Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Internet Censorship Crusade

Starting point is 00:00:00 A couple weeks ago, the actor Joseph Gordon Levitt got up on stage in front of Congress and joined groups like the Heritage Foundation, Morality and Media, and other extreme far-right Christian fundamentalists to promote a law co-sponsored by Lindsay Graham that would dismantle the internet as we know it and eliminate free expression online. The law that he wants to eliminate is called Section 230. And if you're not familiar with it, Section 230 is a foundational internet law. That's why the core of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 Tech Policy Agenda is a about repealing it. It's known as the law that created the internet, and I did an entire video

Starting point is 00:00:34 linked here on the law, breaking down what it says, why it matters, and why the far right and billionaires in power across the political spectrum are so hell bent on destroying it. Basically, Section 230 is what enables user-generated content on the internet. It's the reason you can leave a negative restaurant review without Yelp being sued out of existence. It's the reason fan communities can exist online. It's why any website can host a comment section. Section 230 is what allows blogs to exist and book reviews to be posted online. It's what allows for forums and chat systems to exist. Section 230 is the sole reason why Wikipedia can function as a volunteer edited encyclopedia. It's why the internet archive can preserve snapshots of the web's history.

Starting point is 00:01:14 I could go on and on, but I literally cannot explain how crucial and important this one small internet law is. And of course, it's no surprise that billionaires and powerful far-right extremists want to destroy it. And since destroying it would eliminate the ability to have free speech at all on the internet. I wanted to take today's episode of free speech Friday to talk about it. I didn't want to derail my section 230 mini series, which is currently running on Mondays for a whole episode on Joseph Gordon Levitt, but this stuff is really important. Also, I'm not a millionaire movie star. I do not have any long-term advertising partnerships and my work is entirely 100% self-funded. Big tech groups and reactionary nonprofits are spending millions of dollars to try to get section

Starting point is 00:01:55 230 amended or removed. But the work that I do is entirely funded by you guys. So if you like my work and this series, please, please, please support me on Patreon via the link below or by a paid subscription to my subsection newsletter also linked below. Now, if you missed my whole video from Monday on Section 230, let me give you the cliff notes quickly. Section 230 passed 30 years ago and as I said, it essentially allows for user generated content online. It's not the First Amendment and it's structured a little bit differently, but it's effectively known as the First Amendment for the Internet. And for the first 20 years, it remained largely intact, but about a decade ago, billionaires, Christian fundamentalists, and pro-Israel groups were already trying to dismantle Section 230. They actually

Starting point is 00:02:35 did an entire celebrity campaign led by Amy Schumer to try to get Congress to chip away at Section 230. Those organizations got a bunch of celebrities on board to attack the law and claim that free speech on the internet was destroying society and endangering children. Now, for some godforsaken reason, Joseph Gordon Levitt has joined Amy Schumer and her gang of multi-millionaire celebrities who want to censor the internet but this time he's framing it as somehow cracking down on big tech please watch my other video where i break down exactly how insanely wrong this idea is but suffice to say repealing section 230 would actually consolidate power in big tech the first big successful attack on section 230 was called foster sesta and it was a law that actually passed as an

Starting point is 00:03:17 amendment to section 230 after aggressive lobbying from meta basically the tech giants want to revoke section 230 so they can harvest even more data to feed into their AI algorithms and eliminate their competitors. Unsurprisingly, nobody that cares about freedom and civil liberties actually wants this. After Joseph Gordon Levitt went to the hill, pretty much everyone who follows him began spamming his pages like WTF, what are you doing? And why are you pushing Project 2025 tech policy? Well, last night, he responded with a 12-minute YouTube video that is somehow even more factually inaccurate and delusional than his original speech at Congress. It's actually shocking how, ignorant this man is about this foundational law and the very well-funded far-right political

Starting point is 00:03:58 effort to dismantle it. So to dive in, I first want to address a couple things related to the speech that Gordon Levitt gave in D.C. He said, So I understand what Section 230 did to bring about the birth of the internet. That was 30 years ago. And I also understand how the internet has changed since then. Because back then, message boards and other websites with user-generated content. They really were more like telephone carriers. They were neutral platforms. Right off the bat, he's literally incorrect. Like everything he just said is completely factually false. Mike Maznick actually did a really fantastic whole podcast series where he spoke to the people behind Section 230, including those involved in the early internet and the various lawsuits

Starting point is 00:04:44 at the time. Also, Mike Mazik at TechDirt really has done the best take down of all the claims that Gordon Levitt has made about Section 230 on his tech news website TechDirt. It's going to be linked below. And I'm going to be using a lot of stuff directly from Mike in this video. As he notes, Section 230 was never meant for neutral websites, as the authors and the text of the law itself make very clear. In reality, the whole reason Section 230 was created was so that websites did not have to be neutral.

Starting point is 00:05:12 Section 230 was written in response to two lawsuits, one called Stratton-Okmont-Prodigy. And since Joseph Gordon-Levitt doesn't seem to be familiar with the history of this law at all, I'll just give you the 101. Stratton-Ockmont is actually the company portrayed in the Wolf of Wall Street. And the company sued Prodigy, which was an internet service provider at the time, because a whistleblower posted on a prodigy web forum about how Stratton Oakmont and the Wolf of Wall Street was committing major financial fraud, which, as we all know, ended up being true. But the Wolf of Wall Street wasn't happy about this.

Starting point is 00:05:43 So his company sued Prodigy, and the judge said that because Prodigy moderated, some of the content on their platform in an effort to have a family-friendly social media experience, they were not neutral, and they were suddenly legally liable for anything they decided to keep up. So it's just like Joseph Gordon Levitt, please wake up. These were never neutral platforms. From the jump, they were not neutral, and from the jump, these platforms were shaped by algorithms and content moderation decisions. And I think it's so ironic as well that part of the reason Section 230 was written into existence was to protect this whistleblower who was blowing the whistle on Wolf of Wall Street. Section 230 was originally called the Internet Freedom and Family

Starting point is 00:06:21 Empowerment Act and it was never and I mean never about protecting platforms for being neutral. It was literally the opposite. It was about ensuring that these very much non-neutral platforms could make decisions related to what they shared, what they didn't share, what they amplified, what they chose not to amplify without being held liable as a publisher or speaker of that content. As Mike Maznik writes, this is important, but it's a point that a bunch of bad faith people, starting with Ted Cruz, have been lying about for a decade, pretending that the intent of Section 230 was to protect sites that are neutral. It's literally the opposite of that, and it's disappointing that Joseph Gordon Levitt would repeat this myth as if it's fact. Courts have even said this explicitly. Again, these websites were never neutral. These internet service providers like Prodigy and CompuServe were never neutral. There really is no such thing as, this like neutral internet unless maybe you're talking about things like google drive or dropbox or just like file sharing systems but any kind of platform with user generated content is never going to be

Starting point is 00:07:27 neutral anyway joseph gordon levitt then goes on to talk about legitimate problems with big tech having too much power but for some reason he falsely attributes the reasons to this to section 230 instead of our economic system or failure to regulate antitrust instead he blamed section 230 the very law that protects small platforms' ability to compete on an even playing field with these tech giants. He says, Today the internet is dominated by a small handful of these gigantic businesses that are not at all. Neutral. The neutral thing again.

Starting point is 00:08:00 But instead, algorithmically amplify whatever gets the most attention and maximizes ad revenue. By the way, platforms always did that. There was never a day since the dawn of the internet that any of these platforms, including CompuServe and Prodigy didn't have algorithms. So much of this is just like, it's just a historical. It's just completely a historical. It's like making up a version of the internet that was like, I guess just like file sharing systems, but like all of this is just not true.

Starting point is 00:08:29 This idea that like CompuServe and Prodigy were neutral and like there were no algorithms, like you are under spells. Okay, you are under spells. But anyway, let's let him continue. And we know what happens when we let these engagement optimization algorithms be the lens that we see the world through. We get a mental health crisis, especially amongst young people. We get a rise in extremism and a rise in conspiracy theories. And then, of course, we get these echo chambers. These algorithms, they amplify the demonization of the other side so badly that

Starting point is 00:08:59 we can't even have a civil conversation. It seems like we can't agree on anything. Okay, so there's a lot to unpack here. I know that most people have bought into this moral panic about kids and technology. But as every single, single top researcher who actually studies the effect of social media on kids has found, there is simply no causal connection between social media and mental health problems. What they have found is that the youth mental health crisis is being driven by myriad factors, largely economic and societal, and that your mental health status can affect the way you use the internet, but not the other way around. And here's something else you might not know.

Starting point is 00:09:37 Studies on echo chambers have actually found that the internet as a whole decreases echo chambers, rather than increases them. The studies on mental health broadly as well also show the opposite of what Joseph Gordon Levitt and the Heritage Foundation's Jonathan Hyde at Barry Weiss and others seeking to censor the internet are claiming. Even his claims about algorithms being focused solely on engagement aren't true at all. Like that hasn't been true in years. Initially, companies did use to optimize solely for engagement, but they very quickly realized

Starting point is 00:10:07 that doing that made users burned out and stressed, which was actually bad for business because people were spending less time on these platforms. So every single social media platform over the past several years has adjusted their algorithms away from that. So for those keeping track at home, I just want to reiterate. So far, every single claim that Joseph Gordon Levitt has made in front of Congress and to the media is categorically false or he's at least significantly misrepresenting it to the point that it's just deeply misleading misinformation. But his biggest and most offensive lie to me is that killing Section 230 would somehow crack down. on big tech. Like, this is delusional. And once again, the exact opposite is true. The big internet

Starting point is 00:10:46 companies do not need Section 230. As Mike Masnick reports, the real benefit of Section 230 is that it gets unfounded lawsuits thrown out early. That matters a lot for smaller companies and platforms. To put it in real terms, as Mike says, under Section 230, companies can get vexatious lawsuits dismissed for around $100,000 to $200,000. Apparently, you used to only be around $50,000, but things are getting more expensive. That's a lot of money. 50,000, $100,000, a lot of money. But that's survivable for a small platform. Getting that same case dismissed on First Amendment grounds as almost all of these lawsuits would be if Section 230 went away would shoot the cost up to somewhere near $5 million as a starting point. Now, $5 million isn't really a huge deal to companies like Meta and

Starting point is 00:11:32 Google who have buildings and buildings full of lawyers. But without Section 230, a single lawsuit over a user's legal speech on a non-profit-driven platform would destroy the platform and put it out of business. And I think it's hard for people to remember how vast the Internet is and how much Section 230 protects. Most of us primarily use these social giants. You're probably watching this on YouTube. And these lawsuits really wouldn't harm those platforms. But removing Section 230 would eliminate protection for things like cancer patient forums, eating disorder support groups, online communities for those struggling with addiction or seeking to escape domestic.

Starting point is 00:12:06 violence, LGBTQ communities and nonprofit platforms would be eliminated overnight because of legal liability. Revoking Section 230 would literally wipe out the entire indie internet and consolidate all power and all conversation on platforms run by big tech. This is why Meta is literally running ads telling Congress that it's time to ditch Section 230. In 2020, Facebook had its VP of content policy publish a big piece explaining how Facebook would like Section 230, to be removed. Meta also released a whole white paper outlining a path to destroying Section 230. And here's why all of this is happening now. Meta and Google are giant, but they've maxed out almost all the entire social media market. Most people who have thought about signing up for YouTube

Starting point is 00:12:52 or joining Instagram have already done so. So how can these tech giants continue to expand and capture more and more of our social life and conversation? Well, by driving every single small indie nonprofit community and forum out of business and consolidating that power even more. Getting rid of Section 230 makes it impossible for small startups and forums and online communities to survive. So Mata swoops in and either buys the platform at a fire sale price or just steals their community. Getting rid of Section 230 literally makes every single problem that Joseph Gordon Levitt claims to care about so much worse. Like it's insane. I feel like I'm in like a bizarreo backwards world. And then he says the most offensive thing.

Starting point is 00:13:33 Like, I want to reach through the screen and shake this man back to reality. He goes, I have a message for all the other senators out there. I want to see this thing pass 100 to zero. There should be nobody voting to give any more impunity to these tech companies. Nobody. It's time for a change. Let's make it happen. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:13:55 Are you crazy? Deleting Section 230 is not voting to give anyone more impunity. It's literally voting. to destroy the internet as we know it, consolidate power in big tech, and enact mass mandatory censorship of all online speech. Oh, also, the big tech companies get to harvest way more data for their AI systems, which we'll dive into later because that's a whole other side of this. So after that disaster on the hill and the backlash that came, Joseph Gordon Levitt posted a video yesterday where he triples down on his delusional far right pro censorship slop. Once again,

Starting point is 00:14:31 Mike Maznick at Tector did the best response, and I'm just going to read large parts of it while adding my own commentary. Basically, Gordon Levitt starts out by saying he actually agrees with a lot of his critics because he wants, quote, an internet that has vibrant, free, and productive public discourse. Except that's literally what Section 230 enables. Without it, you don't have intermediaries willing to host public discourse. You only have giant corporations with buildings full of lawyers who will set the rules of public discourse, which are a, of course, dictated by the government. Once again, his entire argument is completely backwards. Then he does this weird sort of like half backtracky thing

Starting point is 00:15:10 where he's saying, oh, I actually didn't want to end section 230. Why are you guys saying that? I mean, yeah, I was calling for the sunset end section 230 act, but really I just wanted reform. Here's the first thing I'll say. I'm in favor of reforming section 230. I'm not in favor of eliminating all of the protections that it affords.

Starting point is 00:15:31 I'm going to repeat that because it's really the crux of this. I'm in favor of reforming, upgrading, modernizing section 230 because it was past 30 years ago. I am not in favor of eliminating all of the protections that it affords. I feel like I'm losing touch with reality and I was like transported to Mars or something because it's like, brother, aren't you kidding me? You literally traveled to Washington, D.C., got up in front of United States senators and told everyone how you wanted this bill that revokes Section 230 that literally takes away every single one of those protections

Starting point is 00:16:06 that we're talking about to pass 100 to zero. You never once said, oh, I just want to reform it. Like, no, that's some complete and total bullshit. You literally said, get rid of this thing. And that's still very much what you want to do. So just be honest about it. Like, seriously, just be honest about it. Enough with this like, oh, I just want reform.

Starting point is 00:16:25 No, you want to revoke it. And I know you want to revoke it. because the whole reform Section 230 thing is really just a dog whistle. Because repealing Section 230 was so rightfully politically toxic for so long, for years, extremist far right groups have been like, oh, no, no, no. We don't listen. We don't want to delete it. We just want to reform it.

Starting point is 00:16:44 And as TechDirt's own First Amendment lawyer, Kathy Gellis, has explained over and over again on the website, every proposed reform to Section 230 is really just a repeal. Like, that's legally how it functions. So let's just spare all of us the time of like litigating these words. And every single kind of reform requires long expensive lawsuits to determine if a platform is liable for whatever speech is in question. And in the end, those companies will still probably win because of the First Amendment. This is why Section 230 is often sort of known loosely as the First Amendment for the Internet. All Section 230 does is basically make it so you don't have to pay lawyers nearly as much to reach the same result.

Starting point is 00:17:25 So literally every reform proposal basically just resets the clock in a way that makes every old court precedent before it just be gone. And all you're doing when you're revoking it is just making these baseless lawsuits against platforms for legal speech cost way, way more. And what's really going to happen because these companies ultimately can't be fighting these lawsuits all the time unless you're meta and Google, just the threat of a lawsuit or the threat of potential legal action for a legal speech on a website will be enough to just shut down speech and enact mass moderation. or shut down the platform completely. Like, if we go along with Joseph Gordon Levitt's plan for Section 230, say Donald Trump or the state of Israel doesn't like what people are saying online on a platform.

Starting point is 00:18:07 They don't even have to go through the whole hassle of suing. They can just threaten to sue. And without Section 230, the platform will just remove the content because they don't want to deal with this expensive lawsuit. Or much more likely, they will presensor any content that's even remotely legally threatening because they don't want to deal with the hassle. This is where AI comes in because they can mass censor the internet and downrank content that's risky or that criticizes power or that says something, you know, not nice about Elon Musk.

Starting point is 00:18:34 They'll just start removing any content that's like negative about a billionaire or a company or Jeffrey Epstein's friends or, you know, anyone with the power basically to file a lawsuit. Now, does this system sound like the vibrant, free and productive public discourse that Joseph Gordon Levitt claims that he wants? Calling for reform of Section 230 is in every single case seen to date, really a call for repeal, whether Joseph Gordon-Levitt wants to recognize that or not. Joseph Gordon-Levett then talks about his own website. I co-founded an online community called HitRecord with a website, with a community of about like a million people when it was the biggest. But oftentimes it's been small. We were a small business. And I completely recognize that if a small business like Hit Record,

Starting point is 00:19:22 could be held liable for all of the things that anybody might post on a user-generated content platform. We wouldn't be able to afford the legal bills, and it could put us out of business. So I really do understand the logic behind Section 230. So he agrees that sites like hit record require Section 230 to operate, which makes it even more insane that he's supporting a full repeal, because that's what he got up in front of Congress to call for.

Starting point is 00:19:50 He said that senators should vote, 100 to zero for a full repeal of Section 230, a statute that now he claims like even he relies on. And now he's just like, oh, well, I actually just wanted to basically get up in front of Congress and threaten to destroy the internet, threaten to revoke free speech for everyone, threatened to remove our ability to criticize power. So what? So you could get up there and get a photo op so that you could just grandstand so that you could,

Starting point is 00:20:18 you know, use your celebrity power to push an insanely bad law. because, you know, it gets you headlines, like literally what's the goal? And then he has the gall to say this. So this Section 230 Sunset Act is, as far as I understand it, a strategy towards reform. It'll force the tech companies to the negotiating table. That's why I supported it. Again, it's so crazy how quickly you backtracked. He's like, oh, I just wanted to get them at the table.

Starting point is 00:20:46 I just want to get them at the table. Guys, I didn't know. Yeah, that law that I said that I shouted at senators should, you know, that they should pass 100 to 1. Oh, yeah, I didn't want them to pass that anyway. I just wanted to get big tech, you know, to the table. It's like, what? Big tech is always at the negotiating table.

Starting point is 00:21:01 They live at the negotiating table. They built the negotiating table. Meta and Google are two of the biggest lobbyist in Washington. All they do all day is meet with lawmakers and try to negotiate tech policy that's favorable to them, which speaking of would conveniently be repealing Section 230. Something like I mentioned, meta has lobbied for, is lobby, for has released blog posts about produced an ad for and released a white paper on and zuckerberg has said that he wants it basically because it makes him seem cooperative like he's agreeing to

Starting point is 00:21:30 tech regulation while it ultimately just allows him to literally destroy any of his smaller competitors ability to survive and what's also so offensive to me and like why i'm getting like increasingly heated during this video is that like joseph gordon levitt doesn't seem to know about the work of any activists in this space at all like he has not engaged with any privacy activists, any civil liberties activist, any like sex workers, trans people, abortion activists, literally no one. Like he doesn't seem to know anything about any of this because the actual reason that Section 230 reform bills have failed is not because of big tech. Literally what are you talking about? There's an entire multi-billion dollar far right Christian fundamentalist political movement

Starting point is 00:22:15 that you've aligned yourself with built on repealing Section 230. Again, the Heritage Foundation, hosy, aka morality and media. You know, the anti-extremist LGBTQ hate group that wants Section 230 removed because they think that the internet is turning kids trans, the ones who support conversion therapy? Surely you're familiar with them because they've been using your Section 230 speech all over social media to boost their cause. Again, the Heritage Foundation has made Section 230 repeal core to the Project 2025 and broader reactionary agenda.

Starting point is 00:22:47 The only reason the Section 230 reforms that these groups, spend millions lobbying for have failed is because enough grassroots activists and people like us show up and scream at Congress. It is absolutely not big tech lobbyists. Like, please show up once. It's the ACLU. It's the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It's fight for the future. It's demand progress. It's it's LGBTQ rights groups. The people fighting for Section 230 are the people who want to protect our ability to criticize ICE online. We want to stop AI surveillance and censorship from dominating our internet. The people fighting to protect Section 230 are marginalized people who have been directly affected by the policies that you continue to use your platform to advocate

Starting point is 00:23:31 for. Again, it's sex workers, it's trans people, it's abortion activists, disabled people, and other people who only have a voice in community and collective power thanks to the internet. It's also just abundantly clear that Joseph Gordon Levitt is so ignorant about the history of Section 230 reform. Like he doesn't know that we literally already reformed it. We literally did everything he says he wants. In 2018, Congress passed Fasta Sesta, the first major reform to Section 230. Fasta Sesta itself is an amendment to Section 230. At the time, lawmakers and celebrities like you made all of the same delusional claims. Do you not remember Amy Schumer's crazy PSA about all this? I sure do. Fostasesta created an explicit carve-out to section.

Starting point is 00:24:18 Section 230 to crack down on child's trafficking content. The amendment to Section 230 only passed because of Meta's aggressive lobbying, by the way. And ignorant celebrities like you claimed that this was cracking down on Big Tech. This Section 230 reform and carve out to hold platforms accountable would end Big Tech's influence, they kept saying. I have a whole other video on this, but the effects were and have been devastating. Fosta Sesta is like one of the worst pieces of legislation that is, has ever passed in my lifetime.

Starting point is 00:24:50 Abortion activists and LGBTQ people have been massy platform from the internet. And so many of the issues with the internet that you described today and how bad it can be are actually due to Fasta Sesta. Fasta Sesta not only pushed, according to some reports, 10% of all workers into homelessness leading to more abuse. It made trafficking on the internet far easier to conduct.

Starting point is 00:25:14 It hid massive amounts of LGBTQ content, and it made it harder. for law enforcement to capture actual human traffickers. I could go on and on. But again, all of this harm, all of this homelessness, abuse that happened, you know, restrictions on women's rights content, abortion content, all of this was done in the name of cracking down on big tech by amending Section 230. So let me ask you, Joseph Gordon Levitt, you claim that Section 230 reform will hurt Big Tech, that this is something that Big Tech doesn't want. In the years since Fasta Sesta, the first and only major reform to Section 230,

Starting point is 00:25:54 has big tech gotten more or less powerful? Is meta more or less powerful today than 2018? Is Google more or less powerful today than 2018? Genuinely, use your brain for a minute. Since Fasta Sesta created the first major carve-out to Section 230 in the name of cracking down on big tech and making the Internet safer, Has big tech become more or less powerful? Maybe before getting up in front of Congress

Starting point is 00:26:23 to call for Section 230 repeal, again, not even reform. You called for repeal. You should learn a little bit more about when we did reform Section 230 because it went exactly how every trans person, LGBTQ person, digital rights group, disabled person, marginalized person said it would. It went exactly that way. Sesta Fasta devastated small online.

Starting point is 00:26:47 communities and suppressed sex positive and LGBTQ content forever. Anyway, Joseph Gordon Levitt then repeats a bunch of slop that's literally just Ted Cruz talking points. Like really, Ted Cruz is, I can't even explain. He's basically the only American who thinks that Section 230 works this way or the only one that ever has ever, like, made these claims. None of these claims are what the law says. But again, I guess Joseph Gordon Levitt is just getting his talking points directly from

Starting point is 00:27:16 Ted Cruz because this is Ted Cruz's whole schick. He says, Section 230 as it's currently written or as it was written 30 years ago, distinguishes between what it calls publishers and carriers. So a publisher would be a person saying something or a company saying something like the New York Times say or, you know, the Walt Disney company publishers. Then carriers would be somebody like AT&T or Verizon, you know, the companies that make your phone or your telephone service. So basically what Section 230 said is that these platforms for user-generated content are not publishers. They are carriers. They are as neutral as the telephone company. And if someone uses the

Starting point is 00:28:01 telephone to commit a crime, the telephone company shouldn't be held liable. And that's true about a telephone company. But again, there's a third category that we need to add to really reflect how the internet works today. And that third category is amplification. Once again, everything he just said is literally wrong, like just completely wrong. Like these are just factual error, like not even errors. He is, there lies. Like, it's all just completely backwards. I don't even know. I mean, I guess you can just get up and say anything in front of Congress. Nothing has to be fact checked. But anyway, Section 230 does not in any way distinguish between what it calls publishers and carriers.

Starting point is 00:28:47 This is this like publishers platform myth that somehow people with no understanding of this law like to promote. It's not what the law says. And if you don't believe me, you can literally just go look at the law and read it yourself. It's very short. It never makes this distinction. This doesn't exist. I don't know where this conspiracy, you know, framing came from, but it's not there.

Starting point is 00:29:08 As Mike Mastick explains, the only distinction that Section 230 makes is between interactive computer services and information content providers. Now, some people, including Joseph Gordon Levitt, seemingly, will claim that that's the same thing as publishers and carriers. But I'm sorry, it's not. It's actually just not. Those two things do not mean the same thing. Carriers, as in common carrier law, implies the neutrality that Joseph Gordon Levitt mentioned earlier. So maybe that's what got him confused. But the purpose of Section 230 was to enable interactive computer. services to effectively act as publishers without being held liable as publishers. It was not saying don't be a publisher. It was saying we want you to be a publisher,

Starting point is 00:29:57 not a neutral carrier. Again, not a neutral carrier, but we know that if you face liability as a publisher, then you won't publish anything. So for third party content, we won't hold you liable for your publishing actions. Again, you can't have user generated content without So to go back to the Prodigy case, Prodigy did act as a publisher in trying to filter out non-family-friendly content. And the judge said, okay, now you're liable. And the entire point of Section 230 was to come in and say, no, don't worry, act as a publisher. But since this is all third-party content, we will hold the speaker of that content liable, not you, not treating you as a publisher. Basically, like, the entire purpose of Section 230 is to encourage these interactive computing services to act.

Starting point is 00:30:45 as publishers by removing liability for being a publisher. The point of Section 230 is not to say you're a carrier, not a publisher. It's literally just to say you can safely act as a publisher because you won't face liability for content that you had no part in its creation. Basically, Joseph Gordon Levitt once again has it completely backwards. And I feel like he's just like picking up on some of these words and kind of like maybe making his own definitions of them. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:31:12 He then just like goes on to make this really weird and meaningless distinction between free speech and commercial amplification, as if this is like, has any legal meaning? It literally doesn't. Like, again, he's just sort of like hitching himself onto like buzzwords and trying to like make up like legal jargon, but it's like this is actual law. And like these are real legal concepts. He says at the crux of their article is a really important distinction. And that distinction is between free speech and commercial amplification. Free speech, meaning what a human being says, commercial amplification meaning when a platform like Instagram or YouTube or TikTok or whatever uses an algorithm to maximize engagement and add revenue to hook you, keep you, and serve you ads. And this is a really important difference that Section 230 does not appreciate.

Starting point is 00:32:08 This is a really important difference that Section 230 does not appreciate. What are you talking about? Joseph Gordon Levitt, what are you talking about? I'm really just going to read what, again, Mike Maznick wrote because I think it's just important to note that, like, basically there's this one article that Joseph Gordon Levitt seems to have read on this topic, which is essentially pseudoscience written by people with zero background and speech law, like zero background. And the article that he's talking about, again, this like pseudoscience weird article is just very, very, very, very, very, very bad. It's written by this guy, Jaron Lanier, Alison Stranger, and Audrey Tang. These people have been publishing this same sort of like fundamentally wrong, like, idea about Section 234 years. Mike Maznick has, again, as always done the Lord's work and sort of like dismantled this over and over again,

Starting point is 00:32:58 and I'll put links to that in the show notes. But these three random people who again have absolutely no connection to speech law in the United States and like he just read this article by these people, like have a really bad reputation. Stanger gave testimony to Congress that was so, wrong on basic facts about the internet that it should have been retracted. Audrey is not a legal expert. She was a digital minister in Taiwan and has worked at tech companies. She doesn't know anything about section 230 whatsoever and she has zero background in this

Starting point is 00:33:29 law. I mean, it's not worth derailing this video with a full breakdown of everything that's wrong in this like weird article that Joseph Gordon Levitt seems to be basing his entire worldview on. But if you just read like the second paragraph of this article that he cites, you'll see that this is like nothing that anybody should ever take seriously. It says, quote, much of the public's criticism of Section 230 centers on the fact that it shields platforms from liability, even when they host content such as online harassment of marginalized groups

Starting point is 00:33:57 or child sexual abuse material. What? I'm sorry. Like, I want to actually, like, at this point, I want to throw my computer out the window. I actually want to throw my computer out the window. And I never want to hear from any of these people again. This is like flat-earther stuff. It's flat-earther stuff because it's so not based in reality.

Starting point is 00:34:17 And these are facts that are so easily disproven. That's what's so crazy too. It's like reading some weird article that like your aunt sent you from Facebook that's just like patently untrue, basing your entire worldview on that, going up in front of Congress to like testify for it. And by the way, like this and what you're testifying for like will harm like millions and millions and millions of the most marginalized people and like destroy free speech on the internet. like what you're doing is so evil and you're basing it on this article that is making these like ridiculous like that's just not based in reality so anyway so yeah so like in the second paragraph of that article that joseph gordon levitt is like citing is like you know basically this informed everything to do with

Starting point is 00:34:54 his worldview again there's this idea that like platforms don't have liability and so that's how they can host c sam but c sam is inherently unprotected speech section 230 absolutely does not protect for c sam are you crazy like section 230 literally has a section E1 where it says that it has no effect on criminal law. And by the way, C-SAM, hello, you should know is criminal. That's criminal. You can't have child sexual abuse material. Platforms actually have a strong incentive to deal with not just C-SAM, but any sort of illegal content. Because again, Section 230 does not protect against illegal content. They need to take illegal content down pretty fast. And aside from X, which recently produced all this weird AI-generated

Starting point is 00:35:33 stuff, like that has nothing to do with Section 230's. And it's also just so concerning that these people that Joseph Gordon Levitt are listening to that again are not experts at all and have never been involved on this law in any sort of meaningful way like they're not legal experts they're not speech experts and yet they're like talking about how we should revoke all protections for user generated content because like having those protections is somehow helping online harassment of marginalized groups unfortunately online harassment of marginalized groups is mostly protected speech under the first amendment anyway so if section 230 didn't cover it companies would still win pretty much every single one of these cases on First Amendment grounds,

Starting point is 00:36:13 unless, of course, it meets the legal threshold for stalking, abuse, et cetera. But all of this just goes back to the issue of legal costs of lawsuits. And as we've seen with the Israel stuff, we don't actually want the government coming in making aggressive hate speech laws since, according to the government, saying things like free Palestine or FI.E.C.E.C. Counts as hate speech potentially. I'm no stranger to internet harassment. Most normal people agree that internet harassment is bad and platforms should curb it. If only there was a law that allowed platforms to do just that. If only there was a law that underpinned platform's entire ability to moderate hate and abuse.

Starting point is 00:36:51 Oh, wait, there is. It's called Section 230. Also, in Lanier and Stranger's original piece in Wired, they actually argued that platforms should be required to use the First Amendment as the basis for moderation, which is so crazy because that would forbid removing actually. most harassment of marginalized groups, like that would actually make hate speech and abuse on these platforms skyrocket and it would tighten government control of online speech. So I just like, I want everybody to understand that these people who Joseph Gordon Levitt

Starting point is 00:37:20 has decided to listen to are not serious people. They are not serious people who have any understanding or knowledge on, you know, speech laws and the First Amendment and how these platforms function in America. And while it's really great that Joseph Gordon Levitt has become friendly with the former digital minister of Taiwan. She's actually a cool person who's done interesting things in Taiwan. She is not a U.S. legal expert. She seems to have pretty much everything about U.S. speech laws entirely backwards, which isn't a huge surprise. She's a government appointee in Taiwan whose job has had zero to do with any of these topics. But I just have to ask, like, why are you

Starting point is 00:38:00 listening to her instead of the many, many civil rights groups out here in the U.S. who have spent decades working tirelessly to defend this law. Why aren't you listening to LGBTQ people, disabled people, abortion educators, anti-ice and anti-surveillance activists who are screaming at you to stop boosting Ted Cruz's delusional talking points and the Heritage Foundation's tech policy agenda? Like, why aren't you listening to them? Did you even bother meeting with any of them before you went to the hill? It sounds like you didn't. It sounds like you literally read a random article, or maybe we're just hanging out with some people and you got these crazy ideas. And before you know, you're in front of Congress standing 10 toes down with the Heritage Foundation,

Starting point is 00:38:39 defending a law that would be devastating to all of these marginalized groups who you claim to care about. I don't know if Joseph Gordon Levitt is just super gullible or what, but he's allowing himself to be used as a tool for far-right reactionaries and fundamentally authoritarian fascists. These people want to mass surveil and censor everything we say online. It's the exact opposite of, again, the things that he claims to support. But that's why, like, I just can't help but wonder, like, what is really going on behind the scenes? As I mentioned in a previous video, Joseph Gordon Levitt and his wife, a former Open AI board member, are heavily involved in the effective altruism movement.

Starting point is 00:39:17 Effective altruism is a test-griol ideology that is heavily intertwined with the AI world. And what's so insidious, I think, is that a lot of these people in these weird Silicon Valley kind of red-pilled world claim to be very anti-AI. But as I outlined in my video linked here, there's, very much not. They basically use the guys of AI safety to push their own reactionary agenda. Just recently, Joseph Gordon Levitt actually attended a private pro-AI event in Los Angeles at the Science Center hosted by a far-right Silicon Valley only fan star and Grimes, where apparently, according to people there, he was talking about his tech agenda. I'll say again, I really have

Starting point is 00:39:57 no idea what's going on with this man's life and kind of what groups he's hanging out with. But it is interesting that Joseph Gordon Levitt claims to be anti-AI. But it's a fact that big tech companies are particularly interested in rolling back Section 230 protections right now because their powerful AI systems can harvest more data as they pre-screen every single piece of content to make sure it doesn't challenge anyone in power. And I'd like to remind Joseph Gordon-Levitt that tech companies do not profit off upholding freedom of expression. They profit off harvesting data. So if you are actually anti-AI and you're this progressive guy, then why are you here fighting aggressively for the most far-right reactionary and authoritarian tech agenda in regards

Starting point is 00:40:43 to Section 230? Why are you hanging out with grimes and other red-pilled AI weirdos? These algorithms you're talking about, they're fed by data. Data that would be a lot easier for companies to harvest if we went along with your tech policy ideas. Which brings me to my final point. If you want to crack down on big tech, and trust me, I actually do want to crack down on big tech, okay? Then you need to start arguing for the exact opposite of what you're fighting for. You need to be on the exact opposite side of the Heritage Foundation, the opposite side of Ted Cruz, the opposite side of morality and media, the opposite side of Donald

Starting point is 00:41:17 Trump. You can't be arguing in favor of their tech authoritarian policies. You need to argue for data privacy reform, which would make it harder for these companies to harvest our data and serve us engaging algorithms. You need to argue that the government should go after these big tech companies hard for anti-competitive behavior. You need to fight the moral panic about misinformation that the government pushes to ensure that we can't criticize U.S. foreign policy. And you need to fight the moral panic that you're simultaneously pushing about kids' mental health and internet use. You should join us in the fight to protect our rights, not dismantle them. You're out here claiming that you're against ICE. And then you turn around and say that you want to repeal Section 230,

Starting point is 00:41:55 100 to zero, eliminating our ability to ever criticize ICE again. Like, please, I am begging you to just wake up. Like, please, please, please, please talk to somebody who understands these laws, please. What makes all of this harder, I think, is the fact that the left has largely abdicated on tech policy for years. We are rapidly losing the ability to communicate and access information anonymously online at all. And the vast majority of leftists, including many of the biggest leftist influencers,

Starting point is 00:42:25 aren't even talking about it. That's really bad. It should be the job of people on the left to dismantle the moral panic that these bad laws are based on. We desperately need leftists to start centering tech policy in the way that the right does.

Starting point is 00:42:38 It's not just about killing bad AI surveillance laws like the Kids Online Safety Act or age verification efforts, but it's also about protecting things like Section 230, which secure our foundational rights. And it's about putting forward our own policies,

Starting point is 00:42:53 policies that would actually curb the power of big tech and build a less profit-driven online ecosystem that centers free expression. This cannot only be done by the marginalized people most affected by these bad laws. It's why it's so particularly crucial for all of us, especially powerful celebrities like you that have a platform to speak out about this stuff and present an alternative anti-surveillance pro-free expression framework for tech. That means defending Section 230 Joseph Gordon Levitt. As Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, one of the authors of Section 6.6.

Starting point is 00:43:24 230 said this week, quote, now is the worst possible time to reform section 230. Donald Trump and his MAGA billionaire cronies would be in the driver's seat to rewrite our laws over online speech. This would be handing Donald Trump a grenade launcher pointed right at the people who want to have a voice. Reforming Section 230 would also kick off this multi-year frenzy to rewrite liability laws. The people with the most expensive lobbyists will win that fight. Not to mention, you just have to basically pray that all the... the stuff lower down and all the court decisions lower down that section two 30 is predicated on you know just basically that marginalized people don't get over when those are thrown up in the air spoiler they will

Starting point is 00:44:05 anyway i can't believe i spent this long responding to joseph gordon levitt but please go leave a comment on his video or his instagram account and let him know that our lives and our rights to free expression are not a photo op there is zero excuse for him to be so insanely ignorant about this law and to allow himself to be used as a tool for the Heritage Foundation and morality in media. We need to protect Section 230 like our lives depend on it because in so many ways they do. I'll be back with a brand new episode of my Section 230 mini series on Monday. And if you like my work again, please, please support me on Patreon. This entire series, like all my work, is self-funded.

Starting point is 00:44:45 Going up against Big Tech and corporations is not profitable. And I'm not a multimillionaire movie star. I fight for this stuff because it really matters. You can click the link. to my Patreon below or buy a paid subscription to my substack. Again, linked below. Until then, I'll see you next week.

Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Internet Censorship Crusade

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