Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Saturday warned social media platforms must take responsibility for moderating their content or risk losing “total control.”
The comment came during an appearance on CNN, during which Clinton discussed her new book “Something Lost, Something Gained.” She acknowledged part of the book focuses on technology use by children, which has become a hot button topic among federal lawmakers.
“In the book, I write about how I don’t think our kids are alright because I think they’ve become addicted to social media,” she said. “I think the phones in their pockets or their purses have a huge impact on how they spend their time, whether they interact with other people.”
Now we know that very often kids are impacted by anxiety or depression, or all kinds of problems that are at least connected to, if not caused, by this connection to the screen,” she added.
Though she applauded states like California for implementing online protection measures for children, Clinton called for action at the federal level to combat ill effects of social media use facing kids. One such step, she said, should be repealing Section 230, a federal law which makes a website not responsible for the content posted by its users.
“We now know that that was an overly simple view,” Clinton said of Section 230. “If the platforms — whether it’s Facebook or Twitter – X or Instagram or TikTok or whatever they are — if they don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control.”
It’s not just the social and psychological effects, it’s real harm,” she added. “It’s child porn and threats of violence, things that are terribly dangerous.”
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Sens. John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Katie Britt, R-Ala., in September introduced the “Stop the Scroll Act,” a measure which would require social media platforms to show users mental health advisories.
“The Surgeon General has said there needs to be a warning sign on social media apps,” Sen. Britt said in a video on the proposal. “People deserve to know what they’re about to enter into.”
“This is a red issue, this is a blue issue,” Sen. Fetterman added. “I have seen what it has done to my own family and how difficult it is.”
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said in July it mistakenly applied a fact check warning alongside a photo from the first assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump. The warning was applied to the widely shared image of Trump raising his fist moments after he was grazed by a bullet at a rally in Butler, Pa.
Meta said its fact check was intended to apply only to an altered image of the photo showing the Secret Service agents around Trump smiling.
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