KOL354 | CDA §230, Being “Part of the State,” Co-ownership, Causation, Defamation, with Nick Sinard

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 354. Libertarian Nicholas Sinard asked me to field some questions about the referenced issues, so we did so. Update: some of these issues also discussed in Libertarian Answer Man: Restrictive Covenants and Homeowners Associations (HOAs) and Libertarian Answer Man: Restrictive Covenants, Reserved Rights, and Copyright. https://youtu.be/54pMdixfWTI Relevant links: No, Libertarians, We Should NOT Abolish the CDA §230 and DMCA Safe Harbors! Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Intellectual Property Is Macy’s Part of the State? A Critique of Left Deviationists Michael Rectenwald, Who Really Owns Big Digital Tech?: "By now it should be perfectly clear that the most prominent Big Digital companies are not strictly private, for-profit companies. As I argued in Google Archipelago, they are also state apparatuses, or governmentalities, undertaking state functions, including censorship, propaganda, and surveillance." Walter Block, "A Libertarian Analysis of Suing for Libel," LewRockwell.com (Sep. 5, 2014) Causation and Aggression (with Patrick Tinsley), The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, vol. 7, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 97-112 Jeffrey Tucker, Backdoor Censorship through Libel Law; Techdirt Podcast Episode 266: In Defense Of Section 230 & A Decentralized Internet A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability, Journal of Libertarian Studies 17, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 11-37 Hoppe on Property Rights in Physical Integrity vs Value “Aggression” versus “Harm” in Libertarianism Youtube transcript as cleaned up by Grok: Transcript: Stephan Kinsella and Nick Sinard Discuss CDA 230 and Libertarian Issues Stephan Kinsella (0:02): Okay, hey, this is Stephan Kinsella with a different edition of Kinsella on Liberty. One of my internet acquaintances, Nick Sinard—is that the right pronunciation? Nick Sinard: Yes. Stephan Kinsella: He's joining us. You wanted to chat about something today. I forgot what it was. I did two Tom Woods episodes last week, and things are blending together, so I'm forgetting what we were gonna talk about, but I'll let you bring up whatever you want. Go ahead. Introduce yourself too, if you don't mind. Nick Sinard (0:29): I'm just Nick Sinard, been a libertarian for like eight years. I got a few businesses and stuff, but maggotsnicksart.com, you know, I put some libertarian stuff up on there, but it's been a while since I've updated it. Stephan Kinsella (0:50): For some reason, I thought you were a foreigner, an outsider, a Frenchman or something with that name, but you sound Southern to me. Nick Sinard: Yeah, it is French, but yeah. Stephan Kinsella (1:01): What state are you in or from? Nick Sinard: Tennessee, close to the Great Smoky Mountains. Stephan Kinsella: Alright, two Southerners on the line then. Let's try to keep the IQ level, the total IQ level, above 100 if we can. It'll be a challenge, I know. Now, I guess I want to talk about mostly three things I think are all pretty interrelated. One you're starting to see more is that libertarians are starting to act like or say that Facebook's a part of the state. Nick Sinard (1:26): Oh no, yeah, I see that more. Stephan Kinsella: Another one I think that's related is kind of the Section 230 thing, or even libertarians will bring that up. And then I've seen, it's not as popular as it used to be, but terms of service violations as aggression. I've seen a few libertarians make that, but I think that's just confusion on liability and contract. Nick Sinard (1:50): I haven't heard that one too much. Stephan Kinsella (1:58): I don't recall ever hearing that terms of service are aggression. You could argue that they're not a binding contract, and I think there are good arguments for that. Nick Sinard (2:04): Well, I'm just saying, on that one, I've seen people say, well, you know, Facebook or Twitter didn't follow their own terms of service, so someone has the right to force them to do. Stephan Kinsella (2:18): Oh, right, yeah, that's a confusion of libertarian property and contract theory. That's true. But I guess start with the first one, which is the most popular one I've seen talked about on a few shows, actually, and many people in the Mises Caucus group pretty much say Facebook is a part of the state just because they're cooperating with the state when it comes to what information the government wants on its platform. Nick Sinard (2:42): You know, and they're like, right now, it's a part of the state, therefore, you know, I've seen some say that, no, I don't want legislation or anything like that, but you can say you don't want legislation to affect Facebook, but if you're saying Facebook's a part of the state, that does enter into some dangerous grounds. Stephan Kinsella (3:00): I agree. I mean, I think if you conclude someone is, you should say it. You shouldn't be afraid of the consequences, but you should be cautious and try to do it carefully. I guess I've been thinking about this too. Why do people feel compelled to do this? Like, why this witch hunt to classify Google, et cetera, as part of the state, or corporations? Like, the left libertarians want to say that about corporations because they have this limited liability privilege grant, so-called. I mean, I think, first, as libertarians, it's important to understand the state because it's the biggest aggressor. So we have an analysis and theory of the state. So the state is an identifiable actor, agent, or entity in society, and it plays a certain role. It's the institutionalized source of aggression. Now, we libertarians oppose aggression in general, so we oppose what I would say is private aggression and public aggression or aggression by private criminals, which is why we need self-defense and defense agencies and laws and courts and things like that. And we also oppose institutionalized aggression, and it seems clear that institutionalized aggression by the state is a far bigger threat than random, isolated, ad hoc acts of private crime by private criminals. Stephan Kinsella (4:01): The minarchists and classical liberals recognize the danger of public aggression, which is why they want to create a state, but they want to put limits on it, like in a constitution. So they recognize how dangerous it is, so they want to put limits on it, but they basically recognize the state as a possible source of violation of rights. So we have to identify the state, and we have an analysis of the state. I think that analysis always comes with this class analysis, like Hoppe does, and even Marx does to some extent, but he does it in a different way. But it's basically the rule of the majority by a minority. Nick Sinard (4:54): Right, that's why they do it, so that it's like a pyramid of power, so that, you know, the five percent or the two percent or the one percent or even the ten percent can exploit the other 90 or 99 percent. Stephan Kinsella (5:06): Right, so they can live high on the hog while the masses are relatively impoverished. So to succeed, I think Hoppe goes into this in his Banking Nation States great article. They have to basically persuade the population to go along with it by a variety of techniques: propaganda, coercion, tradition, appeals to authority, and with democracy, by getting everyone to falsely believe that they're part of the state. And, you know, so many people have relatives, or they themselves work for the state, because the government is so large now. The federal government, for example, so everyone is, you know, their kids are going to public schools, and we drive on public roads, so everyone starts to have this kind of interest in the state, so they're reluctant to challenge it. But still, the state itself has to be a minority. So if you broaden the definition of what's the state so large that it includes Google and Facebook, and even broader, any corporation, because no one has totally clean hands, I suppose, and even broader than that, every—not only every human being that's an employee of the state, which is, I don't know, what, 15, 20, 30 percent of the population—but people that are being paid by the state, because what's the difference, economically and politically, whether you pay someone a salary or you have a defense contractor that you're paying, or a welfare recipient who's getting money, or private jails, you know? Stephan Kinsella (6:08): So I guess these are all part of the state. So if you're going to have such a loose standard of conceptual connection or causation that Google and Facebook are part of the state, then basically we're all part of the state, which is exactly the lie that the state tells. They tell us this so you are part of the government, that's why you can't complain about it. You have the right to vote, so you are the government, right? So you can't complain if you don't get the results you don't like. So you have these anti-statists, so-called, doing the same thing that the statists do. They're all saying we're all part of the state, which is ridiculous. Nick Sinard (7:07): Oh, yeah. Stephan Kinsella: But then you have to ask, okay, so why are these libertarians, why do they want to say that Facebook and Twitter and Google and YouTube—who else? Amazon, I don't know, fantastic Amazon accounts, Apple—basically the FANG and, I guess, other companies, why are they part of the state? I mean, the older reason from 10, 20 years ago would be, you know, they're corporations, they have limited liability, or they influence policy, or they have lobbyists in D.C. They're in bed with the state, they'll say. I mean, the chain of causation is not always clear, admittedly.