Online Lies Nearly Cost Lives—Sen. Paul Demands Tech Liability

Commentary

Lies can wreck a business, destroy a career, kill relationships, and ruin lives. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is right. When an internet service provider hosts a defamatory, fabricated personal attack that accuses the target of reprehensible and criminal behavior, that provider possesses a certain degree of accountability if it refuses to take it down.

Not unlike the print media knowingly publishing a libelous letter or op-ed, the internet carrier may, based on the evidentiary record, be found justly liable for allowing the damage and refusing to act, sort of like deserting an injured person lying in the street after you helped cause the injury.

After all, the service provider is the essential link, without which the offense would never occur. Claiming ignorance seems a flimsy excuse, considering how often these same providers take down content they find objectionable. Politically speaking, that objectionable content is almost always from the right. Paul himself has been a victim of Google’s political cleansing on more than one occasion.

Freedom and moral responsibility were created together and must walk together. The internet is no exception to this universal principle. Paul’s plan to repeal the special, government-granted liability protection reserved exclusively for internet providers under Section 230 of the federal Communications Act is in every sense consistent with good government, the Constitution, and the principles of liberty.

Warning: Paul’s liability proposal could have a chilling effect on lying. It might even help popularize objective truth, and nothing is more dangerous to a creative liar than truth itself. To the chagrin of many, Paul’s bill could undermine our entire culture of internet character assassination, leaving the liars with muted microphones and broken clubs.

It’s not hard to imagine the kind of protest movement Paul’s measure could ignite.

Granted, trolls have rights, too. They’re in the First Amendment. Freedom of expression isn’t limited to expressions that are nice. It includes the vulgar, the vicious, the venal, and the vile. But we’re not talking about your run-of-the-mill, drive-by trolls here.

We’re talking about cynically contrived efforts to spread defamatory lies that steal from another human being his or her possession of greatest value: reputation. It’s the blind complicity and moral malingering of the internet provider that make it all possible.

Consider Paul’s recent ordeal. It’s exactly what we’re talking about.

It started when a self-styled internet executioner decided to pose as a newscaster and put out on YouTube a scandalous video about Paul, made to look like an official news report from a TV studio. Her concocted narrative convinced perhaps millions of viewers that conservative, anti-socialist Paul was guilty of treason against his country, having lined his pockets with money from Venezuela’s former socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro. As the video went viral, paid trolls piled on. People believed the lie.

After the fourth family death threat, Paul had enough. For three weeks, he had appealed to Google (parent company of YouTube) to take down this ludicrous, fabricated video, the sole purpose of which was to misinform and to spread hatred and violence. Google repeatedly refused, saying in essence that it was in no position to determine the truthfulness of the content it hosted! It insisted that it was protecting free speech.

Now wait a minute. This is the same Google and YouTube that regularly take down free speech that they don’t like or don’t happen to agree with. This includes several speeches by Paul delivered on the floor of the U.S. Senate, where they are fully protected. YouTube objected to Paul’s speech in which he warned that cloth masks did not inhibit COVID-19 transmission (now proven to be true), so it removed it.

YouTube objected to one of Paul’s speeches on the Ukraine controversy, so it removed it as well. In both cases, Google and YouTube questioned the U.S. senator’s accuracy and veracity. Yet they say they aren’t able to challenge the truthfulness of a contrived, phony video accusing Paul of treason.

Let’s take a minute to put ourselves in the place of someone who’s been maliciously lied about over the internet and in the mainstream media. At times in our lives, we’ve all found ourselves victims of lies, and the experience can be deeply hurtful. But consider how it would feel to have those lies progressively inflated and delivered into the minds of millions of people you don’t even know.

I’ve been there, and I can tell you that it is hell on earth. I took legal action, and a subsequent settlement ended the matter. (The terms of the settlement limit my ability to say more.) I’m told that I was “vindicated” by the process, but especially in defamation cases, you never feel that you have really been made clean, never believe that justice has truly been served, and never experience total peace. Why? Because you, as the victim, can never reel back in all those hurtful lies. You can never truly clear your name. Most of the damage is permanent.

In my case, only prayer has saved my family and me and allowed us to move on. And I was thankful that despite the unhinged internet attacks, at least the print media was self-policing. Every newspaper refused to print the alleged defamatory comments, both as a matter of professional ethics and out of acknowledged legal liability.

Lying about someone is stealing. It is the worst form of theft; it robs you not of physical possessions but of your reputation. And reputation is a sacred, soul-tied thing, and in a very real sense, a property right as well. You own it—no one else.

Through court-ordered damages and restitution, physical stuff can often be returned or restored. Reputation doesn’t work that way. Much of what is lost never returns to you. People read the juicy internet gossip and generally believe it.

It seems to be human nature to want to believe the worst in people. That’s why a liar’s lies work so well. Moreover, while truth just stands on its own merits, calculated lies can be crafted into the most effective narratives possible—more interesting and more believable than truth itself.

If a small news story eventually appears on page 26, partly correcting the record, it is seen by few and remembered by fewer. That’s the way of things. And people go on remembering the lies. Yes. Lying is theft, the worst kind of theft, often directed against the best kind of people, such as Paul.

The freedom to lie is the freedom to steal. One cannot argue that the First Amendment protects malicious lying against innocent victims any more than one would propose that the Second Amendment protects your right to shoot whomever you please, just to hurt him. Freedom and responsibility are inseparable. They can only exist when bonded together. When the bond breaks, freedom turns to rubble.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.