The Movement: Meta settlement gets praise, pushback from the right

CEI’s Director of the Center for Technology and Innovation Jessica Melugin gave comments to The Hill on Meta’s settlement decision to pay out up to $18 billion in their multi-state lawsuit.

Conservatives have traditionally been the party of less regulation and more speech rights but are now somewhat divided between those on the “tech right,” who seek to keep the juice of innovation flowing in America’s favor — and, on social media, keep unfettered access to online speech — and the “tech temperance” coalition, who are calling for regulation to reverse the social and cultural ills of social media and artificial intelligence.

The former group includes First Amendment advocates who see the Meta settlement as an end-run around a negotiated piece of legislation or a thorough judicial process in public view. 

“This is the latest example of the newest legal strategy, which is, ‘Okay, we’re not going to go after the content of this stuff being addictive because that content is protected by Section 230, that liability protection. We’re gonna say it’s the design features that are addicting,’” said Jessica Melugin, director of the Center for Technology and Innovation at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. 

“Now, I don’t buy that, because if you switch out the content, so one example that’s given often is, what if all the content on this platform was videos of paint drying? Would people be addicted to it, even with autoplay and infinite scroll?” 

The role of parents is also hotly debated. Melugin said parents have the right to not buy their kids a smartphone or impose more controls that already exist. 

Read the full article at The Hill.