WOW: Hillary Clinton DEMANDS More Censorship On X, Says ‘We Lose Total Control’

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has called for the repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 protects online platforms from being held liable for third-party content which makes the internet work, like user content on social media. Watch her comments. We should be, in my view, repealing something called Section 230 which gave platforms on the internet immunity because they were thought to be just pass-throughs that they shouldn't be judged for the content that is posted. But we now know that that was an overly simple view that if the platforms, whether it's Facebook or TwitterX or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don't moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control. And it's not just the social and psychological effects, it's real harm. Now for free speech absolutists like myself, repealing Section 230 would result in censorship. Many users erupted over this on X, writing, quote, the key word here is control. This is how communists talk. She said the quiet part out loud. I don't think she was supposed to do that. I thought the whole point of freedom was not to be controlled. Shouldn't she be in jail already? But I do think repealing Section 230 is a terrible idea. Now one that, unfortunately, many Republicans have joined Democrats in calling for. Hillary Clinton is far from the first political figure to suggest this. This is a popular idea from Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders as well, and also Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and many Republicans. Everybody likes the idea, for some reason, of giving Congress more control over what you can say on social media. I think this would be a terrible idea because imagine if that's how it worked. If you could sue, let's talk YouTube. We're a YouTube-based show. If YouTube could be sued for things people say on YouTube, then it just wouldn't work. They wouldn't allow you to post at will. They would have to vet the content. That would end our show and all YouTube-based commentary, and all commentary on Twitter and on Facebook as we know it. Hillary Clinton knows that. She doesn't like the commentary because it's very anti-her, and so that's what she's proposing, and Republicans would be fools to go along with it because it would end up limiting their speech, primarily. Are you ready for this, Bobby? I don't know. Oh, how about that? How nice. I agree with you. I think that the tech companies have an obligation as good companies that supposedly represent the public space and square, the town square, and they're not fulfilling that obligation of having more moderation and getting rid of the fake accounts and cleaning up the algorithms as we've discussed. Social media is a drug. I really think it's a drug. I'm not saying YouTube is a drug, but I think social media has become dangerous, and that was really the context of what she was talking about. It's become a threat to a lot of young people's health. Suicide has gone up. Mental health issues have gone up. We know these things, right? And Section 230 did give the internet immunity from civil lawsuits, and that is there for a reason. I also find it fascinating that Hillary Clinton is talking about this, and she specifically says these were supposed to be pass-throughs. She basically makes an argument for Julian Assange. That is what he claimed Wikipedia or WikiLeaks were when they released Edward Snowden's files, and she was always opposed to that argument, so essentially she just said what we all know, which is Julian Assange was using the platform as a pass-through, as a journalist would do. So I find it fascinating that it's not just that she said the quiet part out loud. It's that she's basically admitting the whole time they were wrong. And if somebody says something false about you, you can still, on the internet, on a social media platform, you can still go after that person. You just can't go after the platform, and that is an important distinction because we should center blame on the most relevant party. Blaming the platform, and again, that starts to get ridiculous. No one thinks that if I call you up on the phone and I say something defamatory about you that we can sue Verizon or something like that. That's the equivalent of doing it, to some degree, on Facebook or Twitter or anything like that. All right, we're agreeing, but I am going to pick a fight with you anyway now on the mental health aspect of it. So I certainly agree that social media can be bad for some people's mental health under some circumstances, obviously. Just like anything, it is addictive for some people, and addictive things, be it alcohol, drugs, gambling, etc. Actually, gambling is the best example because the overwhelming majority of people can go to the casino, have a little bit of fun, spend some money, and not, you know, bet the farm and the house and the wedding ring and their college kid's tuition. A small minority of people cannot do that. They're addicts for gambling, and it's very bad for them. But I'm not for making policy on the level of, like, the human being who is most outside the bounds, ill-affected by the thing. So that's why I'm very hesitant, similarly to regulate social media on that basis. I do think parents are right to limit their kids' time on the platform, just like my parents were right to limit, you know, how much Nintendo 64 I played when I was a kid. But the problem does not seem fundamentally different from that. Well, there's age limits on drinking, driving, well, you don't get addicted to driving, I hope not, at least. Drinking, gambling, you know, there are age limits on these. But the age limit on social media, I would just say, is when your parents think you're able to use it, right? But not every parent, as you know, is available at all times, or the best parent, let's be honest. There is an addiction, and it is driving radicalization up, for sure. There are people who prey on young people, of course, it's predatory sexual predators out there. And you can't monitor, any parent knows that. Even with, even if you're the best parent in the world, these kids are so sneaky, like, they create multiple accounts, they have secret chats, they can, like, there's all sorts of things out there that they're doing to circumnavigate their parents' supervision, and frankly, the company's supervision. That's why, you know, in New York City, in New York State, and California as well, they're going to be banning social media and cell phones in schools during class time, which I think is right, honestly. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it should be done by the state. I think, I would leave that policy to the schools. I don't, I think this might be a good policy. I'm not, there's no evidence that it works yet, because it hasn't been tried. I think the best thing would be to start with schools experimenting with that, because also, you do want access to a phone if there's an emergency, so I would put the phone in the... Well, they said that they could still... Remember when we were kids? Remember we just went downstairs? Yeah, I went downstairs, front office, would tell my parents I was sick when I wasn't, so they could pick me up, and, or sometimes I'd go on a pay phone, and, or I would just sit in front of the school waiting for my parents to pick me up for hours when they forgot. Yeah, I think they put the phones in, like, have them in the classroom, put them in, like, a little mailbox or something inside the classroom when you go in. I think that's what they're doing. Yeah, to the same extent, like, obviously, a phone is, has, like, we wouldn't allow, it would be crazy to expect that you could play a Game Boy or a Nintendo Switch during class, right? So, similarly, it would be crazy to think you should just be on your phone the whole time, and I absolutely think schools should, again, I wouldn't, I don't, it's not on the level of state intervention for me, but I think schools should try that out and see how it works. And I think, again, back to the platforms, it's, I don't think that these platforms should be held liable for, you know, if you say something defamatory against the president, I completely, you can't control millions and millions of people. You can have moderators. They need to have better moderators. They need to have better, you know, oversight of, of hate crimes. But the kind of moderation Hillary Clinton wants is you don't get to say anything bad about Hillary Clinton. That's true. So that's why it has to be, and if you put, and it'll be Republicans too. I mean, you know, the left has been threatened also by moderation on social media. Of course our Republicans and Democrats get together, they'd form some committee where you can never say anything bad about your government if, if this law was, even to be tweaked. Like there are improvements that can be made. They're not going to do it though. They take so much money from tech. You know that. They're not going to do it. Well, I hope not. All right. We've got a lot more coming up on Rising. Stay tuned.