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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, @12:18PM (1 child)
"So...you're really just broadcasting your ignorance rather than making any sort of reasonable argument."
No, you're really just broadcasting your inability to read. I also said
"Any bank that benefits from FDIC insurance should be required, by law, to ensure that all payment processing services they provide and all payment processors they work with are speech neutral."
The key phrase here is any payment processors they work with. You can't read.
"As such, any law that required anything approaching what you're talking about would violate the First Amendment and would be unconstitutional."
Absolutely not. It's the exact opposite. The government shouldn't require payment processing to be speech neutral if the banks don't want FDIC insurance. The government should only require it if the banks want FDIC insurance because the use of government services should be speech neutral. To give the banks FDIC insurance and to allow them to regulate speech or to work with payment processors that regulate speech essentially gives these banks and payment processing services the green light to throw the weight of the government around to regulate speech.
Think publicly funded research. Publicly funded research should be publicly and freely available. The fruits of such research should be publicly and freely available. No drugs developed with public funding should be patented. No research conducted with public funding should be under copy'rights'. It should be public domain. If you want government money there should be strings attached.
Likewise if you want government services like FDIC insurance for your private business then there should be strings attached (ie: speech neutrality). You don't get to throw the weight of the government around to regulate speech and use the services they provide you with to regulate speech.
It's the same with broadcasting monopolies. When the FCC provides broadcasting monopolies to private entities and those entities use/abuse those monopolies to regulate speech on broadcasting spectra (and they do) that should be unconstitutional. Broadcasting monopolies originate from the government.
Likewise FDIC insurance originates from the government. You don't get to throw the weight of the government around to regulate speech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2021, @06:51AM
And the government is forbidden by the First Amendment [wikipedia.org] to do what you are suggesting:
The government may not make *any* law that prescribes what speech a person or private entity *must* support, host, allow or expend resources on, just as it may not make any law that prescribes what speech a person or private entity must *not* support, host, allow or expend resources on.
There are exceptions [wikipedia.org] to those prohibitions, but your example is not among them.
As such, should Congress enact a law such as you're suggesting, it would be struck down (not that such a law would ever be passed) because it's a clear violation of the First Amendment.
Ignorance is not a good look, friend.