Social Media and the Social Contract

It’s not that all good things must pass away, it’s that the conditions that made them good very often evolve obviating their need or possibly turning their results against their initial benefits. Take the Communications Decency Act as an example and specifically Section 230. Passed in 1996, the Act was seen as a way of encouraging Internet use by telling platform providers like message boards that they were not responsible for the postings of their members.

The Declaration of Independence is a great example of Enlightenment thinking.

The act was eminently sensible back then but the nature of communications, exemplified by the rise of social media, has changed so drastically that some reexamination of the bifurcation of publisher and content creator is in order. That’s what we’ll do here.

An emerging battle line pits First Amendment rights, i.e. free speech, against alleged government overreach in any attempt to regulate what is said in public space, sort of like the effort to thwart common sense gun legislation, but I digress.

Rousseau clearly articulated the social contract.

The Safe Tech Act, a bill announced by Democratic senators Mark Warner (D-VA), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), seeks to put up guardrails for what’s tolerable speech on the Internet. At least one…