A few weeks back, we wrote about a dangerous proposal being debated by various cities who were a part of the League of California Cities to send a letter to Congress, demanding it change Section 230. The proposal was pushed for by the city of Cerritos which got the requisite four other cities to endorse the idea. Since then other cities have debated it (often without understanding it) and now it’s up for an official vote by the organization.
As Joe Mullin describes in a post for the EFF, the basis for this demand is positively ridiculous. Officials in Cerritos were upset about some jokers pulling a prank on social media — and for that they wish to destroy the open internet.
The Cerritos proposal is based on a crime that never happened. According to the proposal, Cerritos police responded to an anonymous posting on Instagram, inviting followers to “work together to loot Cerritos [M]all.” Nothing happened, but the city of Cerritos has now asked the League to endorse dramatic changes to federal law in order to give police vast new powers.
As we detailed in our original post, this proposal is bizarre and has little to do with any of the standard complaints about Section 230. While it has some boilerplate language about pressuring companies to start moderating (even though they already do), the really dangerous stuff is about trying to force social media companies to hand over any data the cops want. The key line in the proposal:…
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