Marc Benioff Calls For Section 230 To Be Abolished At The Same Time His Company Is Relying On 230 To Get Out Of A Lawsuit

from the dude,-seriously? dept

I like Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff, in part because he doesn't act like most tech CEOs and isn't afraid to speak his mind and actually sound fairly human, rather than a rehearsed automaton who has a gazillion PR people vetting every message. That doesn't mean I always (or even often) agree with him, but I appreciate his willingness to speak his mind. I'm even not that surprised that he's jumped on the bandwagon in calling for Facebook to be broken up, even though the reasons he cites are based on false statements that he's apparently been convinced are true (which... maybe is a little scary) or that it still remains totally unclear to me how breaking up Facebook fixes any of the problems discussed by supporters of such a plan (unless the problem is just "I don't want Facebook to exist.").

Benioff also, oddly, seems unfamiliar with how the 1st Amendment works, in claiming that Congress needs to make it against the law to lie in political ads:

In particular, Benioff took issue with Facebook's recent decision to run political advertisements from the Trump campaign which contain false claims. Benioff said there is "no question" that he would not run such advertisements if he were the head of Facebook, and called on Congress to pass legislation that would require truthful advertising on social media platforms.

There are, of course, truth in advertising laws, but those focus on commercial speech, which has been deemed to be moderately less protected under the 1st Amendment. Political speech, on the other hand, is at the top of the protected food chain, and there's no way that the Supreme Court would bless any law from Congress that would "require truthful advertising on social media platforms."

But what strikes me as really bizarre is that as part of his ill-informed attack on Facebook, he's decided to throw Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (and, with it, free speech on the internet) under the bus at the exact moment that his own company is heavily relying on Section 230 to get out of a massive lawsuit. In that same CNN interview which generated the headlines about breaking up Facebook, he briefly addresses Section 230 as well:

One of the reasons tech platforms are able to publish such content without consequences is the law typically shorthanded as Section 230, which allows internet platform providers to moderate some content without fear of being held liable for most of what users do on their platforms. Benioff called Section 230 "the most dangerous law on the books right now," and said it should be "abolished."

He reiterated this statement on Twitter -- a site that literally only exists because of Section 230.

Facebook is a publisher. They need to be held accountable for propaganda on their platform. We must have standards & practices decided by law. FB is the new cigarettes—it’s addictive, bad for us, & our kids are being drawn in. We need to abolish section 230 Indemnifying them. pic.twitter.com/OHVDVVd1jt — Marc Benioff (@Benioff) October 16, 2019

This is wrong and ridiculous on many levels. Section 230 doesn't "indemnify" Facebook, it makes sure that legal liability is properly placed on the party doing the speaking, not the party hosting the speech.

And if anyone should know that, it's Marc Benioff right this very moment. As we detailed earlier this year, Salesforce is currently being sued for sex trafficking by a group of people who were trafficked on Backpage... because Backpage used Salesforce to track its customers. And, the key argument that Salesforce's very expensive lawyers are making... is that Salesforce is protected by CDA 230:

If you're unable to read that it, it shows that the core argument Salesforce is making is that it's protected by Section 230. That's in the legal filing the company made literally one month ago. In it, Benioff's lawyers highlight the importance of Section 230, and also point out that -- despite the claims of the plaintiffs in the case -- the protections of 230 clearly do not apply to content provided by 3rd parties on a platform such as Salesforce (or... Facebook).

I'm not sure if Benioff is so confused that he doesn't understand how Section 230 works, or if he's just uninformed. The fact that he uses the phrase "Facebook is a publisher" suggests, unfortunately, that he's been reading/hearing some of the nonsense about "platform v. publisher" -- a distinction that is not found in the law, but is often played up by online trolls and cranks. I thought Benioff was better than an online troll or crank, but this latest outburst suggests I may have overestimated him.

Salesforce should be able to get this sex trafficking case tossed on 230 grounds, and Section 230 is a key reason why "the cloud" and cloud services -- a space Benioff helped pioneer -- exist. For him to trash 230 and call for it to be abolished is crazy. If anything, an argument can be made that Benioff is savvy enough to know that he can afford expensive lawyers from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher to get him out of sticky situations based on what the various Salesforce customers have done with his services -- but the many growing SaaS competitors creeping into his market... probably can't. And, hey, abusing the law to block and harm competitors. Why that sounds like an antitrust problem...

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Filed Under: 1st amendment, cda 230, free speech, liability, marc benioff, monopoly, political advertising, section 230

Companies: facebook, salesforce