vox--2020-09-23--How do you cover a presidential campaign during a pandemic?

Olivia Nuzzi was covering a Donald Trump rally in Winston-Salem , North Carolina , this summer when the New York magazine reporter had an idea .
Why not go talk to the Trump fans at the gathering , most of whom had been spending hours packed together , mask-free ?
“ I ’ m not going over there today .
I ’ m not fucking going over there and talking to people who don ’ t have masks on , ” she recalls thinking .
“ I don ’ t think the news value of my dumb little idea of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Interviewing a campaign rally attendee is a staple of campaign journalism .
But not in 2020 .
In addition to killing 200,000 Americans and putting millions out of work , the pandemic has upended how campaigns are run — just like everything else , they ’ ve now mostly moved online — which means it ’ s changed the way they are covered .
Which isn ’ t necessarily bad .
But it is unsettling for many political journalists ( again : join the club ) who are trying to figure out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most unusual of circumstances .
And they ’ re thinking about what all of this means — both for this year and for future campaigns .
“ You ’ re just seeing the press release that goes out , you ’ re tuning into the livestream of the speech , you ’ re making as many phone calls as possible , ” says BuzzFeed ’ s Ruby Cramer , who is covering her third presidential campaign this year — and has been in her Brooklyn apartment , except for a single trip to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , since March .
The question that journalists and politician , and eventually voters will have to reckon with is whether the distance between the reporters and the people they ’ re writing about matters : If you can ’ t be on the road with Joe Biden because Joe Biden ’ s not on the road , does it make a difference in what people are going to learn about Joe Biden between now and November 3 ?
And if it doesn ’ t , should journalists and politicians permanently rethink the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even when we can ( hopefully ) gather in person again ?
The boys were already off the bus A standard pandemic cliché , at this point , is to note that it has accelerated a shift that was already underway .
Go ahead and use campaign journalism as another example .
You may have a hazy understanding that the most important coverage comes from Important Journalists who travel alongside candidates on the trail , pestering them and their staff for tidbits of news , access , and interviews .
That ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Tim Crouse ’ s famous book about the 1972 presidential campaign and the men who covered it .
But that notion hasn ’ t synced up with reality for some time .
Yes , sometimes candidates say things at campaign events that become news stories , and may even affect their candidacy — think of Mitt Romney dismissing 47 percent of American voters in 2012 or Hillary Clinton dismissing Trump voters as “ deplorables ” in 2016 .
But there aren ’ t many of those moments , and they certainly don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day-to-day campaign trail reporting .
Which is one of the reasons why reporters who cover candidates on the road in recent campaigns have been “ embeds.
” They tend to be earlier in their careers and lower in the journalistic pecking order ( and more likely to put up with the indignities of constant travel ) .
More important , though , is that campaigns have realized they can use Twitter , Instagram , livestreams , and any other tech they want to bypass reporters and go straight to their intended audience .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ be tolerated , but they ’ re much less likely to get access to the candidate .
“ The curtain at the front of the plane separating the senior staff from the press corps has been drawn for a couple of campaigns now , ” says Peter Hamby , a former CNN reporter .
He says the utility of the campaign trail coverage has been minimal for years .
The shift was clear enough for Hamby to see back in 2013 , when he produced a 95-page research report titled “ Did Twitter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Hamby apparently reached his own conclusion : He ’ s now Snapchat ’ s chief political correspondent and does little reporting from the campaign trail .
So even without a virus tearing through America , you ’ d hear and see reporters talking about the way campaign coverage has been , and should be , changing in 2020 .
But the strain of working in the pandemic underscores the weirdness .
Now you not only have to question the value of interviewing a Trump voter at a Trump rally — it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rally , so what could they say that would surprise you at this point ?
— you have to worry about whether doing so will make you sick .
And that internal discussion is happening after years of Trump himself , who has overturned every bit of conventional political wisdom , going back to his initial campaign .
In 2015 , for instance , everyone knew that the one thing you couldn ’ t do in American politics is to cast aspersions on decorated , wounded veterans .
But Trump announced that Sen. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , held in captivity , and tortured for years , was “ not a war hero , ” because Trump liked “ people who weren ’ t captured.
” For any other candidate , in any other year , that would have been the end of the campaign — and precisely the reason you cover every word a presidential candidate says .
But now , we ’ ve learned that this stuff is intrinsic to Trump .
You expect it .
You hear it all the time .
Why bother going on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
Because maybe you ’ ll still learn something , say reporters who ’ ve worked the campaign trail .
Yes , you can see a lot of the campaign on Twitter and TV .
But if you ’ re not there , they say , you can ’ t get the details that let you know what ’ s really going on — or at least the details that make a great story .
“ Texture ” is a word that comes up a lot .
“ It ’ s sort of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only present in person , ” says Cramer .
“ And it has to do with a feeling inside a room , or the way campaign staff are shuffling back and forth in the hallway while the candidate is speaking.
” Cramer recalls a scene from this year ’ s Democratic primary , as Sen. Bernie Sanders ’ s candidacy evaporated over the course of a couple days : “ I remember getting off the bus and seeing one of Sanders ’ s senior people visibly shaking .
He was shaking from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there was nothing he could do to change it .
It was a visceral thing to watch.
” That scene made it into her story about the campaign ’ s collapse .
“ Every story I wrote , it was hugely beneficial to be on the road , ” says Amy Chozick , the New York Times reporter assigned to the Hillary Clinton campaign from 2015 to 2016 ; Chozick says she traveled 523 days during that stretch .
“ There ’ s huge value in seeing the candidate that you ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ changed two words in a speech , I would know , ” she says .
And being around an event is different from watching an event .
Chozick said she could sense a swell of emotion and excitement , which the Clinton campaign hadn ’ t generated much of before , in the last two weeks of the 2016 campaign — which she readily admits didn ’ t tell you anything about how Clinton would fare on Election Day .
Campaign reporters also lament that limited travel and limited events mean limited chances @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Yes , someone who goes to a Trump event isn ’ t representative of the electorate — it ’ s someone who likes Trump so much they ’ ll leave their house to go see him .
Still , “ you ’ re able to interview voters and see how they ’ re responding .
I basically haven ’ t had the chance to talk to any voters at any rally to see what they think ” about campaign messaging , says Alex Thompson , who is covering the election for Politico @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been stuck in DC .
I ’ m not going to go through the phone book of Milwaukee and call voters.
” Instead , Thompson says , he ’ s trying to figure out how to cover something that ’ s happening virtually .
In a normal year , he says , he ’ d be trying to figure out how to sneak into a volunteer training session for a Democratic door-knocking campaign ; now he says he ’ s “ sneaking into a virtual digital training session about how to text and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Maggie Haberman , who covered the Trump campaign in 2016 and followed him to the White House , has plenty of access to people around Trump .
But she also misses talking to regular humans .
“ One thing that I think is missing from the coverage right now is that you can get more of a sense for parts of the race by being in person , talking to voters , ” she says .
“ That I really do miss .
I really got a lot out of voters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ got ta -see-it-live faction is getting more of their wish lately .
Over the last few weeks , Trump has revived his campaign rallies , which give him a chance to rile up his base and antagonize everyone else .
Just days ago , Trump gloated to a crowd in Minnesota about watching MSNBC reporter Ali Velshi get injured during a protest ; since then , he ’ s also been to Ohio and Pennsylvania , where his crowds were large , densely packed , and largely unmasked .
But cable TV networks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Trump ’ s provocations don ’ t make news — perhaps because the news has plenty of other things to cover , like mass death and unemployment .
Joe Biden , meanwhile , has made very few public appearances at all — a move that ’ s partly a concession to a virus that thrives in large gatherings and partly a calculation that he ’ ll be better off letting Trump talk his way out of votes .
Meanwhile , there are plenty of journalists who say the absence of live events @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coverage — or , crucially , in the way the public learns about the candidates .
“ I think the idea that it ’ s tremendously valuable to your understanding of an election to be able to go and shoot the shit with a mid-level communications flack at a bar is overstated , ” says New York ’ s Nuzzi .
Though she did that kind of reporting herself during the 2016 campaign — and this one , too .
In February , for instance , she filed from the lobby of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where lots of mid-level campaigners were bemoaning that state ’ s caucus debacle .
But by August , after the general campaign had been almost entirely shut down for months , Nuzzi decided she ’ d have a better chance of understanding Trump ’ s reelection chances if she got on the road and visited campaign staff and volunteers in Pennsylvania , a key battleground state .
In a series of vignettes , Nuzzi describes finding nearly empty election offices and campaign events .
In one of them , she drops by a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If this had been a normal campaign , Nuzzi says , she would have never gotten in her car .
“ I wouldn ’ t have thought about it .
There would have been so many rallies to go to.
” You ’ re watching TV .
Are you also covering the election ?
The 2020 general election hasn ’ t been completely virtual .
In place of their usual , week-long summer conventions — impossible to pull off in a social-distancing era — both candidates staged muted , made-for TV presentations that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their case to the country ( or , at least , people who watch political conventions ) .
Normally , reporters flock to the Democratic and Republican conventions because it ’ s a rare chance to get extended face time with a wide swath of Important Political People .
But since very few people , period , actually showed up live in Wilmington , Delaware , where Biden ’ s event was anchored , reporters who attended the event had little to do .
One of the most striking moments I ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was Kamala Harris ’ s DNC speech — not because of the content but because of the context .
The vice presidential nominee stood on a stage , at a podium , just like a normal speech .
But when the camera pulled back , you could see the room she was in was nearly empty , save for a handful of socially distanced reporters , taking notes on a speech they could have watched on their couch .
Just like I was doing .
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Olivia Nuzzi was covering a Donald Trump rally in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, this summer when the New York magazine reporter had an idea. Why not go talk to the Trump fans at the gathering, most of whom had been spending hours packed together, mask-free?
Then she reconsidered.
“I’m not going over there today. I’m not fucking going over there and talking to people who don’t have masks on,” she recalls thinking. “I don’t think the news value of my dumb little idea of a news story is worth the risk.”
Interviewing a campaign rally attendee is a staple of campaign journalism. But not in 2020. In addition to killing 200,000 Americans and putting millions out of work, the pandemic has upended how campaigns are run — just like everything else, they’ve now mostly moved online — which means it’s changed the way they are covered.
Which isn’t necessarily bad. But it is unsettling for many political journalists (again: join the club) who are trying to figure out how to do their job in the most unusual of circumstances. And they’re thinking about what all of this means — both for this year and for future campaigns.
“You’re just seeing the press release that goes out, you’re tuning into the livestream of the speech, you’re making as many phone calls as possible,” says BuzzFeed’s Ruby Cramer, who is covering her third presidential campaign this year — and has been in her Brooklyn apartment, except for a single trip to see Joe Biden accept the Democratic nomination, since March.
The question that journalists and politicians, and eventually voters, will have to reckon with is whether the distance between the reporters and the people they’re writing about matters: If you can’t be on the road with Joe Biden because Joe Biden’s not on the road, does it make a difference in what people are going to learn about Joe Biden between now and November 3?
And if it doesn’t, should journalists and politicians permanently rethink the way campaigns are run and covered, even when we can (hopefully) gather in person again?
The boys were already off the bus
A standard pandemic cliché, at this point, is to note that it has accelerated a shift that was already underway. Go ahead and use campaign journalism as another example.
You may have a hazy understanding that the most important coverage comes from Important Journalists who travel alongside candidates on the trail, pestering them and their staff for tidbits of news, access, and interviews. That’s the idea behind Boys on the Bus, Tim Crouse’s famous book about the 1972 presidential campaign and the men who covered it.
But that notion hasn’t synced up with reality for some time. Yes, sometimes candidates say things at campaign events that become news stories, and may even affect their candidacy — think of Mitt Romney dismissing 47 percent of American voters in 2012 or Hillary Clinton dismissing Trump voters as “deplorables” in 2016. But there aren’t many of those moments, and they certainly don’t have much to do with day-to-day campaign trail reporting.
Which is one of the reasons why reporters who cover candidates on the road in recent campaigns have been “embeds.” They tend to be earlier in their careers and lower in the journalistic pecking order (and more likely to put up with the indignities of constant travel).
More important, though, is that campaigns have realized they can use Twitter, Instagram, livestreams, and any other tech they want to bypass reporters and go straight to their intended audience. Reporters who travel with the campaign can be tolerated, but they’re much less likely to get access to the candidate.
“The curtain at the front of the plane separating the senior staff from the press corps has been drawn for a couple of campaigns now,” says Peter Hamby, a former CNN reporter. He says the utility of the campaign trail coverage has been minimal for years. The shift was clear enough for Hamby to see back in 2013, when he produced a 95-page research report titled “Did Twitter Kill the Boys on the Bus?”
Hamby apparently reached his own conclusion: He’s now Snapchat’s chief political correspondent and does little reporting from the campaign trail.
“It was a visceral thing to watch”
So even without a virus tearing through America, you’d hear and see reporters talking about the way campaign coverage has been, and should be, changing in 2020. But the strain of working in the pandemic underscores the weirdness. Now you not only have to question the value of interviewing a Trump voter at a Trump rally — it’s a Trump voter at a Trump rally, so what could they say that would surprise you at this point? — you have to worry about whether doing so will make you sick.
And that internal discussion is happening after years of Trump himself, who has overturned every bit of conventional political wisdom, going back to his initial campaign. In 2015, for instance, everyone knew that the one thing you couldn’t do in American politics is to cast aspersions on decorated, wounded veterans. But Trump announced that Sen. John McCain, shot down in Vietnam, held in captivity, and tortured for years, was “not a war hero,” because Trump liked “people who weren’t captured.”
For any other candidate, in any other year, that would have been the end of the campaign — and precisely the reason you cover every word a presidential candidate says. But now, we’ve learned that this stuff is intrinsic to Trump. You expect it. You hear it all the time. Why bother going on the road to hear him say it again?
Because maybe you’ll still learn something, say reporters who’ve worked the campaign trail. Yes, you can see a lot of the campaign on Twitter and TV. But if you’re not there, they say, you can’t get the details that let you know what’s really going on — or at least the details that make a great story. “Texture” is a word that comes up a lot.
“It’s sort of like this intangible quality that’s only present in person,” says Cramer. “And it has to do with a feeling inside a room, or the way campaign staff are shuffling back and forth in the hallway while the candidate is speaking.”
Cramer recalls a scene from this year’s Democratic primary, as Sen. Bernie Sanders’s candidacy evaporated over the course of a couple days: “I remember getting off the bus and seeing one of Sanders’s senior people visibly shaking. He was shaking from the realization of what was happening, and there was nothing he could do to change it. It was a visceral thing to watch.” That scene made it into her story about the campaign’s collapse.
“Every story I wrote, it was hugely beneficial to be on the road,” says Amy Chozick, the New York Times reporter assigned to the Hillary Clinton campaign from 2015 to 2016; Chozick says she traveled 523 days during that stretch.
“There’s huge value in seeing the candidate that you’re covering every single day — if Hillary changed two words in a speech, I would know,” she says. And being around an event is different from watching an event. Chozick said she could sense a swell of emotion and excitement, which the Clinton campaign hadn’t generated much of before, in the last two weeks of the 2016 campaign — which she readily admits didn’t tell you anything about how Clinton would fare on Election Day.
Campaign reporters also lament that limited travel and limited events mean limited chances to talk to voters at those events. Yes, someone who goes to a Trump event isn’t representative of the electorate — it’s someone who likes Trump so much they’ll leave their house to go see him.
Still, “you’re able to interview voters and see how they’re responding. I basically haven’t had the chance to talk to any voters at any rally to see what they think” about campaign messaging, says Alex Thompson, who is covering the election for Politico from afar. “I’ve been stuck in DC. I’m not going to go through the phone book of Milwaukee and call voters.”
Instead, Thompson says, he’s trying to figure out how to cover something that’s happening virtually. In a normal year, he says, he’d be trying to figure out how to sneak into a volunteer training session for a Democratic door-knocking campaign; now he says he’s “sneaking into a virtual digital training session about how to text and share things on Facebook.”
The Times’s Maggie Haberman, who covered the Trump campaign in 2016 and followed him to the White House, has plenty of access to people around Trump. But she also misses talking to regular humans. “One thing that I think is missing from the coverage right now is that you can get more of a sense for parts of the race by being in person, talking to voters,” she says. “That I really do miss. I really got a lot out of voters when I talked to them.”
The gotta-see-it-live faction is getting more of their wish lately. Over the last few weeks, Trump has revived his campaign rallies, which give him a chance to rile up his base and antagonize everyone else. Just days ago, Trump gloated to a crowd in Minnesota about watching MSNBC reporter Ali Velshi get injured during a protest; since then, he’s also been to Ohio and Pennsylvania, where his crowds were large, densely packed, and largely unmasked. But cable TV networks no longer reflexively cover them live, and Trump’s provocations don’t make news — perhaps because the news has plenty of other things to cover, like mass death and unemployment.
Joe Biden, meanwhile, has made very few public appearances at all — a move that’s partly a concession to a virus that thrives in large gatherings and partly a calculation that he’ll be better off letting Trump talk his way out of votes.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of journalists who say the absence of live events hasn’t made a difference in coverage — or, crucially, in the way the public learns about the candidates.
“I think the idea that it’s tremendously valuable to your understanding of an election to be able to go and shoot the shit with a mid-level communications flack at a bar is overstated,” says New York’s Nuzzi. Though she did that kind of reporting herself during the 2016 campaign — and this one, too. In February, for instance, she filed from the lobby of the Marriott in Des Moines, Iowa, where lots of mid-level campaigners were bemoaning that state’s caucus debacle.
But by August, after the general campaign had been almost entirely shut down for months, Nuzzi decided she’d have a better chance of understanding Trump’s reelection chances if she got on the road and visited campaign staff and volunteers in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state.
In a series of vignettes, Nuzzi describes finding nearly empty election offices and campaign events. In one of them, she drops by a training session for volunteers in Harrisburg:
I imagined a lot of Trump supporters, maskless and seated close together, breathing heavily on a reporter leaning in to record their comments. But the office was quiet. I walked through the arch of books by right-wing personalities (Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh) and past the portraits (George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan) and maps of Pennsylvania voting precincts. I didn’t see anyone there.
If this had been a normal campaign, Nuzzi says, she would have never gotten in her car to go to a far-flung office in Harrisburg. “I wouldn’t have thought about it. There would have been so many rallies to go to.”
You’re watching TV. Are you also covering the election?
The 2020 general election hasn’t been completely virtual. In place of their usual, week-long summer conventions — impossible to pull off in a social-distancing era — both candidates staged muted, made-for TV presentations that used live and taped segments to make their case to the country (or, at least, people who watch political conventions).
Normally, reporters flock to the Democratic and Republican conventions because it’s a rare chance to get extended face time with a wide swath of Important Political People. But since very few people, period, actually showed up live in Wilmington, Delaware, where Biden’s event was anchored, reporters who attended the event had little to do.
One of the most striking moments I’ve seen in this year’s campaign was Kamala Harris’s DNC speech — not because of the content but because of the context. The vice presidential nominee stood on a stage, at a podium, just like a normal speech. But when the camera pulled back, you could see the room she was in was nearly empty, save for a handful of socially distanced reporters, taking notes on a speech they could have watched on their couch. Just like I was doing.
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vox--2020-09-23--9 experts reflect on the US reaching 200,000 Covid-19 deaths

This week , the number of Americans confirmed to have died from Covid-19 crossed 200,000 .
It is a staggering loss of life , and this unfortunate milestone warrants some reflection .
In that spirit , I asked a question of several of the public health experts whose knowledge I have relied upon over the last six months : If you had been told back in February ( when the first Covid-19 death in the US was recorded ) that before the end of September 200,000 more people would be dead , what would your reaction have been ?
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resilient in our public health , our policymaking , and trust in public health leaders , ” Albert Ko , a Yale School of Public Health professor , told me .
“ I would have thought we would have done a better job protecting our nursing homes.
” I thought I would share the responses in full , with some light editing for clarity .
Jennifer Kates , director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation : Josh Michaud , associate director for global health policy at the Kaiser @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in February to imagine there would be 200,000 dead in the US in a matter of months .
After all , the first state emergency declaration in the US didn ’ t come until the end of February ( in Washington ) , and we didn ’ t know the extent of the disease in Italy , Iran , and other places .
It wasn ’ t until March that the Imperial College model was released ( projecting the potential for a million deaths or more in the US ) , the NBA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , etc .
We didn ’ t know about the US testing debacle yet .
Stay-at-home orders were not yet being talked about .
So back in February I don ’ t think it had dawned on most just how bad things could get .
Even so , looking back it ’ s clear that many US deaths could have been prevented with a different national course of action and it ’ s not like 200,000 deaths was a foregone conclusion at all .
There are a lot of proximal reasons here specific @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , how people didn ’ t take it seriously , the lack of universal health care , the distrust of government right now , lack of a clear message that really matter .
But I ’ d like to point out that the US is currently 46th in the world in terms of life expectancy .
So why would COVID-19 deaths be any different ?
All of these same factors that impact our COVID prevalence and COVID deaths also are in many ways similar to what leads to our higher overall deaths as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ realize is that is wasn ’ t always this way in the US .
From 1975-1980 , we were 17th in the world in life expectancy .
But there has been a slow ( and recently not so slow ) decline since the early 1980s .
Shocked – that would be the word that I would say captures my response to our current death numbers from the vantage point of February .
By mid-March we were locked down .
The doubling time of numbers of infections has truly shown we are not serious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID-19 .
This represents the failure of the national leadership , the failings of the executive branch , the emasculation and politicization of the CDC and FDA , and the skepticism of science by large segments of the public , egged on by the president .
My guess is that we will be at 400,000 by the close of the year ; I certainly hope not .
Kumi Smith , an epidemiology professor at the University of Minnesota : The things that have surprised me most in hindsight : - That it took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ develop and distribute a test .
Precious time was lost as they tried to recover from the first failed test ; this set us on a whole different epidemic trajectory .
- That the White House would ever try to assume the role of public health messenger to the public .
And that the CDC has taken as much of a back seat as it has .
There ’ s a protocol for issuing out consistent and up-to-date public health messaging to the public but you wouldn ’ t know it from how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wearing would become so politicized ( though someone did recently share with me a story about anti-maskers during the 1918 pandemic so maybe I shouldn ’ t have been surprised ) .
If you take into account all of these things , the death toll is sadly not all that surprising .
In February , I was definitely watching COVID carefully , but I also felt confident that the administration would activate a coordinated epidemic response and that such a response would control the spread of the virus relatively quickly and successfully .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Not only was there no clear coordinated response , many of the pandemic preparations that had been made over the previous two decades had been scrapped , canceled , or left to lapse/ expire , making it difficult for other levels of government to step in to the leadership void .
I made a tweet sometime in February in response to someone asking for a prediction of what COVID would look like that said something like : right now our best guess for what will happen is to look at historical examples @ @ @ @ @ @ @ & MERS and both were pretty much contained by one year out ; not at all like the 1918 flu .
I still think that at the time that was a reasonable prediction , given what we knew , but it ’ s clear that the pandemic has not played out like SARS or MERS .
Some of that has to do with features of the virus – the presence of pre-symptomatic spread makes control much harder for SARS-CoV-2 than for SARS .
But a lot of it has to do with failures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security : Natalie Dean , a biostatistician at the University of Florida : In the spring , I participated in a series of expert surveys facilitated by Nick Reich and colleagues at UMass .
I was able to look back and see what I had put for predictions .
My May predictions for the year-end totals are below .
So by December , we will likely exceed my 90th percentile prediction .
It is sad .
I expected that this would be challenging , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we as a country would become to over 1,000 Americans dying a day .
The goalposts keep moving , and what once seemed unimaginable is now a daily reality .
Sometimes I think it is worth reminding people that we have various models to forecast cumulative deaths , but infectious diseases are not the weather .
What ultimately will happen depends upon our actions , and so much more death does not need to be foretold .
What more can we be doing to keep people safe ?
Be it testing , tracing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ alternatives to activities .
And demanding greater action from our politicians to make this possible .
This story appears in VoxCare , a newsletter from Vox on the latest twists and turns in America ’ s health care debate .
Sign up to get VoxCare in your inbox along with more health care stats and news .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our lifetimes .
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This week, the number of Americans confirmed to have died from Covid-19 crossed 200,000. It is a staggering loss of life, and this unfortunate milestone warrants some reflection.
In that spirit, I asked a question of several of the public health experts whose knowledge I have relied upon over the last six months: If you had been told back in February (when the first Covid-19 death in the US was recorded) that before the end of September 200,000 more people would be dead, what would your reaction have been?
“I thought we would be much more resilient in our public health, our policymaking, and trust in public health leaders,” Albert Ko, a Yale School of Public Health professor, told me. “I would have thought we would have done a better job protecting our nursing homes.”
I thought I would share the responses in full, with some light editing for clarity.
Jennifer Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation:
My February self was indeed worried. Things were escalating fast and I increasingly believed, from reviewing the emerging data, that the U.S. was barreling toward treacherous territory. However, I in no way envisioned we would get to 200,000 deaths. In part because that was not (yet) the scale being discussed but also because this was not inevitable. Many of these deaths could have been prevented, if the response had been different.
Josh Michaud, associate director for global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation:
It was really hard in February to imagine there would be 200,000 dead in the US in a matter of months. After all, the first state emergency declaration in the US didn’t come until the end of February (in Washington), and we didn’t know the extent of the disease in Italy, Iran, and other places. It wasn’t until March that the Imperial College model was released (projecting the potential for a million deaths or more in the US), the NBA shut down, Tom Hanks was infected, etc. We didn’t know about the US testing debacle yet. Stay-at-home orders were not yet being talked about. So back in February I don’t think it had dawned on most just how bad things could get. Even so, looking back it’s clear that many US deaths could have been prevented with a different national course of action and it’s not like 200,000 deaths was a foregone conclusion at all.
David Rehkopf, a social epidemiologist at Stanford University:
There are a lot of proximal reasons here specific to how we didn’t react, how people didn’t take it seriously, the lack of universal health care, the distrust of government right now, lack of a clear message that really matter. But I’d like to point out that the US is currently 46th in the world in terms of life expectancy. So why would COVID-19 deaths be any different? All of these same factors that impact our COVID prevalence and COVID deaths also are in many ways similar to what leads to our higher overall deaths as well. But what is important to realize is that is wasn’t always this way in the US. From 1975-1980, we were 17th in the world in life expectancy. But there has been a slow (and recently not so slow) decline since the early 1980s.
David Celentano, chair of Johns Hopkins University’s epidemiology department:
Shocked – that would be the word that I would say captures my response to our current death numbers from the vantage point of February. By mid-March we were locked down. The doubling time of numbers of infections has truly shown we are not serious in regard to a national approach to COVID-19. This represents the failure of the national leadership, the failings of the executive branch, the emasculation and politicization of the CDC and FDA, and the skepticism of science by large segments of the public, egged on by the president. My guess is that we will be at 400,000 by the close of the year; I certainly hope not.
Kumi Smith, an epidemiology professor at the University of Minnesota:
The things that have surprised me most in hindsight: - That it took so long for the US CDC to develop and distribute a test. Precious time was lost as they tried to recover from the first failed test; this set us on a whole different epidemic trajectory. - That the White House would ever try to assume the role of public health messenger to the public. And that the CDC has taken as much of a back seat as it has. There’s a protocol for issuing out consistent and up-to-date public health messaging to the public but you wouldn’t know it from how things have gone. - That mask wearing would become so politicized (though someone did recently share with me a story about anti-maskers during the 1918 pandemic so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised). If you take into account all of these things, the death toll is sadly not all that surprising.
Eleanor Murray, a Boston University epidemiologist:
In February, I was definitely watching COVID carefully, but I also felt confident that the administration would activate a coordinated epidemic response and that such a response would control the spread of the virus relatively quickly and successfully. Clearly I was very wrong about that. Not only was there no clear coordinated response, many of the pandemic preparations that had been made over the previous two decades had been scrapped, canceled, or left to lapse/ expire, making it difficult for other levels of government to step in to the leadership void. I made a tweet sometime in February in response to someone asking for a prediction of what COVID would look like that said something like: right now our best guess for what will happen is to look at historical examples of similar outbreaks – those are SARS & MERS and both were pretty much contained by one year out; not at all like the 1918 flu. I still think that at the time that was a reasonable prediction, given what we knew, but it’s clear that the pandemic has not played out like SARS or MERS. Some of that has to do with features of the virus – the presence of pre-symptomatic spread makes control much harder for SARS-CoV-2 than for SARS. But a lot of it has to do with failures in response.
Tara Smith, an epidemiologist at Kent State University:
In February, I knew 200,000 deaths were theoretically possible, but I honestly didn’t believe we’d get to that point. Surely we’d get it under control well before that level of mortality, right? I hadn’t anticipated not only the lack of federal response, but the active undermining of our federal scientific leadership within the CDC, FDA, and NIH. I had expected a potentially bumpy road, and resistance from anti-science folk (though I anticipated that being directed toward the vaccine; I hadn’t considered mask mandates in February), but not this level of dysfunction that we’ve seen only amplify since early in the epidemic.
Caitlin Rivers, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security:
I think we started off on the wrong foot with our struggles to scale diagnostic testing and identify cases. By the time community transmission was first recognized, I think we already had substantial outbreaks underway. We fell behind and have struggled to catch up ever since, though for more reasons than just diagnostic testing shortages. There have been gaps in the federal response, notably a lack of clear overall strategy. Although state and local leaders have done the best they can, I think a lack of a national approach has held us back.
Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida:
In the spring, I participated in a series of expert surveys facilitated by Nick Reich and colleagues at UMass. I was able to look back and see what I had put for predictions. My May predictions for the year-end totals are below. So by December, we will likely exceed my 90th percentile prediction. It is sad. I expected that this would be challenging, but I didn’t expect how desensitized we as a country would become to over 1,000 Americans dying a day. The goalposts keep moving, and what once seemed unimaginable is now a daily reality. Sometimes I think it is worth reminding people that we have various models to forecast cumulative deaths, but infectious diseases are not the weather. What ultimately will happen depends upon our actions, and so much more death does not need to be foretold. What more can we be doing to keep people safe? Be it testing, tracing, ventilation, mask-wearing, finding safer alternatives to activities. And demanding greater action from our politicians to make this possible.
This story appears in VoxCare, a newsletter from Vox on the latest twists and turns in America’s health care debate. Sign up to get VoxCare in your inbox along with more health care stats and news.


vox--2020-09-23--Marvel pushes Black Widow to 2021, delaying the MCU’s future even further

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been stopped in its tracks until 2021 .
On Wednesday , Variety reported that Disney has again delayed the release of Black Widow , the next scheduled Marvel film , from November 6 , 2020 , to May 7 , 2021 .
That ’ s the second delay for the film , which stars Scarlett Johansson as her Avengers character .
It was originally scheduled for a May 1 , 2020 , release , before the Covid-19 pandemic led Disney to bump it to the fall .
Now the film will premiere more than a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Black Widow ’ s rescheduling comes a domino effect for the other Marvel films in the queue : Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Eternals .
Eternals had been moved from a November 6 , 2020 , release to February 12 , 2021 .
Now it has again moved to November 5 , 2021 .
Shang-Chi was first scheduled for February 12 , then moved to May 7 ; it will now premiere on July 9 .
The delay of these three movies is just the latest in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worldwide pandemic .
Movie theaters involve large gatherings of people , and while many theaters are now open again in the US and around the world , there isn ’ t a general feeling that everyone ’ s ready to go back to seeing movies the way we used to before the coronavirus .
That “ let ’ s all go to the movies ” moment may not even come until there ’ s an accessible and successful vaccine .
For studios like Disney , which owns Marvel , lockdowns and social distancing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decide among a few options : delay a movie , release a movie anyway , or maybe release a movie directly onto a streaming service like Disney+ .
Disney released New Mutants , a long-delayed X-Men spinoff it acquired when the company bought Twentieth Century Fox , in theaters in August .
Disney then chose to release Mulan , first slated for theaters in March , at a premium on its Disney+ streaming service and in some theaters worldwide earlier this month .
New Mutants hauled in $ 35 million worldwide , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ haul has yet to be disclosed , it ’ s only made $ 57 million in its international box office — a disappointing figure when you consider it cost around $ 200 million to make .
The lack of box office enthusiasm and low prospects for budget recuperation , as well as factors like some theaters not being open and people still having qualms about sitting in a theater for two hours , may be the reason Marvel decided to push Black Widow to 2021 .
But because this is Marvel , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lengthy schedule of movies ahead , a Black Widow push means a push for every subsequent Marvel film .
Shang-Chi , Marvel ’ s first superhero movie with a predominantly Asian and Asian American cast , was originally set to follow Black Widow ’ s and Eternals ’ s 2020 releases .
Both Shang-Chi and Eternals , the latter of which is helmed by award-winning director Chloé Zhao , are set to introduce new characters to the MCU and perhaps give us more forward-looking stories than Black Widow will .
( Black Widow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ takes place before the events of Avengers : Infinity War and Avengers : Endgame . )
Eternals also stars big-name actors including Angelina Jolie , Salma Hayek , Kit Harington , and Kumail Nanjiani , fueling further interest .
There ’ s an added layer of excitement surrounding that film because of Zhao ’ s talent and rising profile .
Zhao ’ s new film Nomadland , starring Frances McDormand , is set for a December 4 release and is considered an Oscar frontrunner after winning the coveted Audience Award at the Toronto @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these delays , the first glimpse into a post-Endgame Marvel Universe may be the weird and wacky Disney+ TV series WandaVision .
It has no release date yet but is expected to hit Disney+ by the end of this year .
Marvel has said its television shows will tie into the movie universe — a universe we ’ ll have to wait a few more months to pick back up again .
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The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been stopped in its tracks until 2021. On Wednesday, Variety reported that Disney has again delayed the release of Black Widow, the next scheduled Marvel film, from November 6, 2020, to May 7, 2021.
That’s the second delay for the film, which stars Scarlett Johansson as her Avengers character. It was originally scheduled for a May 1, 2020, release, before the Covid-19 pandemic led Disney to bump it to the fall. Now the film will premiere more than a year after its original date.
And with Black Widow’s rescheduling comes a domino effect for the other Marvel films in the queue: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Eternals. Eternals had been moved from a November 6, 2020, release to February 12, 2021. Now it has again moved to November 5, 2021. Shang-Chi was first scheduled for February 12, then moved to May 7; it will now premiere on July 9.
The delay of these three movies is just the latest in a series of postponements and reactions to the worldwide pandemic. Movie theaters involve large gatherings of people, and while many theaters are now open again in the US and around the world, there isn’t a general feeling that everyone’s ready to go back to seeing movies the way we used to before the coronavirus. That “let’s all go to the movies” moment may not even come until there’s an accessible and successful vaccine.
For studios like Disney, which owns Marvel, lockdowns and social distancing have created a situation where they must decide among a few options: delay a movie, release a movie anyway, or maybe release a movie directly onto a streaming service like Disney+. Disney released New Mutants, a long-delayed X-Men spinoff it acquired when the company bought Twentieth Century Fox, in theaters in August. Disney then chose to release Mulan, first slated for theaters in March, at a premium on its Disney+ streaming service and in some theaters worldwide earlier this month. New Mutants hauled in $35 million worldwide, and while Mulan’s official digital download haul has yet to be disclosed, it’s only made $57 million in its international box office — a disappointing figure when you consider it cost around $200 million to make.
The lack of box office enthusiasm and low prospects for budget recuperation, as well as factors like some theaters not being open and people still having qualms about sitting in a theater for two hours, may be the reason Marvel decided to push Black Widow to 2021.
But because this is Marvel, and Marvel has a connected universe and a lengthy schedule of movies ahead, a Black Widow push means a push for every subsequent Marvel film. Shang-Chi, Marvel’s first superhero movie with a predominantly Asian and Asian American cast, was originally set to follow Black Widow’s and Eternals’s 2020 releases. Both Shang-Chi and Eternals, the latter of which is helmed by award-winning director Chloé Zhao, are set to introduce new characters to the MCU and perhaps give us more forward-looking stories than Black Widow will. (Black Widow is a prequel of sorts, and takes place before the events of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.)
Eternals also stars big-name actors including Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Kit Harington, and Kumail Nanjiani, fueling further interest. There’s an added layer of excitement surrounding that film because of Zhao’s talent and rising profile. Zhao’s new film Nomadland, starring Frances McDormand, is set for a December 4 release and is considered an Oscar frontrunner after winning the coveted Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
With these delays, the first glimpse into a post-Endgame Marvel Universe may be the weird and wacky Disney+ TV series WandaVision. It has no release date yet but is expected to hit Disney+ by the end of this year. Marvel has said its television shows will tie into the movie universe — a universe we’ll have to wait a few more months to pick back up again.


vox--2020-09-23--Trump’s Justice Department proposes legislation that could end the internet as we know it

The Trump administration ’ s Justice Department has made its latest attempt to chip away at a law that allows the internet as we know it to exist : a proposal to Congress to create legislation that would require social media platforms to moderate users consistently or else lose immunity from lawsuits granted by a law called Section 230 .
You may have never heard of it , but Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is the legal backbone of the internet .
The law was created almost 30 years ago to protect internet platforms from liability for many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do on them .
And now it ’ s under threat by one of its biggest beneficiaries : President Trump .
In combination with an executive order issued in May , the Justice Department ’ s proposed law could ensure that the president can say whatever he wants on social media and address the accusation that platforms are biased against conservatives .
( Evidence suggests the contrary . )
Section 230 says that internet platforms that host third-party content — think of tweets on Twitter , posts on Facebook , photos on Instagram @ @ @ @ @ @ @ news outlet ’ s reader comments — are not liable for what those third parties post ( with a few exceptions ) .
For instance , if a Yelp reviewer were to post something defamatory about a business , the business could sue the reviewer for libel , but it couldn ’ t sue Yelp .
Without Section 230 ’ s protections , the internet as we know it today would not exist .
If the law were taken away , many websites driven by user-generated content would likely go dark .
Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in earnest in May after Twitter put a warning label and fact-check on two of his tweets that contained misinformation about mail-in voting , but the ramifications of changing the law would extend far beyond a few tweets .
Here ’ s a look at how Section 230 went from an amendment to a law about internet porn to the pillar of internet free speech to Trump ’ s latest weapon against perceived anti-conservative bias in the media .
In the early ’ 90s , the internet was still in its relatively unregulated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ porn floating around platforms like AOL and the World Wide Web where anyone , including our nation ’ s impressionable children , could see it .
This alarmed some lawmakers .
In an attempt to regulate this situation , in 1995 lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill called the Communications Decency Act which would extend to the internet laws governing obscene and indecent use of telephone services .
This would also make websites and platforms responsible for any indecent or obscene things their users posted .
In the midst of this was a lawsuit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Stratton Oakmont and Prodigy .
The former is featured in The Wolf of Wall Street , and the latter was a pioneer of the early internet .
But in 1995 , Stratton Oakmont sued Prodigy for defamation after an anonymous user claimed on a Prodigy bulletin board that the financial company ’ s president engaged in fraudulent acts .
As the New York Times explains the court ’ s decision : Fearing that the Communications Decency Act would stop the burgeoning internet in its tracks and mindful of the court ’ s decision @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wyden and Rep. Chris Cox authored an amendment that said that “ interactive computer services ” were not responsible for what their users posted , even if those services engaged in some moderation of that third-party content .
The internet companies , in other words , were mere platforms , not publishers .
“ What I was struck by then is that if somebody owned a website or a blog , they could be held personally liable for something posted on their site , ” Wyden explained to Vox ’ s Emily Stewart @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then — and it ’ s the heart of my concern now — if that ’ s the case , it will kill the little guy , the startup , the inventor , the person who is essential for a competitive marketplace .
It will kill them in the crib.
” Section 230 also allows those services to “ restrict access ” to any content they deem objectionable .
In other words , the platforms themselves get to choose what is and what is not acceptable content , and they can decide to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That means the free speech argument frequently employed by people who are suspended or banned from these platforms — that the Constitution says they can write whatever they want — doesn ’ t apply , no matter how many times Laura Loomer tries to test it .
As Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe points out , the First Amendment argument is also generally misused in this context : Wyden likens the dual nature of Section 230 to a sword and a shield for platforms : They ’ re shielded from liability for user @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to moderate it as they see fit .
The Communications Decency Act was signed into law in 1996 .
The indecency and obscenity provisions , which made it a crime to transmit such speech if it could be viewed by a minor , were immediately challenged by civil liberty groups .
The Supreme Court would ultimately strike them down , saying they were too restrictive of free speech .
Section 230 stayed , and the law that was initially meant to restrict free speech on the internet instead became the law that protected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ internet to thrive .
Think about it : Websites like Facebook , Reddit , and YouTube have millions and even billions of users .
If these platforms had to monitor and approve every single thing every user posted , they simply wouldn ’ t be able to exist .
No website or platform can moderate at such an incredible scale , and no one wants to open themselves up to the legal liability of doing so .
That doesn ’ t mean Section 230 is perfect .
Some argue that it gives platforms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the worst parts of the internet — think 8chan or sites that promote racism — to flourish along with the best .
Simply put , internet platforms have been happy to use the shield to protect themselves from lawsuits , but they ’ ve largely ignored the sword to moderate the bad stuff their users upload .
In recent years , Section 230 has come under threat .
In 2018 , two bills — the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act ( FOSTA ) and the Stop Enabling Sex @ @ @ @ @ @ @ signed into law , which changed parts of Section 230 .
Now , platforms could be deemed responsible for prostitution ads posted by third parties .
These were ostensibly meant to make it easier for authorities to go after websites that were used for sex trafficking , but they did this by carving out an exception to Section 230 .
The law was vulnerable .
Amid all of this was a growing public sentiment that social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook were becoming too powerful .
In the minds of many , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2016 presidential election by offering up its user data to shady outfits like Cambridge Analytica .
There were also allegations of anti-conservative bias .
Right-wing figures who once rode the internet ’ s relative lack of moderation to fame and fortune were being held accountable for various infringements of hateful content rules and kicked off the very platforms that helped created them .
Alex Jones and his expulsion from Facebook and other social media platforms is perhaps the most illustrative example of this .
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz , demonstrating a profound misunderstanding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 op-ed that the law required the internet platforms it was designed to protect to be “ neutral public forums.
” Lawmakers have tried to introduce legislation that would fulfill that promise ever since .
Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert introduced the Biased Algorithm Deterrence Act in 2019 , which would consider any social media service that used algorithms to moderate content without the user ’ s permission or knowledge to be legally considered a publisher , not a platform , thereby removing Section 230 ’ s protections .
( Remember the Stratton Oakmont @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have hearkened back to that era . )
Later that year , Republican Sen. Josh Hawley introduced the Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act , which would require that , in order to be granted Section 230 protections , social media companies would have to show the Federal Trade Commission ( FTC ) that their content moderation practices were politically neutral .
Neither of those bills went anywhere , but the implications were obvious : Emboldened by FOSTA-SESTA , the two sex-trafficking bills from 2018 , lawmakers not only wanted to chip away @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out ways to do it .
More likely to succeed is a bipartisan bill introduced in March called the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies ( EARN IT ) Act , from Sens .
Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal .
Here , the lawmakers used the prevention of child pornography as an avenue to erode Section 230 by requiring companies to follow a set of “ best practices ” developed by a newly established commission or else lose their Section 230 immunity from civil lawsuits over child pornography postings .
Some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would extend to requiring tech companies to provide law enforcement with access to all user content .
The law has bipartisan support , with Hawley and Democrat Dianne Feinstein among its cosponsors .
President Trump , who has benefited greatly from social media , is trying to dial back Section 230 ’ s protections through an executive order .
Back in May , Trump signed his “ Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship ” roughly 48 hours after Twitter applied a new policy of flagging potentially false or misleading content to two of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the signing ceremony , Trump referred to Twitter ’ s actions as “ editorial decisions , ” and Attorney General Barr referred to social media companies as “ publishers.
” “ They ’ ve had unchecked power to censure , restrict , edit , shape , hide , alter virtually any form of communication between private citizens or large public audiences , ” Trump said at the time .
“ We can not allow that to happen , especially when they go about doing what they ’ re doing.
” The order says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ good faith ” moderation of content should be considered publishers and therefore not entitled to Section 230 ’ s protections .
It also calls on the Federal Communications Commission ( FCC ) to propose regulations that clarify what constitutes “ good faith ; ” the FTC to take action against “ large internet platforms ” that “ restrict speech ; ” and the attorney general to work with state attorneys general to see if those platforms violate any state laws regarding unfair business practices .
While the order talks a big game @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to think much — or even any — of it can be backed up , citing First Amendment concerns .
It ’ s also unclear whether or not the FCC has the authority to regulate Section 230 in this way , or if the president can change the scope of a law without any congressional approval .
Barr is not a fan of Section 230 , and his Department of Justice has been looking into the law and how he believes it allows “ selective ” removal of political speech .
This has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Justice Department in June and the legislation proposal sent to Congress on Wednesday .
The proposal includes the addition of a “ good faith ” section requiring platforms to spell out their moderation rules , follow them to the letter , explain any moderation decisions to the user whose content is being moderated , and provide the user with the chance to respond .
There are also additional carve-outs that would remove civil lawsuit immunity for material that violates anti-terrorism , child sex abuse , cyberstalking , and antitrust laws .
“ For @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shield for online platforms to operate with impunity , ” Barr said in a statement .
“ Ensuring that the internet is a safe , but also vibrant , open and competitive environment is vitally important to America .
We therefore urge Congress to make these necessary reforms to Section 230 and begin to hold online platforms accountable both when they unlawfully censor speech and when they knowingly facilitate criminal activity online.
” It ’ s not clear how Barr determined that platforms are “ unlawfully ” censoring speech , as First Amendment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Trump and Barr will be meeting with some Republican state attorneys general on Wednesday , where they will , according to reports , discuss ways state laws can be used to further dictate how and when social media platforms can moderate their users ’ speech .
“ As the co-author of Section 230 , let me make this clear : There is nothing in the law about political neutrality , ” Wyden said .
“ It does not say companies like Twitter are forced to carry misinformation about voting , especially from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 230 will only make online content more likely to be false and dangerous.
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You may have never heard of it, but Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is the legal backbone of the internet. The law was created almost 30 years ago to protect internet platforms from liability for many of the things third parties say or do on them.
Decades later, it’s never been more controversial. People from both political parties and all three branches of government have threatened to reform or even repeal it. The debate centers around whether we should reconsider a law from the internet’s infancy that was meant to help struggling websites and internet-based companies grow. After all, these internet-based businesses are now some of the biggest and most powerful in the world, and users’ ability to speak freely on them bears much bigger consequences.
While President Biden pushes Congress to pass laws to reform Section 230, its fate may lie in the hands of the judicial branch, as the Supreme Court is considering two cases — one involving YouTube and Google, another targeting Twitter — that could significantly change the law and, therefore, the internet it helped create.
Section 230 says that internet platforms hosting third-party content are not liable for what those third parties post (with a few exceptions). That third-party content could include things like a news outlet’s reader comments, tweets on Twitter, posts on Facebook, photos on Instagram, or reviews on Yelp. If a Yelp reviewer were to post something defamatory about a business, for example, the business could sue the reviewer for libel, but thanks to Section 230, it couldn’t sue Yelp.
Without Section 230’s protections, the internet as we know it today would not exist. If the law were taken away, many websites driven by user-generated content would likely go dark. A repeal of Section 230 wouldn’t just affect the big platforms that seem to get all the negative attention, either. It could affect websites of all sizes and online discourse.
Section 230’s salacious origins
In the early ’90s, the internet was still in its relatively unregulated infancy. There was a lot of porn floating around, and anyone, including impressionable children, could easily find and see it. This alarmed some lawmakers. In an attempt to regulate this situation, in 1995 lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill called the Communications Decency Act, which would extend laws governing obscene and indecent use of telephone services to the internet. This would also make websites and platforms responsible for any indecent or obscene things their users posted.
In the midst of this was a lawsuit between two companies you might recognize: Stratton Oakmont and Prodigy. The former is featured in The Wolf of Wall Street, and the latter was a pioneer of the early internet. But in 1994, Stratton Oakmont sued Prodigy for defamation after an anonymous user claimed on a Prodigy bulletin board that the financial company’s president engaged in fraudulent acts. The court ruled in Stratton Oakmont’s favor, saying that because Prodigy moderated posts on its forums, it exercised editorial control that made it just as liable for the speech on its platform as the people who actually made that speech. Meanwhile, Prodigy’s rival online service, Compuserve, was found not liable for a user’s speech in an earlier case because Compuserve didn’t moderate content.
Fearing that the Communications Decency Act would stop the burgeoning internet in its tracks, and mindful of the Prodigy decision, then-Rep. (now Sen.) Ron Wyden and Rep. Chris Cox authored an amendment to CDA that said “interactive computer services” were not responsible for what their users posted, even if those services engaged in some moderation of that third-party content.
“What I was struck by then is that if somebody owned a website or a blog, they could be held personally liable for something posted on their site,” Wyden told Vox’s Emily Stewart in 2019. “And I said then — and it’s the heart of my concern now — if that’s the case, it will kill the little guy, the startup, the inventor, the person who is essential for a competitive marketplace. It will kill them in the crib.”
As the beginning of Section 230 says: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” These are considered by some to be the 26 words that created the internet, but the law says more than that.
Section 230 also allows those services to “restrict access” to any content they deem objectionable. In other words, the platforms themselves get to choose what is and what is not acceptable content, and they can decide to host it or moderate it accordingly. That means the free speech argument frequently employed by people who are suspended or banned from these platforms — that their Constitutional right to free speech has been violated — doesn’t apply. Wyden likens the dual nature of Section 230 to a sword and a shield for platforms: They’re shielded from liability for user content, and they have a sword to moderate it as they see fit.
The Communications Decency Act was signed into law in 1996. The indecency and obscenity provisions about transmitting porn to minors were immediately challenged by civil liberty groups and struck down by the Supreme Court, which said they were too restrictive of free speech. Section 230 stayed, and so a law that was initially meant to restrict free speech on the internet instead became the law that protected it.
This protection has allowed the internet to thrive. Think about it: Websites like Facebook, Reddit, and YouTube have millions and even billions of users. If these platforms had to monitor and approve every single thing every user posted, they simply wouldn’t be able to exist. No website or platform can moderate at such an incredible scale, and no one wants to open themselves up to the legal liability of doing so. On the other hand, a website that didn’t moderate anything at all would quickly become a spam-filled cesspool that few people would want to swim in.
That doesn’t mean Section 230 is perfect. Some argue that it gives platforms too little accountability, allowing some of the worst parts of the internet to flourish. Others say it allows platforms that have become hugely influential and important to suppress and censor speech based on their own whims or supposed political biases. Depending on who you talk to, internet platforms are either using the sword too much or not enough. Either way, they’re hiding behind the shield to protect themselves from lawsuits while they do it. Though it has been a law for nearly three decades, Section 230’s existence may have never been as precarious as it is now.
The Supreme Court might determine Section 230’s fate
Justice Clarence Thomas has made no secret of his desire for the court to consider Section 230, saying in multiple opinions that he believes lower courts have interpreted it to give too-broad protections to what have become very powerful companies. He got his wish in February 2023, when the court heard two similar cases that include it. In both, plaintiffs argued that their family members were killed by terrorists who posted content on those platforms. In the first, Gonzalez v. Google, the family of a woman killed in a 2015 terrorist attack in France said YouTube promoted ISIS videos and sold advertising on them, thereby materially supporting ISIS. In Twitter v. Taamneh, the family of a man killed in a 2017 ISIS attack in Turkey said the platform didn’t go far enough to identify and remove ISIS content, which is in violation of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act — and could then mean that Section 230 doesn’t apply to such content.
These cases give the Supreme Court the chance to reshape, redefine, or even repeal the foundational law of the internet, which could fundamentally change it. And while the Supreme Court chose to take these cases on, it’s not certain that they’ll rule in favor of the plaintiffs. In oral arguments in late February, several justices didn’t seem too convinced during the Gonzalez v. Google arguments that they could or should, especially considering the monumental possible consequences and impact of such a decision. In Twitter v. Taamneh, the justices focused more on if and how the Sponsors of Terrorism law applied to tweets than they did on Section 230. The rulings are expected in June.
In the meantime, don’t expect the original authors of Section 230 to go away quietly. Wyden and Cox submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court for the Gonzalez case, where they said: “The real-time transmission of user-generated content that Section 230 fosters has become a backbone of online activity, relied upon by innumerable Internet users and platforms alike. Given the enormous volume of content created by Internet users today, Section 230’s protection is even more important now than when the statute was enacted.”
Congress and presidents are getting sick of Section 230, too
In 2018, two bills — the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) — were signed into law, which changed parts of Section 230. The updates mean that platforms can now be deemed responsible for prostitution ads posted by third parties. These changes were ostensibly meant to make it easier for authorities to go after websites that were used for sex trafficking, but it did so by carving out an exception to Section 230. That could open the door to even more exceptions in the future.
Amid all of this was a growing public sentiment that social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook were becoming too powerful. In the minds of many, Facebook even influenced the outcome of the 2016 presidential election by offering up its user data to shady outfits like Cambridge Analytica. There were also allegations of anti-conservative bias. Right-wing figures who once rode the internet’s relative lack of moderation to fame and fortune were being held accountable for various infringements of hateful content rules and kicked off the very platforms that helped create them. Alex Jones and his expulsion from Facebook and other social media platforms — even Twitter under Elon Musk won’t let him back — is perhaps the best example of this.
In a 2018 op-ed, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) claimed that Section 230 required the internet platforms it was designed to protect to be “neutral public forums.” The law doesn’t actually say that, but many Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation that would fulfill that promise. On the other side, Democrats have introduced bills that would hold social media platforms accountable if they didn’t do more to prevent harmful content or if their algorithms promoted it.
There are some bipartisan efforts to change Section 230, too. The EARN IT Act from Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), for example, would remove Section 230 immunity from platforms that didn’t follow a set of best practices to detect and remove child sexual abuse material. The partisan bills haven’t really gotten anywhere in Congress. But EARN IT, which was introduced in the last two sessions, was passed out of committee in the Senate and ready for a Senate floor vote. That vote never came, but Blumenthal and Graham have already signaled that they plan to reintroduce EARN IT this session for a third try.
In the executive branch, former President Trump became a very vocal critic of Section 230 in 2020 after Twitter and Facebook started deleting and tagging his posts that contained inaccuracies about Covid-19 and mail-in voting. He issued an executive order that said Section 230 protections should only apply to platforms that have “good faith” moderation, and then called on the FCC to make rules about what constituted good faith. This didn’t happen, and President Biden revoked the executive order months after taking office.
But Biden isn’t a fan of Section 230, either. During his presidential campaign, he said he wanted it repealed. As president, Biden has said he wants it to be reformed by Congress. Until Congress can agree on what’s wrong with Section 230, however, it doesn’t look likely that they’ll pass a law that significantly changes it.
However, some Republican states have been making their own anti-Section 230 moves. In 2021, Florida passed the Stop Social Media Censorship Act, which prohibits certain social media platforms from banning politicians or media outlets. That same year, Texas passed HB 20, which forbids large platforms from removing or moderating content based on a user’s viewpoint.
Neither law is currently in effect. A federal judge blocked the Florida law in 2022 due to the possibility of it violating free speech laws as well as Section 230. The state has appealed to the Supreme Court. The Texas law has made a little more progress. A district court blocked the law last year, and then the Fifth Circuit controversially reversed that decision before deciding to stay the law in order to give the Supreme Court the chance to take the case. We’re still waiting to see if it does.
If Section 230 were to be repealed — or even significantly reformed — it really could change the internet as we know it. It remains to be seen if that’s for better or for worse.
Update, February 23, 2023, 3 pm ET: This story, originally published on May 28, 2020, has been updated several times, most recently with the latest news from the Supreme Court cases related to Section 230.