After former President Donald Trump encouraged his followers at his Jan. 6 “Save America” rally to march on the Capitol, they did just that. The scene of a man marching through Congress brandishing a Confederate flag and taking selfies sent a chill down most Americans’ spines. 

Trump’s followers would have had little momentum were it not for the president’s active use of social media. Social media not only played a central role in the attack on the Capitol, showing the event unfold in real time, but it also fostered the propagation of “Stop the Steal” sentiment. A study from the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce found that Facebook especially polarized conservative users, who read news about 30% more conservative than their online news while on the app. 

Big Tech giants Facebook and Twitter banned Trump due to his “incitement” of violence, though as companies congratulated themselves for intervention, they failed to announce other permanent safety measures. The events in the Capitol on Jan. 6 demonstrate the need to reconsider Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996 as well as the power of social media giants.

Section 230 of the CDA relieves internet providers from responsibility over what people post on their sites. It began as a protection against defamation and obscene content, and the ratification of several lawsuits—most notably Zeran v. AOL (1997), which released AOL from responsibility over damaging content posted by its users—weakened the moderation requirements of internet companies and thus disincentivized them to remove material.

Because social media platforms bear no responsibility for content, they currently lack motivation to be the “Good Samaritan” moderator that Section 230 originally described. Section 230 operates under the assumption that tech companies should be trusted to self-regulate, an idealistic illusion that has proved detrimental. 

Such little moderation has incurred criticism from both conservatives and liberals. In May 2020, Trump announced an executive order to narrow 230 with the intent to protect what he imagined were silenced right-wing voices. It proposed that websites should lose immunity when they remove or restrict content in violation of “good faith.” Liberals have proposed to revise 230 to prevent attacks like the one on Jan. 6 by stripping companies of immunity if they promote extreme content.

A few major tech companies extend a dominant amount of control over our online lives, giving them great bargaining power with federal governments. On Jan. 22, Google, which regulates 95% of all queries in Australia, threatened to pull its service completely out of the country if the Australian government passed a bill requiring the company to pay for journalism posted online. Facebook echoed similar sentiments, stating that it would restrict Australian users from interacting with content if the bill proceeded. Coupled with other examples such as Amazon exerting monopoly power over smaller vendors in online retail or Apple ranking its own services higher in the App Store, display a dangerous reliance on Big Tech.

Both the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union assert that Section 230 is not the problem, stating that to repeal or revise it would threaten free speech. These organizations suggest that the government pass antitrust legislation to break up Big Tech, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google and Amazon to prevent one single company from dominating decisions to regulate speech. 

Unsurprisingly, Big Tech disagrees and prefers “regulation,” though how this regulation could be implemented given their opaque company approaches to moderation, remains ambiguous. While regulation is also necessary, a more tangible approach is to break up tech companies and increase competition, providing companies with an incentive to up their standards in areas such as user privacy and mitigating the threat of one company wielding power over the judgement of hate speech. Breaking down the bargaining power of large tech companies over the government opens the door for further inquiry into company regulation policies.

Advocating for a Glass-Steagall style amendment for Big Tech, Congress delivered recommendations on the possibility of breaking up the most powerful internet companies on Oct. 6. Passed in 1933, the Glass-Steagall Act separated commercial banking from investment banking, preventing bankers from also acting as brokers. In the 21st century, similar antitrust legislation would prevent companies from controlling the marketplace while also acting as a seller, preventing companies such as Amazon from competing with smaller vendors on its platform. Similar acts that limit the power of one company over the entire industry include preventing mergers and acquisitions as seen in Facebook’s acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram or allowing users to sue the company for violations.

To prevent the disastrous outcomes of Big Tech moderating itself, legislation must give up the idealism of Section 230 in favor of increasing competition, providing a motive for Internet companies to finally meet user standards.

This story was originally published on Harker Aquila on January 27, 2021.