"Big tech has made a big mistake. Swept up in a wave of political correctness and the fallout from the Russia investigation, many of the largest online platforms have embarked upon a fruitless adventure in censorship that can only further divide rather than unite the nation. These internet companies have lost sight of the most basic principle underlying the First Amendment, that no matter how uncomfortable it makes us, we must put our trust in the power of a free market of ideas. ...
"Just yesterday I personally received a notice from Google disallowing an ad I placed on its platform, one that has been running for weeks, with a cryptic notice mysteriously referring me to the guidelines for political advertising. Only it was not political advertising at all. I placed an ad for a political game, Two Seventy, that I built with friends for fun that allows people to reenact campaigns. But Google's computers saw the names of political figures and, bingo, I was censored, given no one to call and asked to fill out a form to try to lift this unfair restraint on my speech. This is what will happen with increasing frequency. The automated bots on online platforms can become roving censors unable to understand the true context of what they are reading and, yet, wielding enormous power to delete, downgrade or hide words, pictures and information.
"Until now, the big tech platforms like Google, YouTube, and Facebook stayed out of censoring. They preached the benefits of an open and connected society. If they were going to delete material, it would mostly be on a very limited basis, using a scalpel, not a machete. Sometimes they even tolerated too much freedom on their platforms and were fined for accepting fake drug ads, and for failing to police their platforms of sex trafficking and other crimes. They also have not always been vigilant enough to catch bots and fake accounts. They made some mistakes that they could and should fix to the best of their abilities. ...
"The big tech companies will only find themselves enmeshed in a growing public crossfire if they become active arbiters of content, purveyors of speech codes, and forerunners of a 'Bladerunner' future. Congress should remove the content liability exemption from companies exercising too much power over user content. Or, better yet, the industry should adopt a uniform published code with clear standards mirroring the Supreme Court and have tough cases judged by a panel that genuinely has equal numbers of liberals, moderates, and conservatives. Maybe we should have an internet freedom amendment to the Constitution.
"As the ACLU once understood well, the very essence of the First Amendment is tolerating speech we hate, and standing up for it takes courage. We need some more of that kind of courage today."
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