Legal expert Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax TV on Saturday morning that Facebook and Twitter should lose their exemptions under the Communications Decency Act as a result of banning President Donald Trump.
Section 230 of the act protects social media companies from liability for content their users post.
"Two thirty [230] basically exempts Twitter and other social media from being held responsible for their content and the content others put on because they're supposed to be just a platform where anything goes on," Dershowitz told host Carl Higbie on "Saturday Report."
"But once they become a publisher, once they decide, 'No, we don’t like this president, we like the other president,’ then they lose their exemption under Section 230, and I think there will be Congressional action to limit Section 230 to actual platforms.”
Both Facebook and Twitter have banned President Trump from posting on their platforms. Twitter did so permanently. Facebook said it's suspension will last until the president's term is over.
"Anybody who censors selectively should lose their 230 exemption," Dershowitz said.
On Friday night, the president temporarily used the official @POTUS Twitter account to say he and allies would investigate creating a competing social platform. Those posts were quickly removed by Twitter.
"The next decade, we will see great changes in the way the law deals with these very large and very influential media platforms," Dershowitz said. "They are different from the New York Times, they are different from the government. They're not quite anything.
"They don't sit into any previous categories and the law has to adapt to the realities of social media having such a big impact on American political discourse."
Dershowitz was informed that social platform Parler had been told it would be dropped from the Apple Store if it doesn't start doing a better job moderating its content. Google already has removed Parler from its store until the platform improves moderation.
"That would really raise questions under the monopoly provisions of the law," Dershowitz said. "Once you start taking actions against others, whether they're competitors or not, then you really do run into these issues."
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