In the United States private companies are usually mostly allowed to do what they want..
This works out well for the most part. But sometimes those private companies do things that are harmful to other people..
When a private company does something that harms someone else the harmed party has always had the ability to seek retribution through legal proceedings such as lawsuits.
In the United States lawsuits have always been the way that harmed parties can seek legal retribution against a private entity that harmed them..
section 230 of the internet communications decency act undermines this very important American legal system..
Section 230 Shields internet websites and companies from any legal or financial liability for the information they post on their websites..
This leaves Americans with no legal recourse should they do something harmful..
Now it's noted that some websites are not eligible for section 230. Particularly publishers who publish their own information paid for by their own staff. This would include news outlets like CNN Fox News Huffington Post New York Times and the daily caller.
as they are the publishers of the information they are not protected by section 230 from liability. While social media networks such as Facebook Instagram Twitter and others did end up with section 230 protections.. being that they were not the publishers. Instagram did not commission the photos that it's users uploaded..
since Facebook staff did not make a defamatory post they would not be the ones liable in a suit..
And their arguments both ways about whether or not networks like Facebook deserved those 2:30 protections.. being that they heavily curate what would be on their website..
But that's a discussion for a different time.. the discussion with Wikipedia is much more cut and dry.. Wikipedia is not a social media network. And never once build itself to be one. Wikipedia advertised itself as the encyclopedia of the internet.. AKA a true and reliable source of information.. Wikipedia created multiple standards and had an entire team of moderators dedicated to making sure that not just anything could be posted on their website. And only things that were in all intents and purposes approved and sanctioned by the Wikipedia corporation..
As such it should be very clear that Wikipedia would not deserve section 230 protections being that it would much more closely fit the definition of publisher than a website like Facebook or Instagram..
and they're in less problem. Wikipedia should not have those protections.. it should never have had those protections.. Wikipedia has been accused on multiple occasions of libel and slander. Most notably it has had many pages created with borderline libelous and defamatory statements against the president of the United states.. an entire page dedicated to calling him a
racist
. With the most borderline non-existent evidence they could find. Something that looked like it may have been ripped from The Huffington post. It may very well have been created and edited by staff from The Huffington post..
[looking at
the talk page for the particular page you can see multiple people calling out how many of it is unproven and most of it doesn't even have to do with Donald Trump but they do not delete the page.. despite the fact that they have made a statement that they would not allow a similar page for accusations of Joe Biden's racism..
more than that they have other pages. A page that for many many months claimed and promoted the
debunked
Democrat conspiracy theory that Donald Trump called neo-nazis fine people.. it was so prevalent that it took notice of high profile people. And Wikipedia was so reluctant to edit it for more factual standards then it took months of high profile people like
Scott Adams lobbying
it and hundreds and thousands of users commenting on it before they finally changed it to a slightly less biased where they only IMPLIED that he called neo-nazis fine people..
These are just two examples but there's many more. Wikipedia's co-founder has commented on its
left-wing bias
..
Multiple studies
have found in extreme
left-wing
in Wikipedia among others that show that restricting editing on certain pages actually creates more bias than rather
than less
..
Wikipedia for all intents and purposes has created slander and libel against multiple people. Similar to what CNN could be accused of doing.. but unlike CNN Wikipedia was shielded from lawsuits against them for slander. Many people were able to sue CNN for various false reporting but nobody was ever able to sue Wikipedia for si
That's a problem. Because lawsuits have always been the way to settle those kinds of harmful decisions.. lawsuits were the most American way of preventing big companies from doing bad things without requiring the government to step in and regulate them..
And they're in life's problem. Wikipedia benefited from a government regulation protecting them from any liability for the false statements they would publish. but at the same time people argued against the idea that the government should step in and regulate them to prevent them from publishing false statements..
A solution must be found. One proposed solution would be to modify section 230 to reiterate that a requirement of being eligible for section 230 protections would be that you either have to allow all speech on your platform without any moderation OR reliable to the government and if the FCC determines that your website has false information the FCC can levi a fine
Those are just suggestions but something must change..