This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, August 11th, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The President and many members of Congress are hoping to punish big tech firms

for what they believe is anti-conservative bias. The latest order from the

White House to the FCC on this calls the alleged treatment online censorship.

Cato's Will Duffield argues that problems of big tech firms should be better understood before we leave to claims of malice.

The president and a lot of his defenders have had this lengthy row with big tech.

The hearings that were held last week as of this recording were notable in that lots of members of Congress didn't really seem to

understand a lot of the tech terms that they were using. The president likewise makes reference to the ways in which he is treated poorly by big tech companies, especially platforms that are designed for speech, what has he asked the FCC to do?

Well, back in the beginning of June, the president issued an executive order directing In the

National Telecommunications and Information Administration

to petition the FCC to petition the FCC to essentially reinterpret Section 230. Section 230 is an intermediary

liability protection that prevents platforms from being treated as the publisher or

speaker of what you or I may post to them. So if I were to slander you on Facebook,

that's my problem but it isn't Mark Zuckerberg's. This executive order essentially

attempts to limit platform's ability to set and enforce rules for their own platforms.

It would limit their ability to moderate content

by reinterpreting certain parts of Section 230

that empower platforms to do this.

Section 230, this is the of the Communications Decency Act,

which is known widely as the words that created the internet. Now section 230 essentially tells

interactive computer services wherever they may be that they will not be held liable for content that is placed there by users.

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