{"id":1073394,"date":"2021-12-01T15:59:56","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T20:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1073394"},"modified":"2021-12-01T15:59:59","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T20:59:59","slug":"emotional-injury-democrats-press-to-broaden-liability-for-social-media-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/emotional-injury-democrats-press-to-broaden-liability-for-social-media-companies\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Emotional Injury\u2019: Democrats Press To Broaden Liability for Social Media Companies"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Femotional-injury-democrats-press-to-broaden-liability-for-social-media-companies%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1073394&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div readability=\"29.344978165939\">\n\t\t\t<span class=\"article-category\"><a class href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/democrats\/\">Democrats<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"article-excerpt\">Critics say policy would force platforms to heavily restrict user speech<\/p>\n<figure class=\"post-thumbnail-container relative lg:mr-24 w-full my-4 mb-8\">\n\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"485\" height=\"340\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/propaganda-1.jpg\" class=\"w-full lazyload blur-up wp-post-image\" alt=\"propaganda Facebook social media\" srcset=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 485px) 100vw, 485px\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/propaganda.jpg 485w, https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/propaganda-300x210.jpg 300w\" data-sizes=\"auto\" \/><figcaption class=\"absolute text-white p-4 w-full text-right text-xs bottom-0 bg-black opacity-75\">\n\t\t\t\tGetty Images\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\t\t\t<span class=\"text-gray text-xs md:text-lg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/author\/santi-ruiz\/\" title=\"Posts by Santi Ruiz\" class=\"author url fn text-red-700\" rel=\"author\">Santi Ruiz<\/a> \u2022 December 1, 2021 3:48 pm<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<div readability=\"80.929087327643\">\n<p>House Democrats on Wednesday called for legislation that would allow users to sue social media sites for causing &#8220;emotional injury.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The House Energy and Commerce Committee discussed several bills that would amend Section 230, the legislation that protects tech platforms from being legally liable for users&#8217; posts. The &#8220;Justice Against Malicious Algorithms Act&#8221; would allow users to sue platforms for causing &#8220;severe emotional injury,&#8221; but does not specify a definition of emotional injury. Free speech advocates worry the law\u2019s vagueness would force platforms to delete more user speech to avoid being sued.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.) called the act &#8220;a thinly veiled attempt to pressure companies to censor more speech.&#8221; She said if &#8220;companies will have to decide between leaving up content that may offend someone and fight it in court, or censor content that reaches a user\u2014which do you think they\u2019ll choose?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Democrats and Republicans have both pushed for reforming Section 230, although for different reasons. Republicans say tech platforms should lose their immunity if they shut down conservative speech. But Democrats want to increase platforms&#8217; liability to push them to remove &#8220;misinformation.&#8221; Wednesday&#8217;s hearing highlighted the substantial differences between the parties. Twitter and Facebook have regularly shut down conservative speech including criticism of President Joe Biden and removed discussion of the lab leak theory of COVID-19\u2019s origins.<\/p>\n<p>Democratic witness Rashad Robinson, president of a George Soros-backed advocacy group, called for more restrictions on free speech to combat &#8220;misinformation.&#8221; Robinson\u2019s group, Color of Change, has pushed for <a href=\"https:\/\/act.colorofchange.org\/sign\/tell-congress-defund-police\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">defunding the police<\/a>. Robinson also serves on the Aspen Institute\u2019s Commission on Information Disorder, which <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/cybersecurity\/581634-report-urges-us-government-to-take-immediate-steps-to-curb-online\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">called<\/a> for a &#8220;national response strategy&#8221; to stop &#8220;misinformation&#8221; online. In the hearing, Robinson called for Congress to place legislative limits on the First Amendment, saying &#8220;I understand that we have these conversations about the First Amendment, but there are limitations to what you can and cannot say.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Democratic representatives largely agreed with Robinson that new regulations should curtail free speech. Many of them also called for requirements for social media platforms to &#8220;deamplify&#8221; content they view as objectionable.<\/p>\n<p>Democratic representative Darren Soto (Fla.) said &#8220;lies are not free speech.&#8221; Another Democratic panelist said freedom of speech is not &#8220;freedom of reach.&#8221; Rep. Tony C\u00e1rdenas (D., Calif.) fretted about the rise of disinformation in Spanish and called for more oversight of how Facebook moderates Spanish language content. Panelist and Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen responded that Spanish speakers were &#8220;less safe&#8221; than English speakers on the platform.<\/p>\n<p>Both sides found more common ground on protecting children from harm on social media, as Haugen pointed out that employees of tech companies tend to be childless.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Democrats Critics say policy would force platforms to heavily restrict user speech  Getty Images  Santi Ruiz \u2022 December 1, 2021 3:48 pm House &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":194,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1073394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1073394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1073394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1073394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1073394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}