During Sunday’s broadcast of New York WABC 770 AM radio’s “The Cats Roundtable,” Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz took aim at big tech companies like Twitter and Facebook for censoring users on their platforms.
Dershowitz said the social media giants are acting as platforms while also acting as publishers, which he said is “not fair” because they have both censorship and immunity.
“Facebook says we don’t like this, and Twitter says we don’t like attacks on Hunter Biden. And once you act as a publisher, you’re a publisher. You know what it means — I mean, you are a publisher. And you can be sued because you’re a publisher,” Dershowitz told host John Catsimatidis. “But they are platforms. They can’t be platforms at the same time and act like publishers. They should have to check a box: If you’re going to be a platform, no censorship. If you’re not going to be a platform, then you don’t get immunity. But you can’t both have censorship and get immunity at the same time. That’s just not fair and not right.”
He added, “I think we’re going to see a revision of [Section] 230. We’re also seeing anti-trust cases now against Facebook and others. Look, this is the hardest question under the First Amendment in the 21st-century — is how to deal with these giant social media that have such an enormous impact, are not regulated … on the other hand, we can’t just let them be immune from the law. They are not above the law either.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
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