White House "Principles for Enhancing Competition and Tech Platform Accountability"
Yes, you should be skeptical
Thanks to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, we are learning about the troubling extent of what he describes as our "federal government's incestuous relationship with social media companies." Our government, via officials putting pressure on social media companies to remove content and ban users, has repeatedly done an end-run around the First Amendment, infringing on our rights to think and speak freely. And so we should wonder whether the White House "Principles" are yet another way in which this Administration, under the guise of protecting us from an ever-increasing list of horribles, hopes to evade and violate our Constitutional rights to free thought and expression and take full control of the vital medium of social discourse.
To many, Principles 5 and 6, concerning tech platforms' algorithms and content moderation practices, might sound reasonable. After all, many of us realize that the engagement-enhancing algorithms of the larger social media platforms have contributed to a range of problems in our society, from eating disorders in young female users to political polarization, divisiveness, and hostility in society generally. Similarly, many are aware of what seems to be the increasingly biased content moderation policies of these platforms and sense that this is a real problem in need of a solution.
But note that the White House's Principles go beyond mere transparency. Simply requiring more transparency, while otherwise permitting competition on a free market, would address the real problems while still preserving the rights of everyone, from the big platforms and their competitors (like Parler) to the users affected daily by the platforms' practices and policies. Instead, in the Principles, we see suggestions that government take control over the algorithms and that it take control over content moderation. And, of course, the White House hopes to win support for its suggestions by pledging to exercise control to address "very real dangers," to shield "protected groups" and "vulnerable communities."
Make no mistake: Government control over algorithms and content moderation would violate a core principle of our nation's founding—one so sacred that it was embodied in the First Amendment to our Constitution. There are several reasons for this, but one critical one—as Nadine Strossen and other scholars have observed—is that violating this core principle would only exacerbate the very problems the Principles purport to address. For this reason, we must insist that the First Amendment be respected and adhered to by our government. Moreover, we should be more discriminating in our online platforms and use those whose missions, policies and practices also respect that core principle of free thought and expression.