Combating Tony Ortega’s and Arielle Silverstein’s Viral Hate

Arielle Silverstein spreading the Draw Mohammed Day campaign on social media

Beginning around the time of the federal raid to shutdown the Backpage sex ring, headed by Tony Ortega’s former Backpage syndicate, social media platforms began to bogusly claim that any new limits on their operations would “break the internet.” In reality they seem to be the ones doing most of the damage – from the brand of malicious propaganda Tony Ortega pumps out regularly to the online hate speech and extremism his wife Arielle Silverstein traffics in from the comfort of her U.N. office. They have been misusing the existing rules to their advantage to malign those they hate or disagree with.

Unsurprisingly, this has all spawned an avalanche of investigations and oversight, including most recently  inquiries by Congress into the spread of coronavirus misinformation and now a major legislative effort to revisit the legal immunities and protections that have allowed the big platforms like Backpage to grow so wildly successful despite the toxic atmosphere they were created to enable. Presumably the protections offering save havens to smaller homegrown misinformation sites like Tony Ortega’s abysmal blog will also be facing scrutiny.

As we’ve written before, much of the problem lies in the sweeping “safe harbors” lawmakers created in the internet’s early days. Cowards like Tony Ortega and his Backpage co-conspirators may hide behind these laws and wave their First Amendment flags but the tide may soon be changing.

In recent years, Congress has taken baby steps toward reining in the increasingly notorious Section 230 safe harbor, which shields platforms for liability from their role in facilitating a huge range of antisocial abuses online. And a host of new bills are apparently on the way dealing with for fake stories, child exploitation, censorship and discrimination and, indeed, the very same deceptive propaganda and hate incitement both Tony Ortega and Arielle Silverstein trade in.

Perhaps Ortega, Silverstein and their “sources” should take note that their days of plaguing social media with hate-mongering may soon find them permanently restrained from spreading their toxic contagion online.