Sen. Mark Warner’s Memo Calls for the Government to Regulate Internet

Axios obtained a memo written by the office of Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, that plans for the government to takeover the internet and regulate digital platforms. From Reason:

To save American trust in “our institutions, democracy, free press, and markets,” it suggests, we need unprecedented and undemocratic government intervention into online press and markets, including “comprehensive (GDPR-like) data protection legislation” of the sort enacted in the E.U.Titled “Potential Policy Proposals for Regulation of Social Media and Technology Firms,” the draft policy paper—penned by Sen. Mark Warner and leaked by an unknown source to Axios—the paper starts out by noting that Russians have long spread disinformation, including when “the Soviets tried to spread ‘fake news’ denigrating Martin Luther King” (here he fails to mention that the Americans in charge at the time did the same). But NOW IT’S DIFFERENT, because technology.”Today’s tools seem almost built for Russian disinformation techniques,” Warner opines. And the ones to come, he assures us, will be even worse.

RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA!

The memo splits the proposal into three sections: combat disinformation, protect user privacy, promote competition in tech. Axios provided the details:

So does this mean that satire sites like The Onion and Babylon Bee will no longer exist? Reason reported:

And—of course— these include further revisions to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, recently amended by Congress to exclude protections for prostitution-related content. A revision to Section 230 could provide the ability for users to demand takedowns of certain sorts of content and hold platforms liable if they don’t abide, it says, while admitting that “attempting to distinguish between true disinformation and legitimate satire could prove difficult.”

At least the memo “acknowledges that these policy ideas come with plenty of questions: ‘In many cases there may be flaws in each proposal that may undercut the goal the proposal is trying achieve, or pose a political problem that simply can’t be overcome at this time.'”

One of those is labeling for bots. Warner’s office wants “companies to somehow label bots or be penalized” without offering an idea on how a company should do this. The memo also would like “social media platforms to authenticate and disclose the geographic origin of all user accounts or posts.” Matthew Ingram at the Columbia Journalism Review addresses this issue:

But would labeling bots actually help solve the issues Congress is concerned about? Experts say they are just one part of the problem, and that the behavior of what are sometimes called “cyborgs”—partially automated accounts run by human beings—is also important. And while anonymity can be a shield for some trolls, others are more than happy to engage in all kinds of bad behavior under their real names.The paper also admits that identifying users could backfire if it invades the privacy of journalists or dissidents and whistleblowers who have real reasons for wanting to remain anonymous.

Warner’s memo does not “include the possibility of breaking up any large tech platforms – as some activists have called for – or establishing a new federal regulator for digital issues.” The Washington Free Beacon pointed out that the group Freedom from Facebook has asked “the Federal Trade Commission to break up the social media giant’s many properties and impose several of the same proposals that show up in the white paper.”

The left has gone into an outrage over Russia interference and data taken by Cambridge Analysts. Yes, our data belongs to us, but we don’t need government to protect us. Usually when you ask to be sent emails from a company, there’s a box that asks you if it’s okay to share your information with third parties. Simply don’t click the box. When you sign up for apps on Facebook or Twitter it warns you that third parties may gain access to your data. If that pops up then don’t use that app.

Tags: Democrats, Technology, US House

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