who’s actively using any of those sites to become familiar with terms and conditions so they know what to expect when they post certain things,” said McCall.
In October, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey addressed concerns among users that Twitter was removing posts altogether from their site.
Straight blocking of URLs was wrong, and we updated our policy and enforcement to fix. Our goal is to attempt to add context, and now we have capabilities to do that. https://t.co/ZLUw3YD887
– jack (@jack) October 16, 2020
During Election Day, it seems Twitter did make improvements to their system. Tweets sent by President Trump weren’t deleted, but users were instead shown a notice on the tweets adding context.
Facebook seemed to follow a similar system, making sure there were notices on questionable posts that also provided context to other Facebook users..
Full interview with McCall:
