Trump threatens Zuck with jail for Meta’s bias. Here’s how to lower the temperature  

Following the unprecedented events of President Biden stepping aside (announced via posts on social media), and the attempted assassination of former President Trump, social networks have been overwhelmed with heated misinformation. Flowing from all sides of the political spectrum, as well as from adversarial state actors, much of this content is posted and boosted by bot and troll accounts.

Adding fuel to the fire, on July 9, former President Trump threatened to send Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to prison if he’s elected. It’s no coincidence that just three days later Meta announced it would remove all previous restrictions on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Meta and other social media giants have long been accused of political bias, including suppressing conservative content. This is keenly troubling given that about one-third of Americans get their news from Facebook. 

The government has an important role to play in holding social media giants accountable for their privacy violations, harms against children and monopoly power. Yet it’s not the job of political leaders to penalize Meta or other social media companies for their moderation decisions, never mind how they spend their fortunes to influence elections. Zuckerberg’s certainly perturbed Trump on that score, too.

Curiously, there’s a flipside. On July 13, X’s owner Elon Musk announced his endorsement of Trump to his 190 million followers worldwide (nearly half of whom are bots or fake accounts, as reported by TIME Magazine in 2022). Subsequently, Musk announced plans to spend $45 million per month on a super PAC supporting Trump’s campaign. 

X has over 100 million active users in the United States and consistently ranks as the top app in the Apple Store’s “News” category. (They’re not listed as a “Social Network” like Meta, because they’re not about personal social connections.) During Musk’s stewardship, X has also been known to throttle traffic to liberal-leaning news outlets such as the New York Times. 

Should Zuckerberg or Musk be imprisoned for their respective platform’s political biases? Should the owners of CNN or Fox News be penalized for their networks’ biases? Such a net would inevitably ensnare smaller sites like Trump’s Truth Social’s. You can see where this is going. 

Government intervention would take this problem from bad to worse. Such power over online speech would easily be abused at the whims of political leaders on both sides. Authoritarian regimes, like China or Russia, routinely arrest tech business leaders for allowing information on sites that offends their governments. 

This would also fly in the face of the Constitution. The First Amendment shields individuals from government censorship. It also applies to private enterprises. On July 1, the Supreme Court weighed in on this topic. It cast doubt (though declined to make a decision) on the legality of recently challenged laws in Florida and Texas that restrict social media sites from removing certain users and posts. 

Cases tested in the courts have traditionally protected the rights of publishers and social media companies to make their own editorial decisions. The 2022 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals (11th Circuit), which blocked Florida’s law stated: “while the Constitution protects citizens from governmental efforts to restrict their access to social media…no one has a vested right to force a platform to allow [a citizen] to contribute to or consume social media content.” 

Supporting free speech principles and civil discourse is vital to strengthening our republic. Open discussion is what fuels the democratic process. Disagreement is the backbone of a well-functioning democracy. 

Considering all this, what are the best strategies to support civil discourse and the free expression of differing ideas?

A first step is to pass legislation that promotes data and content interoperability. This would level the playing field by enabling users to transfer their content, contacts and followers between platforms easily. Users could relocate individually or en masse from sites they find unsavory. Recently, in a bipartisan effort, five senators co-sponsored the re-introduction of the ACCESS Act (Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching). Such legislation is long overdue. 

A second step is mandating that large social media companies like Meta, X and TikTok implement privacy-protecting user ID verification. Bots and trolls will be rooted out. Russia, China and other bad actors frequently use bot and troll farms on social media to amplify misinformation and undermine democratic societies while remaining anonymous. Mandatory user ID verification is our most effective solution to counter this menace.

A third step is updating instead of sunsetting Section 230. Enacted in 1996, Section 230 remains crucial for a functioning free market. It provides sites with broad discretion to moderate without being liable for user-generated content. This protection is vital for startups and small to medium-sized companies. It shields them from potentially bankrupting lawsuits. 

Congress recently unveiled bipartisan legislation to sunset Section 230 in 18 months. Reportedly the bill intends to get Big Tech to the bargaining table. An important update desired by the bill’s sponsors (Reps.  Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Frank Pallone (D-N.J.)) is to hold social media companies “accountable for failing to protect our children.” There ought to be a good compromise hammered out that protects startups from financial ruin while carefully safeguarding our kids.

By adopting these three steps, we can cool the rhetoric before it boils over in this election cycle, and promote genuine American-style civil discourse. Of course with heady politicking in full swing, we’ll all need to sharpen our critical thinking while we await these initiatives.  

American tech executives aren’t going to jail—at least not for their moderation policies or legal donations. Let’s instead focus on strengthening free market principles, promoting civil discourse and protecting future generations.

Mark Weinstein is a world-renowned tech and privacy expert. He is the founder of the social network MeWe, which he left in July 2022, to write the book on the intersection of social media, mental health, privacy, civil discourse and democracy. “Restoring Our Sanity Online.” is being published on Sept. 24, by WILEY.