The sheriff might be coming to town.
Or the sheriff may just be diligently covering its own posterior.
Either way, what comes next might be interesting.
Early Tuesday morning, social media giant Facebook sent out a notice to its users that the site’s basic rules, its Terms of Service, are changing. It’s only 33 new words in a 4,200-word document — a document that also links to a dizzying dozen or so sets of terms, policies and guidelines — but those words might end up being quite something.
Facebook has argued for years that it’s essentially exempt for responsibility for what gets posted: it has maintained that it is a vehicle for other people to post their thoughts and recipes, a platform but not a publisher. Unlike newspapers and digital media sources, it doesn’t even have to try to be accurate.
Here’s what Facebook says is coming: “Effective Oct. 1, 2020, section 3.2 of our Terms of Service will be updated to include: ‘We also can remove or restrict access to your content, services or information if we determine that doing so is reasonably necessary to avoid or mitigate adverse legal or regulatory impacts to Facebook.’”
In some ways, it looks like legal boilerplate — in other ways, it’s perhaps a tacit admission that Facebook isn’t just a neutral participant on its own site.
The change was noticed pretty quickly: there has already been considerable pushback by people arguing that Facebook is preparing to censor them and remove their freedom of speech.
Maybe people should look at it a different way: you’re certainly allowed to express yourself, even if that expression is urinating on the floor. You just can’t do it at my house.
Newspapers have been making that argument with some people who write letters to the editor for years: you’re allowed to say whatever you like, and bear the consequences that may occur. But there’s a point where it’s just not welcome on our pages: you can certainly go ahead and build your own website, and carry legal responsibility and social consequences for your words. But we’re not doing that for you.
Facebook has argued for years that it’s essentially exempt for responsibility for what gets posted: it has maintained that it is a vehicle for other people to post their thoughts and recipes, a platform but not a publisher. Unlike newspapers and digital media sources, it doesn’t even have to try to be accurate.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg put it this way: “Facebook and other social media companies, in general, shouldn’t be arbiters of truth.”
But that’s clearly not true any more: without the power of Facebook’s reach, a whole host of false information — including harmful and violent racism — would wither from sheer lack of oxygen. You can yell non-stop, but if there’s no one to hear you, the impact is, well, nil.
There have been rules about conduct on the social media giant’s site, but, to be honest, they’ve been less than transparent, both in language and in application. The new 3.2 clause is, quite possibly, Facebook blinking.
“Well, we didn’t write it” isn’t really a get-out-of-jail-free card for the legal responsibility of sharing false, defamatory, insulting or hateful speech with millions of users.
