SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
McConnell introduces bill tying $2K stimulus checks to Section 230 repeal:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has thrown a wrench into Congressional approval of an increase in government stimulus relief checks from $600 to $2,000. The House voted overwhelmingly on Monday to increase the payments, as President Trump had advocated for. Instead of voting on the House bill, however, McConnell blocked it and instead introduced a new bill tying higher stimulus payments to Section 230's full repeal, according to Verge, which obtained a copy of the bill's text.
It's a tangled web, but the move is tied to Trump's veto of the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes $740 billion in defense spending for the upcoming government fiscal year. "No one has worked harder, or approved more money for the military, than I have," Trump said in a statement about the veto, claiming falsely that the military "was totally depleted" when he took office in 2017. "Your failure to terminate the very dangerous national security risk of Section 230 will make our intelligence virtually impossible to conduct without everyone knowing what we are doing at every step."
Section 230 has nothing to do with military intelligence; it's a 1996 law designed to protect Internet platforms. At its highest level, the short snippet of law basically does two things. First, it grants Internet service providers, including online platforms, broad immunity from being held legally liable for content third-party users share. Second, it grants those same services legal immunity from the decisions they make around content moderation—no matter how much or how little they choose to do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 07 2021, @12:27AM (2 children)
"Don't like it? Start your own payment processor!"
What I don't like is the fact that banks and, by extension, the payment processors they work with or the payment processing services they provide benefit from FDIC insurance. The FDIC is a government entity.
Laws should be passed that require that if a Bank wants to be FDIC insured (and what bank wouldn't want to be) the payment processing services they provide or the payment processors they work with must be speech neutral. If the banks and payment processors want to argue free market capitalism then that's fine, they don't need the government giving them FDIC insurance. They can just provide their services without FDIC insurance (good luck getting customers then but there are such things as corporate backed and insured assets and bonds but they're more risky).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 07 2021, @12:33AM
When the banks and any payment processors that work with the banks block payment to speech they don't like they are essentially using the weight of a government body, the FDIC, to block speech they don't like. It's the FDIC that insures their assets and gives consumers the confidence they need to use their services and put their money in the bank.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 07 2021, @12:35AM
If the banks and payment processors want to argue free market capitalism then that's fine, they don't need the government giving them FDIC insurance. Free market capitalism all the way down and not just when it's convenient to them.