Fight for the Future: New GAO Report Confirms: FOSTA-SESTA Has Been a Disaster

BOSTON, Massachusetts, June 23 (TNSRep) -- Fight for the Future, an advocacy group for digital rights, issued the following news release:

BREAKING: Yesterday, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report detailing how federal prosecutors have rarely used an anti-sex trafficking law, the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which established criminal penalties for promoting or facilitating online prostitution and sex trafficking and introduced a carveout within Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The report says "criminal restitution has not been sought and civil damages have not been awarded" under the law, often referred to as FOSTA-SESTA. DOJ officials interviewed by the GAO for the report also said they did not bring more cases "because the law is relatively new and prosecutors have had success using other criminal statutes."

"The GAO report confirms our worst fears: FOSTA-SESTA was a complete disaster," said Sarah Roth-Gaudette (she/her), Executive Director, Fight for the Future. "Lives were put in danger when sex workers in the U.S. were forced to retreat into the darkest corners of the internet without visible structures for protection. And now we learn that the law has only been used once in its three-year history. Until we fully study the unintended consequences of amending Section 230, by investigating the impact of FOSTA-SESTA, we cannot pretend that uncareful changes to Section 230 will not harm the most vulnerable and marginalized members of society."

In January 2021, Fight for the Future led a campaign to release a letter along with 70+ other human rights and social justice groups opposing repeal of or overbroad changes to Section 230 that could harm marginalized communities. Instead we endorse further efforts to study the impact of FOSTA-SESTA, including the SAFE SEX Workers Study Act, legislation from Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Ro Khanna to investigate its harm done by SESTA/FOSTA. We also support strong federal data privacy legislation, robust antitrust enforcement, the restoration of net neutrality, and have called for an outright ban on surveillance-based advertising and an immediate industry-wide moratorium on non-transparent forms of algorithmic manipulation of content and newsfeeds.

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January 27, 2021

To the Biden/Harris Administration and the 117th Congress:

In the wake of this latest act of white supremacist violence directed at the U.S. Capitol, it's more urgent than ever that lawmakers take steps to address systemic racism and injustice, and to hold Big Tech companies accountable for their role in undermining democracy and amplifying harmful content. However, repeal of or injudicious changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act would only make the situation worse.

Gutting Section 230 would make it more difficult for web platforms to combat the type of dangerous rhetoric that led to the attack on the Capitol. And certain carve outs to the law could threaten human rights and silence movements for social and racial justice that are needed now more than ever.

Section 230 is a foundational law for free expression and human rights when it comes to digital speech. It makes it possible for websites and online forums to host the opinions, photos, videos, memes, and creativity of ordinary people, rather than just content that is backed by corporations.

The danger posed by uncareful changes to Section 230 is not theoretical. The last major change to the law, the passage of SESTA/FOSTA in 2018, put lives in danger. The impacts of this law were immediate and destructive, limiting the accounts of sex workers and making it more difficult to find and help those who were being trafficked online. This was widely seen as a disaster that made vulnerable communities less safe and led to widespread removal of speech online. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Ro Khanna have sponsored legislation to investigate the harm done by SESTA/FOSTA. Lawmakers should pass this bill and examine past mistakes before modifying Section 230, and should hold hearings on the human rights and civil liberties implications of altering the law before legislating further. Overly broad changes to Section 230 could disproportionately harm and silence marginalized people, whose voices have been historically ignored by mainstream press outlets. For example, social media platforms would be unlikely to host viral videos of police violence that have spurred nationwide uprisings for racial justice if they faced constant litigation from law enforcement for doing so.

We share lawmakers' concerns with the growing power of Big Tech companies and their unwillingness to address the harm their products are causing. Google and Facebook are just some of the many companies that compromise the privacy and safety of the public by harvesting our data for their own corporate gain, and allowing advertisers, racists and conspiracy theorists to use that data to target us. These surveillance-based business models are pervasive and an attack on human rights. But claims that Section 230 immunizes tech companies that break the law, or disincentivizes them from removing illegal or policy-violating content, are false. In fact, Amazon has invoked Section 230 to defend itself against a lawsuit over its decision to drop Parler from Amazon Web Services due to unchecked threats of violence on Parler's platform. Additionally, because Section 230 protects platforms' decisions to remove objectionable content, the law played a role in enabling the removal of Donald Trump from platforms, who could act without fear of excessive litigation.

Repealing Section 230 would make it even harder for platforms to engage in good faith moderation of hateful speech and disinformation. It could lead thousands of smaller companies and alternative platforms to be shut down, therefore crushing competition and making Big Tech even more powerful. This is why Big Tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg have said they are open to 230 reforms, because they know it would only reinforce their influence.

We concur that Congress should act to address the harms of Big Tech through meaningful legislative action on data privacy, civil rights and others fronts, and enforcement of existing antitrust laws. But uncareful efforts to poke holes in Section 230 could result in the exact opposite outcome. Lawmakers must consider the intersectional consequence that this will have on activists, sex workers, Black and brown communities, Muslim communities, LGBTQ+ folks, disabled people and other marginalized communities before they make a change that could profoundly alter the state of digital free speech and human rights.

18 Million Rising

Access Now

Adult Industry Laborers & Artists Association

Advocating Opportunity

Assembly Four

Black and Pink

Black and Pink Massachusetts

CARES - Community AIDS Resource and Educations Services

Carolina Are, Researcher, Activist, Blogger at Blogger On Pole

Common Cause

Community United for Safety and Protection

Convocation Design and Research

COYOTE RI- Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics

Dangerous Speech Project

Data for Black Lives

Defending Rights and Dissent

Detroit Community Technology Project

Erotic Service Providers Legal, Education and Research Project

Equality North Carolina

Fight for the Future

Freedom Network USA

Free Press Action

Friends of Sabeel, North America

Global Forum for Media Development

Global Voices

Hacking//Hustling

Hollaback!

House of Tulip

Ishtar Collective

Indigenous Friends Organization

Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice

Institute of Information Cyprus (101.cy)

International League of Advocates

Joy Buolamwini, Founder Algorithmic Justice League

Kairos Action

Lucy Parsons Labs

Media Justice

Michael Karanicolas, Yale Law School Initiative on Intermediaries and Information

Montgomery County (MD) Civil Rights Coalition

Movement Alliance Project

Mpower Change

Muslim Justice League

National Black Justice Coalition

National Center for Lesbian Rights

National Lawyers Guild

Other 98

OpenMedia

Open MIC (Open Media and Information Companies Initiative)

PDX Privacy

PEN America

Popular Resistance

Positive Women's Network - Ohio

Public Knowledge

Prostasia Foundation

Presente.org

Ranking Digital Rights

Reframe Health and Justice

Renata Avila, Race & Technology Fellow, HAI, Stanford University

Sasha Costanza-Chock, Senior Research Fellow, Algorithmic Justice League

Sero Project

Sex Workers' Action Program of Hamilton

S.T.O.P. - The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project

SWOP - Sex Workers Outreach Project

SWOP Behind Bars

SWOP Brooklyn

The 6:52 Project Foundation, Inc.

The Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center

Transgender Law Center

UltraViolet

URGE: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity

US People living with HIV Caucus

Wikimedia Foundation

Win Without War

WITNESS

Woodhull Freedom Foundation

X-Lab

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REPORT: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-21-385-highlights.pdf

[Category: CaptureV]