Hillary Clinton’s Continued Confusion About Section 230 Highlights Need For Basic Tech Literacy Among Politicians

Hillary Clinton has no clue how Section 230 works. She seems to think that repealing it will make websites more likely to remove misinformation (which is backwards). But what law do we need repealed to stop Clinton from spreading misinformation about Section 230 (and social media)?

In April, we wrote about some comments from Hillary Clinton regarding Section 230, showing that she was incredibly confused about what it does and how it works, to the point of actively spreading misinformation about how the law works. It appears that since then, either no one has told her she’s wrong or (worse) they have and she refuses to understand why.

She recently appeared on Michael Smerconish’s show to talk about her book and continued to push misinformation about Section 230. Indeed, this time it was even worse and more wrong than earlier this year. Smerconish was equally confused, though I’d never heard of the guy until now, but someone should get him to stop pushing utter misinformation as well. If you want to watch their interaction, it’s here:

Clinton kicks off this part of the discussion by saying that she believes kids are addicted to smartphones and social media. This is not what the evidence shows, but who needs evidence when you have feelings? Yes, there are a few high profile politicians and pundits who claim this is true, but the actual evidence is much more complex and nuanced, showing that many kids (especially LGBTQ kids) get real benefit from the ability to connect in this way, and only a very small percentage struggle with it (which often appears to be a sign of trouble elsewhere in their lives).

Smerconish responds by thanking Clinton for citing Jonathan Haidt as an expert, which is laughable because he’s not. Basically all of the actual experts and all of the actual science in the space disagree with Haidt and say he is misrepresenting the evidence regarding social media and kids. Even more ridiculously, Smerconish claims “I’m shocked that no person — no Republican, no Democrat — is championing this issue,” referring to kids and social media.

Has Smerconish been living in a cave? For like two years now, there’s been an ongoing baseless moral panic on this very issue (driven by non-experts like Haidt). KOSA (a terrible bill that will lead to real harm for LGBTQ youth in particular, but which is pitched as a “save the kids online” bill) passed the Senate with only three no votes and over 70 co-sponsors.

The idea that no one is championing this idea is so out of touch with reality that it makes me realize whoever Smerconish is, he seems to not know what’s going on. So why should anyone pay attention to what he has to say?

Smerconish then does the “out of touch old man” routine, claiming that we need to get kids to be more social like their parents and grandparents. Dude. Many kids do socialize today, and they do some of it with their phones. Yes, that’s different from when you were a kid, but that doesn’t necessarily make it worse.

There truly is nothing worse than two rich, out-of-touch people insisting that “the kids these days” are doing stuff wrong because it’s different from back in the day. How obnoxious. And wrong.

But, on to Clinton’s comments. In response to this, she pushed for getting rid of Section 230 again, but it appears that she completely misunderstands Section 230 (to the point of literally getting it backwards):

We need national action and sadly, our Congress has been dysfunctional when it comes to addressing these threats to our children. So you’re absolutely right. This should be at the top of every legislative, political agenda. There should be a lot of things done. We should be, in my view, repealing something called section 230, which gave platforms on the internet immunity because they were thought to be just pass-throughs, that they shouldn’t be judged for the content that is posted. But we now know that that was an overly simple view, that if the platforms, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter X or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don’t moderate and monitor the content we lose total control and it’s not just the social and psychological effects it’s real harm, it’s child porn and threats of violence, things that are terribly dangerous.

So, I couldn’t agree with you more. We need to remove the immunity for liability and we need to have guardrails. We need regulation. We’ve conducted this big experiment on ourselves and particularly our kids, and I think the evidence is in that we’ve got to do more….

Okay, so first, she has Section 230 literally backwards. Somehow, she seems to have internalized Ted Cruz’s lying about Section 230 and assumed it’s accurate.

Section 230 was not “because [websites] were thought to be just pass-throughs.” It’s literally the opposite of that. Surely Clinton knows Senator Ron Wyden, who wrote the law, and could tell her she’s wrong? It was written to encourage moderation by removing liability for websites’ moderation choices.

There is still liability for content online. It’s just on whoever created the content.

If you repeal Section 230, you get less moderation not more, because you are now creating liability for moderation choices. If you create more liability for something you get less of it. Where Clinton is woefully confused is she seems to think that repealing Section 230 would create liability for misinformation. It would not. The First Amendment protects that. It would just create liability for moderation. Meaning you’d get less of that and more misinformation.

The First Amendment (which, surely, Clinton is familiar with?) requires there to be actual knowledge of violative content for a distributor to be liable. All repealing Section 230 would do is encourage websites to look the other way to avoid liability.

Clinton is literally misinforming the public, getting the law exactly backwards, and demanding a regulatory move that would do exactly the opposite of what she claims it would, based on misunderstanding misrepresented research.

It’s like an entire seven-layer cake of misinformation.

So, please, if anyone reading this has any ability to talk to Hillary Clinton, please, please, please get her to talk to some actual experts, whether they’re experts on Section 230 or on the very nuanced and complex issues regarding social media and mental health, as she seems to have fallen down a rabbit hole of moral panic misinformation, combined with nonsense GOP talking points, and is pushing the worst solution possible. Her current stance will do real harm to children.

Separately, I’ll just note that Clinton’s confusion is also (stupidly) leading to even more confusion and misleading reporting. Fox News took Clinton’s comments and published an article misleadingly suggesting she wants to force websites to moderate political content “or we lose control.” In the CNN interview, she was clearly only talking about child safety issues, which the MAGA world seems aligned with her on. They also want to “repeal” Section 230 and are pushing KOSA because they think it’s necessary to “stop the transgender.”

So, maybe, just maybe, Clinton would be better served by getting a clue on how all of this works, so she stops pushing nonsense that actually supports the MAGA world’s position on LGBTQ content and spewing utter misinformation?