Rand Paul Only Wants Google To Be The Arbiter Of Truth When The Videos Are About Him

Content Moderation

from the your-own-bill-would-have-made-your-actions-illegal dept

Just a year and a half ago, Senator Rand Paul sponsored a bill that would make it illegal for federal government employees to ask internet companies to remove any speech. Now, in a NY Post op-ed, Paul proudly announces that he did exactly that—formally contacting Google executives to demand they remove a video he didn’t like.

The video apparently (falsely) claims Paul took money from Nicolas Maduro, the former Venezuelan President the US recently kidnapped. And Paul is furious that YouTube wouldn’t take it down for him.

But the straw that broke the camel’s back came this week when I notified Google executives that they were hosting a video of a woman posing as a newscaster posing in a fake news studio explaining that “Rand Paul is taking money from the Maduro regime.”

I’ve formally notified Google that this video is unsupported by facts, defames me, harasses me and now endangers my life.

Google responded that they don’t investigate the truth of accusations . . . and refused to take down the video.

Let’s pause here. Senator Paul—a sitting U.S. Senator—”formally notified” Google executives that they needed to remove content. Under his own proposed legislation, that would be illegal. His bill was explicitly designed to prevent government officials from pressuring platforms about speech. And yet here he is, doing exactly that.

This is also notably closer to actual government jawboning than most of what the Biden administration was accused of in the Murthy v. Missouri case—where the Supreme Court found no First Amendment violation because platforms felt free to say no. Paul, a Senator with legislative power over these companies, is “formally notifying” them of what he wants removed, and is now saying that Google’s refusal to do so means they should lose Section 230 protection. Remember, the “smoking gun” in the Murthy case was supposedly Biden officials (and Biden himself) threatening to remove Section 230 if the tech platforms didn’t remove content they didn’t like.

Rand Paul was furious about that and his bill was supposedly in direct response to the Murthy ruling, in which he wanted to make it clear that (1) no government official should ever demand content be taken down and (2) threatening to pass legislation to punish companies for their refusal to moderate content would also violate the law.

And here he’s doing both.

But it gets worse. Buried in the third-to-last paragraph of Paul’s op-ed is this remarkable admission:

Though Google refused to remove the defamatory content, the individual who posted the video finally took down the video under threat of legal penalty.

Wait. So the system worked exactly as designed? Paul threatened legal action against the person who actually created the content, and they took it down? That’s… that’s the whole point of Section 230. Liability attaches to the speaker, not the host. The creator is responsible. And when threatened with actual legal consequences, they removed the video.

So what, exactly, is Paul complaining about?!? He got the outcome he wanted through the mechanism that Section 230 preserved for him: the ability to bring legal action against the speaker. But instead of acknowledging that the law worked, he’s using this as his justification for destroying it.

Paul is a public figure. He has access to pretty much all the media he wants. If he wanted to use the famous “marketplace of ideas” he so frequently invokes to debunk a nonsense lie about him and Maduro, he was free to do that. If the video was actually defamatory, he could sue the creator—which he apparently threatened to do, and it worked! Instead, he wants to tear down the entire legal framework because YouTube wouldn’t do his bidding, even though the video was already taken down.

The Arbiter of Truth Hypocrisy

Here’s where Paul’s position becomes truly incoherent.

I asked one of Google’s executives what happens to the small town mayor whose enemies maliciously and without evidence, post that he is a pedophile on YouTube?. Would that be OK?

The executive responded that YouTube does not monitor their content for truth. But how would that small town mayor ever get his or her reputation back?

Just a few years ago, Rand Paul was apoplectic that YouTube tried to determine whether content—specifically about COVID-19—was true or not. He thought it was terrible that YouTube would dare to be the arbiter of truth, and he whined about it at length.

Now he’s demanding they be the arbiter of truth and remove one video because he says it’s false.

Paul even acknowledges this contradiction in his own op-ed, apparently without realizing it:

Interestingly, Google says it doesn’t assess the truth of the content it hosts, but throughout the pandemic they removed content that they perceived as untrue, such as skepticism toward vaccines, allegations that the pandemic originated in a Wuhan lab, and my assertion that cloth masks don’t prevent transmission.

Yes. And you screamed bloody murder about it. You insisted they should never do that. You built your entire position around the idea that platforms shouldn’t be deciding what’s true. And, with the re-election of Donald Trump, the big tech platforms all bent the knee and said they’d stop being arbiters of truth (even as it was legal for them to do so).

And so they stopped. And now you’re furious that they won’t make an exception for you.

Doesn’t that seem just a bit fucking hypocritical and entitled?

The “It’s Their Property” Problem

Paul’s real complaint—buried under all the high-minded rhetoric about defamation—is that Google makes its own decisions:

So, Google and YouTube not only choose to moderate speech they don’t like, but they also will remove speeches from the Senate floor despite such speeches being specifically protected by the Constitution.

Google’s defense of speech appears to be limited to defense of speech they agree with.

Yeah, dude. That’s how private property works. They get to decide what they host and what they don’t. That’s how it works. It’s also protected by their First Amendment rights. Compelled hosting or not hosting of speech you agree or disagree with is not a remedy available to you, Senator.

Paul continues:

Part of the liability protection granted internet platforms, section 230(c)(2), specifically allows companies the take down “harassing” content. This gives the companies wide leeway to take down defamatory content. Thus far, the companies have chosen to spend considerable time and money to take down content they politically disagree with yet leave content that is quite obviously defamatory. So Google does not have a blanket policy of refraining to evaluate truth. Google chooses to evaluate what it believes to be true when it is convenient and consistent with its own particular biases.

He says this as if it’s controversial. It’s not. It’s exactly how editorial discretion works. The company gets to make their own editorial decisions. You don’t have to like those decisions. But demanding they make different ones, and threatening to strip their legal protections if they don’t, is a government official using state power to coerce speech decisions.

You know, the thing Paul claimed to be against.

I think Google is, or should be, liable for hosting this defamatory video that accuses me of treason, at least from the point in time when Google was made aware of the defamation and danger.

Again: you already threatened the creator, and they took it down. The remedy worked. You used it successfully.

And if Paul’s standard is “Google becomes liable once made aware,” then anyone who wants content removed will just claim it’s defamatory and dangerous. How is this different from the COVID videos Paul was so mad they removed? People told Google those were false and dangerous, Google removed them, and Paul was furious that they acted after being “made aware” of allegedly false and dangerous content.

Now Google is doing exactly what Paul demanded—not removing content based on mere claims of falsity or danger—and he’s still mad at them.

The Section 230 Threat

So what’s Paul’s solution? Threaten to remove Section 230:

It is particularly galling that, even when informed of the death threats stemming from the unsubstantiated and defamatory allegations, Google refused to evaluate the truth of what it was hosting despite its widespread practice of evaluating and removing other content for perceived lack of truthfulness.

Remember when MAGA world insisted that Biden administration officials threatening platforms’ Section 230 protections was unconstitutional coercion? Remember how that was supposedly the worst violation of the First Amendment imaginable?

Rand Paul is now doing the same thing. A sitting Senator, using his platform and his legislative power, threatening to strip legal protections from a company because they won’t remove content he personally dislikes.

Paul literally told these platforms it wasn’t their job to determine truth or falsity. He literally sponsored a bill to prevent government officials from pressuring platforms about content. And now he’s doing exactly what he said was wrong—and threatening consequences if they don’t comply.

He didn’t “change his mind” on Section 230. He just revealed that he never had a principled position in the first place.

Paul supported Section 230 when he thought it meant platforms would leave up content he liked. He sponsored anti-jawboning legislation when he thought it would stop people he disagreed with from pressuring platforms. But the moment the system produces an outcome he doesn’t like—even though it worked exactly as designed and the video came down anyway—he’s ready to burn the whole thing down.

What is it with Senators and their thin skins? A few months ago we wrote about Senator Amy Klobuchar pressing for an obviously unconstitutional law against deepfakes after someone made an obviously fake satirical video about her. Now Paul joins the club: Senators who want to remake internet law because someone was mean to them online.

The video’s already down, Senator. You won. Maybe take the win instead of trying to burn down the open internet because Google wouldn’t do you a personal favor (the same favor you wanted to make illegal).

Filed Under: 1st amendment, defamation, editorial discretion, free speech, hypocrite, jawboning, liability, principles, rand paul, section 230
Companies: google, youtube