The remedy for social media bias
Conservatives believe, with considerable justification, that they don’t get a fair shake from social media giants, such as Twitter, Facebook and Google. And some want to regulate how they deal with content.
That isn’t a conservative solution. And it wouldn’t remedy the problem.
The issue has gained saliency from actions Twitter has taken against its most prominent user, Donald Trump, and Trump’s reaction to it.
Twitter attached what amounted to a fact check on a Trump tweet inveighing about fraud with all-mail elections. And it suppressed a Trump tweet about looting and rioting associated with protests against the police that said: “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” The tweet was available, but required an extra step to get to it. And people couldn’t like it or retweet it.
In response, Trump issued an executive order basically initiating a review of liability immunity federal law grants social media companies for moderating and removing content on their sites.
Now, Twitter is a cesspool of snark, invective and misinformation. You cannot spend a minute and half on the site without encountering content at least as bad or worse than what Trump posted that Twitter took action against.
There is no question that Twitter is subjecting Trump to scrutiny that it doesn’t apply to other politicians, much less the other roughly 50 million Twitter users in the U.S. In that respect, it is taking sides in the 2020 election.
This is nothing new. The major communications media in this country have always been biased against conservative views and voices. It’s an obstacle that conservatives have always had to figure out ways to overcome.
Trump’s review of liability immunity for social media giants won’t amount to much. Basically, the law says that social media companies are free to moderate content and aren’t liable for defamation from content posted by third parties.
By providing this immunity, Congress was encouraging social media companies to remove content harmful to children. Without it, there was a risk that by moderating some content, social media companies would be legally liable for all content posted on their sites. Congress didn’t want the social media companies to be in a position to either regulate all content or no content. Reversing that isn’t desirable. Nor would it make social media giants more hospitable to conservative views and voices.
Some on the right want to impose a sort of fairness doctrine on social media, such as the one used to apply to broadcasters. But conservatives didn’t get a fair shake under the fairness doctrine, and it was abolished by Ronald Reagan’s administration. Liberals wanted to keep it.
Liberals know that, irrespective of whoever is nominally in control at the top via political appointments, the permanent staff doing the regulating on the ground will be one of them. Liberals are attracted to that kind of work. Conservatives are not.
Reagan understood that competition, not regulation, was the way for conservative views and voices to be more widely heard. That’s not only the best practical option. It’s also the only approach consistent with conservative principles.
These social media giants are private companies, as are the traditional media. If they tilt the playing field, intentionally or unintentionally, to the left, that is their right, both as a property right and as a First Amendment right. That’s the only true conservative perspective on the matter.
The solution to anti-conservative bias in social media is the same as it was for television and radio: create alternatives