Rand Paul Changes Mind About Google. Thinks They 'Deserve To Be Sued'

The senator believes the internet giant should be held accountable for knowingly allowing harmful lies to be spread on their platform. #54

Screenshot/NBC News YouTube

Rand Paul has long defended the liability of major social media companies from being sued for the content they host via the federal protection of Section 230.

He’s changed his mind.

What’s Changed?

Paul explained what has shifted for him on this issue in a New York Post op-ed, “For the past three weeks YouTube has been hosting a video that is a calculated lie, falsely accusing me of taking money from Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. It refused to remove the video.”

Google owns YouTube. The notion that longtime non-interventionist libertarian Rand Paul has taken bribes from Maduro is a spectacular lie.

Paul is against U.S. wars abroad. Including Venezuela. He is against U.S.-led regime change. So was his father. For good reason. This is not a remotely new position for libertarian Republicans.

Sen. Paul continued, “It is, of course, a ludicrous accusation, but paid trolls are daily spreading this lie across the internet. This untruth is essentially an accusation of treason, which then leads the internet mob to call for my death.”

“Advocating for liability for Google is no small step for me,” the senator said. “I have long defended the private-property rights of internet companies and long defended them against overzealous, partisan abuses of antitrust law, even when I was angry with YouTube for its policies that silenced my attempts to educate the public on the potentially deadly consequences of relying on cloth masks to prevent transmission of COVID-19.”

Paul detailed YouTube’s extensive history of censoring COVID-related information that is now known to be true, from the Wuhan lab origins to natural immunity.

The senator discussed some of this during his recent interview with Joe Rogan.

And how alliances between Google, Big Pharma and other actors might have influenced certain “moderation” decisions.

Paul also referenced the platform’s blatant censorship under pressure from the Biden administration, including banning him.

Yes, Paul now says, “But I will not sit idly by and let them host a provably false defamatory video, which is now part of a widespread harassment campaign. I am now receiving death threats.”

Google Must Be Held Accountable

As Paul describes, “The courts have largely ruled that Section 230 shields social-media companies from being sued for content created by third parties. If someone calls you a creep on the internet, you can call them a creep right back, but you can’t sue the social-media site for hosting that insult.”

This is defensible. Any large platform like Google, Facebook, X, etc., cannot practically be held liable for every insult spewed on social media. It would be impractical to do so. It would be impossible for social media to exist with this liability.

“I always believed this protection is necessary for the functioning of the internet,” Paul says. “I have always accepted, perhaps too uncritically, that unmitigated liability protection for social-media sites was necessary to defend the principle of free speech.”

This is all still true. But there’s also more to it.

So what has changed for the senator?

It’s one thing to know untruthful things will be posted on a platform as vast as Google and YouTube and reasonable to not hold the company responsible.

It’s quite another for the company to know that a blatant lie that affects the reputation and even safety of someone exists on their platform and yet they still refuse to take that content down - particularly when the same company banned so much truthful information during the COVID pandemic.

Paul explains (emphasis added):

I can’t tell you how disappointed I am by Google’s decision to host this defamatory video. Part of the implicit grant of immunity is that the internet platforms would self-police their content, which all of the social companies do to a certain degree.

Google’s own content moderation policy states: “We don’t allow content that targets someone with prolonged insults or slurs based on their physical traits or protected group status. We also don’t allow other harmful behaviors, like threats or doxxing.

So Google believes that calling someone ugly should be policed and taken down but doesn’t believe that accusing someone of treason (taking money from Maduro) incites “threats or doxxing.”

If the woman defaming me had also ridiculed my race or sexuality, Google would happily take down the post.

And yet . . . they do monitor truth, or at least their version of it.

Taking Action

Paul spelled out exactly how his interactions with Google have played out and what he now plans to do about that.

Paul says, “It is particularly galling that, even when informed of the death threats stemming from the unsubstantiated and defamatory allegations, Google refused to evaluate the truth of what it was hosting despite its widespread practice of evaluating and removing other content for perceived lack of truthfulness.”

“This complete lack of decency, this inconsistent moderation of truthfulness, this conscious refusal to remove illegal and defamatory content has led me to conclude that the internet exemption from liability, a governmentally granted privilege and a special exemption from our common law traditions, should not be encouraged by liability shields and I will pursue legislation toward that goal,” he vowed.

Rand Paul has a point about a major platform that refuses to police itself in some major, self-evident ways. The false Maduro video should have never been allowed to stay up. No excuses.

So pursue away.