Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on lawmakers to remove social media companies' immunity from being held liable for third-party content.
Clinton, while appearing on CNN to promote her new memoir, discussed the effects of social media on school children and offered her opinion on what needs to be done to improve the situation.
"If the platforms, whether it's Facebook or Twitter/X or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don't moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control," Clinton told host Michael Smerconish on Friday. "And it's not just the social and psychological effects, it's real harm. It's, you know, child porn, and threats of violence, things that are terribly dangerous."
Clinton, the 2016 Democrat presidential nominee who lost to Donald Trump, commended several states for trying to regulate social media companies by trying to restrict phone usage in schools.
"We can look at the state of California, the state of New York, I think some other states have also taken action," Clinton said. "But we need national action, and sadly, our Congress has been dysfunctional when it comes to addressing these threats to our children. … This should be at the top of every legislative agenda."
Clinton called for the repealing of Section 230 of the Communications Act, which protects online platforms from being held liable for user and third-party content.
"[It] gave, you know, platforms on the internet immunity because they were thought to be just pass-throughs, that they shouldn't be judged for the content that is posted," Clinton said. "We now know that was an overly simple view.
"We need to remove the immunity from liability, and we need to have guardrails, we need regulation."
Clinton added that kids are benefiting from having their phones taken away at school.
"We've conducted this big experiment on ourselves and particularly our kids and I think the evidence is in that we've got to do more. Take phones out of schools," she said. "I'm so happy to see schools beginning to do that, where the kids turn their phone in when they walk in the door.
"And guess what? Kids are paying better attention in class. They are talking to each other in the lunchroom, things that used to be part of your daily life when you were a child in school."
Clinton was promoting "Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Liberty," which was released Sept. 17.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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