Fight For The Future Wants To Help You Tell The FCC Where To Shove The NTIA's Anti-Section 230 Petition
We recently filed comments in the still ongoing FCC comment period regarding the NTIA's petition to get the FCC to reinterpret Section 230 to match with the President's bizarrely warped view of social media content moderation. I filed personal comments from my perspective running Techdirt, and we also filed more official comments as an organization. Both were filed during the initial comment period, but we're now in the middle of a second comment period -- officially for "responses" to the initial comments -- which are due by September 17th.
It really is not particularly difficult to file a comment with the FCC, though if you do, I recommend that you write out a letter and submit a PDF that clearly states the issue and your argument (rather than just ranting incoherently) as many FCC commenters have been known to do.
However, if you want it to be even easier, the good folks over at Fight for the Future have announced that they've set up a new site, SaveOnlineSpeech.org to make it even easier to file a comment.
The comments will be submitted directly to the FCC's public docket, which so far has been mostly filled with nonsense, including identical astroturf comments backed by AT&T -- some that still include boilerplate XYZ group" language -- and hundreds of comments from an anti-LGBTQ hate group backing the executive order.
The page notes that, while there may be very real problems with how big internet companies are managed and how platforms are run, messing with Section 230 is not the way to fix that.
There's no question that Big Tech companies have amassed tremendous power to limit expression, spread dangerous misinformation, silence dissent, and manipulate public opinion. These are serious problems that impact our lives, and it's long past time the government took action to address this dangerous behavior by enacting strong legislation to prevent corporate data harvesting, banning abusive practices like microtargeted advertising, and taking on Silicon Valley's monopolistic business practices at their root. But this Trump executive order, and similarly misguided proposals from Democrats to rip up Section 230, won't do any of that. Instead, they'll make these problems worse.
Punching a hole in Section 230 will allow any president to decide what speech is allowed on the Internet. If the government doesn't like how social media websites moderate content, the government can simply shut those companies down. That might seem like a good idea when someone you support is in the Oval Office, but political power changes quickly. No matter what your political beliefs are, we should all be able to agree that letting governments and corporations restrict the free flow of information is a bad idea.
Feel free to check it out if you're looking for a way to file a comment, and the FCC page was not user-friendly for you.