On Thursday, two U.S. Democratic senators will add a stack of bills to the bill after Article 230 (a law that protects technology companies from being sued for user-posted content) to make these platforms more relevant to health. Responsible for the error message.
The legislation proposed by Amy Klobuchar and Ben Ray Lujan requires Internet platforms such as Facebook to delete health and vaccine-related misinformation during public health emergencies, otherwise Be responsible for this.
It also instructs the Department of Health and Human Services to issue guidelines on what constitutes health misinformation.
“These are some of the largest and richest companies in the world, and they must take more steps to prevent the spread of deadly vaccine misinformation,” Klobuchar said.
The bill cited a study by the Counter Digital Hate Center that found that social media platforms failed to take action on 95% of the false information reported to them related to the coronavirus.
Kevin Martin, Facebook’s vice president of public policy, said the company supports the reform of Section 230.
“We believe that clarifying the difficulties and pressing issues of health-related misinformation will help, and look forward to working with Congress and industry as we consider reform options.”
The Health Misinformation Act is not the first bill to target technology companies’ liability shields. Senator Klobuchar is the chairman of the Senate’s Antitrust Subcommittee.
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Earlier this year, she and two Democrats co-sponsored another bill called the “Security Technology Act.” It aims to make social media companies more responsible for online stalking, targeted harassment and discrimination on their platforms.
The CEOs of Google, Twitter and Facebook stated that Article 230 is essential to freedom of speech on the Internet. They stated that this provides them with a tool to strike a balance between protecting freedom of speech and content review, even if they seem to be open to suggestions that the law needs moderate changes.
Several Republican lawmakers have separately pushed for the complete repeal of the law because the technology platform decided to ease criticism of former President Donald Trump and his supporters.
There are several other pieces of legislation aimed at changing laws that have been under consideration for more than a year, including a bipartisan bill by Democrat Brian Schatz and Republican John Thun.
Trump has repeatedly pushed for deprivation of legal protection because of his claims to censor conservatives.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Dan Grebler and Sam Holmes)
