POLITICS: Rand Paul: I’ve changed my mind — Google and YouTube can’t be trusted to do the right thing and must be reined in

Youtube and its parent company Google deserves to be sued.

For the past three weeks YouTube has been hosting a video that is a calculated lie, falsely accusing me of taking money from Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. It refused to remove the video.

It is, of course, a ludicrous accusation, but paid trolls are daily spreading this lie across the internet. This untruth is essentially an accusation of treason, which then leads the internet mob to call for my death.

Advocating for liability for Google is no small step for me. I have long defended the private-property rights of internet companies and long defended them against overzealous, partisan abuses of antitrust law, even when I was angry with YouTube for its policies that silenced my attempts to educate the public on the potentially deadly consequences of relying on cloth masks to prevent transmission of COVID-19.

But I will not sit idly by and let them host a provably false defamatory video, which is now part of a widespread harassment campaign. I am now receiving death threats.

The arrogance of Google to continue hosting this defamatory video and the resultant threats on my life have caused me to rethink Congress’ blind allegiance to liability shields.

Much like Big Pharma

The MAHA movement points out that liability shields allowed Big Pharma to ignore vaccine injuries. Arguably, liability shields aid and abet bad behavior.

My default position as a libertarian/conservative has been to defend the internet liability protections known in law as Section 230 of the Communications Act. The courts have largely ruled that Section 230 shields social-media companies from being sued for content created by third parties. If someone calls you a creep on the internet, you can call them a creep right back, but you can’t sue the social-media site for hosting that insult.

I always believed this protection is necessary for the functioning of the internet.

I have always accepted, perhaps too uncritically, that unmitigated liability protection for social-media sites was necessary to defend the principle of free speech. Until now, I had not sufficiently considered the effects of internet providers hosting content accusing people of committing crimes.

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?

Historically, such false accusations were rarely published in newspapers because they were conscious of significant liability for publishing untrue, defamatory accusations. Liability protection now encourages bad actors, many of whom are actually paid for their bad actions.

Hypocritical acts

Social-media companies claim they are proudly and unselfishly protecting speech.

I discovered, though, during the COVID pandemic, that the social-media companies’ idea of free exchange of ideas did not include my speeches explaining that cloth masks have no value in inhibiting the transmission of COVID.

YouTube exercised its private-property rights to take down my speech. YouTube also decided to take down a speech I gave on the Senate floor that named the individual who alleged that President Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president was inappropriate.

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.

Not to be outdone, Facebook, for over a year, buried any news story or opinion piece that argued that the pandemic began as an accident in a Wuhan lab.

And still, despite obvious left-wing biased censorship, I defended Google and Facebook’s private property rights to moderate their platforms as they saw fit.

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.

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.

Promise to self-police

I can’t tell you how disappointed I am by Google’s decision to host this defamatory video. Part of the implicit grant of immunity is that the internet platforms would self-police their content, which all of the social companies do to a certain degree.

Google’s own content moderation policy states: “We don’t allow content that targets someone with prolonged insults or slurs based on their physical traits or protected group status. We also don’t allow other harmful behaviors, like threats or doxxing.

So Google believes that calling someone ugly should be policed and taken down but doesn’t believe that accusing someone of treason (taking money from Maduro) incites “threats or doxxing.”

If the woman defaming me had also ridiculed my race or sexuality, Google would happily take down the post.

And yet . . . they do monitor truth, or at least their version of it.

According to YouTube “cloth masks don’t work” is not true, so they took down my video. YouTube also will take down videos that are not true such as video simulations that place a person engaging in an activity that is a fake, but Google allows untrue words to be said that are harmful, harassing and inciting death threats. 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.

Pursuing legislation

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.

Though Google refused to remove the defamatory content, the individual who posted the video finally took down the video under threat of legal penalty. Yet, the defamatory video still has a life of its own circulated widely on the internet and the damage done is difficult to reverse.

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.

This complete lack of decency, this inconsistent moderation of truthfulness, this conscious refusal to remove illegal and defamatory content has led me to conclude that the internet exemption from liability, a governmentally granted privilege and a special exemption from our common law traditions, should not be encouraged by liability shields and I will pursue legislation toward that goal.

Republican Rand Paul represents Kentucky in the Senate.