Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies
axios.com
axios.com
“This week a federal appeals court, ruling in a case brought by conservative activists against social media companies, affirmed that private websites are not public spaces and social media companies don't have First Amendment obligations.
Any truly strong limits to Section 230 would almost certainly require action by Congress.”
Right now we have a situation where the platform owner can collect the fruits of popularity, while the platform users experience basically no-liability gossip, such as empirical claims about businesses.
Anyone who is hated broadly by the internet, whether just or unjust, would like FB to be liable no matter what is right or wrong, because holding hundreds of tiny individuals accountable for tiny wrongs over the web is a losing battle.
It really is a public web space that is operated by a private company, but I can't help but feel that the nuances and similarities of what Twitter really is and what responsibility they truly hold in society is above the courts comprehension.
No, it isn't, any more than a store is a public space because it has windows the public can see into. You have to sign up for a Twitter account and accept their terms of service to post on the site. It's a private platform run by a private company for its own private business interests.
And so if I run a knitting forum I am not allowed to restrict people who want to turn it into a pornography one. And how would it work for spam. This could end up in a situation where a large spammer could force websites to not remove spam.
It sounds unworkable and over the top just to protect some people who aren't even having their rights impeded.
Considering they could log out (or open a private tab) and view the content, obviously it wasn't access to the information that was fundamental but the act of the President taking a step to reduce someone's access.
With that in mind, does the host have the authority to take the same action? Why or why not?
This is not a 1st Amendment issue - after all Trump blocking someone doesn't limit their ability to tweet him or at all - but it's a really weird spot of free speech vs private property vs public forum vs public access vs.. ?
FWIW this is only thematically related, the order concerns the distinction between immune or non-immune activities under Section 230.
If you publish something defamatory on your blog, and you operate it, you may be liable. Section 230 is there to say that if a website merely retransmits your publication, it is not liable for it, so if you publish that same defamatory statement on Facebook, Facebook is not then liable.
However, the argument with the executive order is that if you exercise a level of deliberate control over the content beyond some threshold, or you augment expression (like Twitter did the other day, adding links to contrary opinion pieces next to the President's opinion), you effectively become a publisher of that content.
It's not a completely ridiculous idea either. Consider how diverse the expressions published to Twitter are; at some point it's not that different to choose not to publish some expression, than to express the complement of that expression yourself.
Before S230 that was the case: Executing any editorial control risked you being concluded to be the publisher.
Online providers said this is bullshit, we want be able to remove garbage -- lies, obscene material, defamation, etc. If moderating makes us publishers over everything on our site and legally liable, we can't do that. Make us immune so we can clean up the worst of things, and you can still always go after the actual sources.
So I think it only makes sense to the extent that the world before S230 also made sense. But that's a world where sites like twitter probably couldn't have come into being.
Without S230 the law is bizarre because it treated running a public venue as equivalently of being a publisher for everything that happened in it. It would be like if I ran a shopping mall and some member of the public came in and started calling you a paedophile that you could sue the mall simply because at other times I removed other people who were urinating on the walls.
The parallel would be Twitter commenting on a tweet. As long as they just pass the tweet on to other people, without commenting on it, then they aren't responsible for it's content. But as soon as they say "hey, this might be false information" about a specific tweet then they are responsible for the content of all tweets.
The Supreme Court may eventually take one of these cases and come to a different conclusion.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1194_08l1.pdf
The case was about a government trying to restrict a sex offender from accessing web sites where he could engage in first amendment activities like commenting. The court ruled that they could not, absent a sufficient showing that the restrictions on the appellant's internet usage were necessary to prevent the sex offender from re-offending.
In fact the express language of the ruling states that social media sites are a means for accessing the public square, not that these sites are the public square. Moreover, these dicta statements (i.e., non-binding commentary) are a direct reference to the first amendment mall cases, which similarly involved activities that could occur in a public square. The mall cases held that private malls could ban speech because they were private facilities, thus they were not public squares even though the public could (and frequently did) engage in traditional public square activities in the mall.
TLDR: the private-public distinction matters for First Amendment law. The First Amendment only applies to public properties and public agencies, not private properties or persons.
Perhaps this will end the same way codifying the word “Marriage” in the Defense of Marriage Act did. Nothing like Federalizing a word.
Don't fool yourselves, if Facebook or Twitter wanted to swing an election they absolutely have the power to do that. Isn't that a problem that government is supposed to solve? I'm sorry, and I don't like the guy in charge right now either, but regulation really is the only answer here. Maybe calm down for a minute and let this make its way through the Circuit Courts, refined, watered down, etc etc.
All of that aside, I want my distributed and independent internet back. Maybe we should just be teaching our kids the command line from now on because that might be the only way that we can communicate over this protocol in a civil way.
Others are upset because, as the Constitution is written, he cannot force a private website to carry his speech (the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected “compelled speech”). Although, yes, we should wait for the courts to (hopefully) strike it down.
There’s also the fact that repealing Section 230 would be absolutely detrimental to the internet. Sure, decentralize it all, but, as it stands now, that’s not what the majority of the public want; They want centralization because it makes things easier. Facebook, Twitter, Google/YouTube, etc. are the size they are today because they’re centralized; it makes finding what you want easier.
I don't see how this is repealing anything. It seems like the order is saying that if a company wants Section 230 protection, they have to be very strict about not editorializing anything, and if they do even a little bit, they have to go all the way.
And you can thank the previous guy in charge for setting this precedent, that you can do whatever you want via Executive Order. I have little sympathy here.
>as the Constitution is written, he cannot force a private website to carry his speech
Not quite sure this is actually the question at hand. It's about choice of moderation is it not? In any case ... thankfully we have a Court system that is designed to handle these types of questions.
>There’s also the fact that repealing Section 230 would be absolutely detrimental to the internet.
Not following you. Maybe the social media and tech companies have to hire a lot more layers instead of bloating their HR departments. Probably a good development imo, since HR people like to pretend they work in tech but what they really do is bureaucracy.
That said, I'm not quite sure why Trump would call for it. Doesn't seem like something that would help him.
If we do not police ourselves, the government will do it for us. When law enforcement is expected to deal with everything, they become militarized. I'm not sure what this means for the internet.
Fundamentally the whole exercise is an attempt to conflate Twitters (first amendment!) right to speak its own opinions with somehow "restricting" the rights of their subscribers. And that's insane. Just look at how many people in this very thread are buying into the frame by discussing what big companies should be allowed to censor, when of course nothing of the sort occurred at all.
Trump will be on to some other highly divisive circus act next week. The question of whether Twitter is a public square will persist.
I'd agree, but de facto is not de jure. And if we're going to make them into public spaces legally, it's certainly not going to happen through an executive order. It would require an act of Congress, similar to the restrictions and obligations placed on broadcasters.
Private property is sometimes public space, especially in Twitter's home of California. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v....
The real issue is the extent to which Big Tech platforms can tilt a playing field that a billion people play on. Whether tilting the field to favor their own products, as the EU courts ruled, or their own political preferences or whatever else they want, heaven help you if you are playing against their favored team and have to play on their field. Death by a thousand bad ref calls.
Big Tech is big because of the network effects on the internet, meaning that for many things you want to do, there are lots of choices in theory but just one in practice. They own the whole league. You play on their tilted field or you "can always go start your own" league and play alone. (Google started their own FaceBook. Microsoft started their own phone OS. Now you go start your own Twitter.)
Congress and the courts need to look at these massive network-effects platforms that are claiming the rights of players and non-players and the responsibilities of neither.
>I'd agree, but de facto is not de jure.
In 2018 there was a decision of a district court[1], subsequently reaffirmed by the Courts of Appeal, that the President's twitter account is a "designated public forum". This was widely reported due to it's "Trump cannot block other users" aspect, but might have interesting bearing here.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_First_Amendment_Institu...
Monopoly power and market manipulation is a second order issue.
Legally, it doesn’t matter if people think of Twitter as a public space. No amount of perception turns twitter into a governmental organization or subjects it to laws that only pertain to the government.
This case is even further from the first amendment because Twitter didn’t prevent any speech. It just exercised its own right to free speech alongside the president’s free speech.
Nobody has the right to uncontested or un-responded-to speech.
The more foolish aspect of this is that the President doesn’t have a direct means of striking back against what Twitter actually did (post a Get the Facts link), so he’s trying to punish them by reinterpreting Section 230. This EO definitely has some teeth, but there are provisions in it that I can’t wait to see in court.
For that matter: what about malls? Or university campuses? Or public transit infrastructure provided by private government contractors? What are your free-speech rights when in one of these (privately-owned, public use) places?
I feel like a very extreme edge-case situation could be constructed to test the law here: incorporate a town; and then, as your first act as mayor, sell the whole of the town's incorporated territory to a private corporation. Have the corporation declare that anyone engaging in democratic actions on "its property" (e.g. holding a municipal election) is trespassing. Are you now the town's autocratic mayor-for-life, however-many people may move in?
https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/constitutional....
Main Points from the page.
- The First Amendment is content-neutral and provides a nonpolitical framework for regulating speech. It would behoove social media companies to abide by it.
- Rather than resort to censorship, social media companies can offer users tools that block unwanted content, including content that could be hurtful or offensive.
- Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms have become the new public square. Rather than resorting to corporate speech policies, these companies should promote free speech principles in the U.S. and abroad.
- Social media companies are global. The U.S. Constitution is based on American values and, therefore, should not be used to regulate international platforms.
- The spread of hateful digital content dilutes meaningful discourse and, in some cases, causes emotional and physical harm. Social media companies have a duty to offer safe, welcoming platforms for users.
From election interference to “fake news,” nefarious actors are using social media to undermine democracies and deepen partisan divides. Social media companies must act to prevent this type of conduct.
The Debaters
David French - Senior Writer, National Review
Corynne McSherry - Legal Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Nathaniel Persily - Professor, Stanford Law
Marietje Schaake - International Policy Director, Stanford's Cyber Policy Center & Fmr. Member, European Parliament
> "Rather than resort to censorship, social media companies can offer users tools that block unwanted content, including content that could be hurtful or offensive."
I think this is an interesting idea, but I think it would effectively mean de facto speech censorship like HN has with flagged/dead comments. Sure they exist, but most users don't have them on, and the larger the forum, the more annoying having them on will be. Given the amount of spam/hate comments on Twitter, no sane user would ever turn that feature on. So you end up right back where we are now, only by technicality they aren't censored. I suppose a positive, but then it gets right back into editorialization arguments re what content is flagged or "blocked".
> Social media companies must act to prevent this type of conduct.
Even if most can agree here, this doesn't appear to lay out concrete policies, nor does anyone appear to have any proposed that align with these main points that I know of. I didn't watch the media specifically so if you have any detail on those specifics or any concrete recommendations they make, a summary would be very much appreciated.
This has nothing to do with any real person, but is just a hypothetical situation pertaining to this question in your post:
Let's say an account X with many followers calls you a pedophile. You're not, of course, so you responded and said you weren't, but since the followers tend to like X, they don't listen to you. X's followers then dox you, find your address, and start making threats to you outside of the realm of social media.
Does the model of "the people decide what is wrong and what is right, what is true and what is false, what is fact is and what is fiction" hold up here?
Instead, this was an attempt to high-road one of the most powerful trolls in history, and high-roading a troll is the absolute most losing strategy around. Basically, however imperfect you are, that's how much ammo you've just given the troll. Twitter is very imperfect, so 1/10, tactless strats imo.
And the whole "fact-check" thing is just such a bad idea in general. Twitter really needs to hire some trolls to pass these ideas passed first.
- Trump claimed that mail-in ballots would lead to "a Rigged Election." However, fact-checkers say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud.
- Trump falsely claimed that California will send mail-in ballots to "anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there." In fact, only registered voters will receive ballots.
- Five states already vote entirely by mail and all states offer some form of mail-in absentee voting, according to NBC News.
Also, keep in mind that Twitter did not add the warning just because they thought the information was incorrect. They added the warning because they believe it was incorrect AND because they felt it's purpose was "manipulating or interfering in elections or other civic processes" (https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/election-inte...).
I'm not sure how I feel about points 1 and 3, but point number 2 seems like a pretty fair reason to label the tweet with the warning, IMO. Trump provided factually incorrect information about voter registration to his millions of followers.
I agree I don't want them to decided what is right and wrong, but if they hold themselves to the rules of only labeling confirmed incorrect information about civic processes. I have no problem with what they are doing.
> The people made the platform successful, let the people decide what is wrong and what is right, what is true and what is false, what is fact is and what is fiction.
That's not what is happening anymore though. Large chunks of Twitter are not run by "the people" anymore. Twitter is in an endless battle with large groups of bots designed to present carefully curated misinformation as organic.
It's easy to say Twitter should just be hands-off and let the people decide, but that isn't an option unless your definition of "the people" is small special interest groups who have paid bot farms to push their message.
No freedom is lost here, people can (and will) decide that the factcheckers are wrong and dumb.
How could a fact-check not be considered free speech like anything else and why shouldn’t twitter be able to post content?
If you and I meet in a bar, and over some drinks I tell you that I’m the CEO of Uber, and the tavern owner leans in and say, “No he’s not,” how is that being the “sole arbiter of truth?” If I don’t like it, I should meet you somewhere else.
This is also no different than if Daniel Dale interviews me, and I say I founded YCombinator. When he prints the article, he says, “Reg lied.” How is that making Dale the ‘sole arbiter of truth?”
Nobody told Trump to use Twitter. He’s actually better off on Twitter than I would be in either of the scenarios I mentioned, because moments after he tweets, millions of his followers can reply and agree with his statements.
There is no way Twitter’s “fact check” is the sole arbiter of truth, when everyone can read thousands of replies that disagree with what Twitter claims are facts, and when Mr. Trump can say whatever he likes on the news, or when calling into some Fox show, without Twitter ‘fact-bombing’ him.
Here is the audio version: https://playthis.link/https://pastebin.com/0mzv8heR
At the risk of this being downvoted to oblivion, why doesn't he think that Twitter, a privately run company, has the right to fact-check claims made on their site? Even if there were some secret evil liberal agenda on Twitter, which there absolutely is not, why aren't they allowed to do that exactly? Is he planning on holding Fox News to the same standard and make them put less racism apologia on their network?
Because seems to be presenting themselves as a neutral platform, which they have shown themselves to not be.
EDIT: Just to clarify, obviously Twitter is not presenting themselves to users as a neutral platform. But for legal purposes, they are cloaking themselves in the same privileged status as a phone company, when they clearly are not.
B) Verizon (Comcast, Spectrum, etc...) are closer to something like a utility. I wouldn't be supportive of a water or electricity company not providing services to people I disagree with. Twitter is not a utility, it's a glorified fortune-cookie-sharing site. It's a not a "right", and there's no reason that you should feel entitled to it.
Eh? Twitter bans accounts _all the time_. It hides stuff from search, and hides potentially explicit content behind an "are you sure you want to see this?" It is in no way a neutral platform. Fact-checking world leaders was originally conceived by twitter as an alternative to just banning them when they get dangerous.
2. Twitter has never had any obligation to be a neutral platform
https://gizmodo.com/comcast-to-customer-who-noticed-it-secre...
Hum I don't think that could possibly be true. What leads you to think this? Phone companies existed before Section 230 and as far as I know their behavior didn't change. Have you read Section 230? It definitely reads like it was passed to give entities like Twitter more power to delete objectionable content and it definitely doesn't read to me like it obligates them to be neutral.
By the logic of the order, Fox News should also lose their immunity and be liable for suit for anything posted by commenters to their online articles.
They still enjoy immunity with respect to user-posted content, because that is part of the explicit language of the statute and a Presidential Order can't override statutory language.
Here is a quote from him: "Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate,” [...] “It would also not silence that leader, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”
He apparently feels there will be wider discussion from all parts of the political spectrum if things are left as they are. Should Trump move to a platform where he has more control over the format, it might just make it easier for him to suppress or obfuscate dissent.
I don't know if Dorsey is making the right call here, but he has clearly thought about it a lot, and discussed those thoughts publicly.
A better approach may be to offer a resource page that shows every news article on the topic, with guidelines on political leaning, how credible each article is etc so that readers can exercise their critical thinking to figure out what to believe. For example: https://story.thefactual.com/news/story/239362-Social-Media shows 285 related articles.
Disclosure: above page is from my startup, The Factual.
Similarly, I'm conflicted. I understand Jack's argument, but I'm not sure he's making the right call here. It is highly unlikely Trump could build a platform or co-opt one that has the reach of Twitter. And arguably, the terms of service should apply equally to everyone on the platform. Trump has engaged in hate speech and targeted his followers against individuals in a way that probably destroyed their lives (death threats, etc.). IMHO, Twitter should enforce their TOS against all users in a fair and equal way, regardless of whether they are POTUS or a normal citizen.
If Twitter did ban his account, what about other equally bad but smaller accounts? How many can they ban?
It seems like Twitter is in a lose-lose situation here.
Edit: I know election and inauguration are separate, I was wondering about the significance of this to Twitter.
If you are serious, it's because Trump has done more for the legitimacy and usage of Twitter than any engineer, businessperson, or celebrity other than Dorsey & cofounders.
To be clear: Twitter may take a tough official stance against Trump, but behind closed doors he is the MVP.
[1]:https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TWTR/twitter/stock...
[2]: https://www.macrotrends.net/2488/sp500-10-year-daily-chart
1. Barack Obama, 118 million.
2. Justin Bieber, 111.
3. Katy Perry, 108.
4. Rihanna, 96.
5. Taylor Swift, 86.
6. Christiano Ronoldy, 84.
7. Lady Gaga, 81.
8. Donald Trump, 80.
9. Ellen DeGeneres, 80.
10. Ariana Grande, 74.
The next highest politican is Indian Prime Minister Modi, at #17 with 57 million. The Office of the Prime Minister of India is at #42, with 35 million. Obama, Trump, and Modi are the only politicians in the top 50.
The only individuals in the top 50 who are not those three or entertainers (counting athletes as entertainers) are Bill Gates at #22 with 50 million and Elon Musk at 47 with 34 million.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_Twitter_...
This should be a well-known fact but some people still don't accept it, 4 years after he was elected (will 8 years do the trick?)
Is this not similar to the approach and actions of other large State actors out there that hold a lot of authoritative power?
From a 3rd country's perspective, really, all authoritative countries look the same in their policies barring nuances.
I can't see how a Twitter/FB feed is substantively different from a curated "letters to the editor" section in a newspaper and I cannot for the life of me understand why it is treated different legally.
Would love to hear arguments that either 1) these social media sites are not actually publishing or 2) social media publishing is somehow different from publishing in other media.
With S230, companies can remove the worst, most obvious ofenses without fearing being held accountable by the things they didn't find.
Both companies offer non-algorithmic feeds where users are 100% in control of what they see. Even with an algorithmic feed, users are still doing far more curation than any "curation" that an algorithm does, which is random at best in terms of intention by these companies at a political level.
I don't see how we interpret that as publishing any more than posts on a forum. The only "editorial" stances these companies take is to moderate content - not delete or edit, only flag and delete. This case is only really interesting because it's a new type of flagging that has not been broadly applied yet against a president.
I'm not sure how we got the question reversed - how in the world is Twitter/Facebook considered a publisher? They have millions and millions of users that write whatever they want without any editorial help, only moderation like that of most all internet forums.
This begs the question - what is "publishing" defined as, and what are the relevant features? I'm hard pressed to think of a useful definition of publishing that includes Twitter/Facebook.
What our president doing is abusing opponents using his popular twitter account as a megaphone while violating the TOS.
In the US, we have a long history of allowing politicians to get away with illegal activities in the name of not rocking the boat. Every once in a while someone comes along and tries to use that to their advantage, and ideally the system would punish them by media pointing out the issue and people not voting for them. But somehow, due to some nexus of insanity, someone like Trump was catapulted into office.
Twitter responded to a message from authority by adding their own, dissenting message, not censoring the first message.
I guess this kind of double-speak is what we can expect now.
The Executive (created to execute the laws enacted by Congress) states that they WILL NOT execute a portion of Congressional Law (the portion that stipulates oversight of the Executive) because they “don’t understand” and because the Constitution has a clause stating that they (the Executive) must execute the laws faithfully.
I think it is the patent for “what to expect moving forward”.
Fraud and libel come close, but there are important requirements in both cases beyond truth value.
I think you're drastically overestimating the profitability of a single twitter user.
They have hundreds of millions of active users. It would probably be far easier and more cost effective to ban every user that causes them any amount of grief, than to investigate and potentially sue them.
1. Start a website where users are able to write arbitrary articles.
2. Have a bot systematically spam your site with all possible articles (suitably limited so as to make this technically doable).
3. Systematically weed out all the articles which are NOT equal to the articles you actually wanted to publish.
Voila, now you've published all and only the articles you wanted, and yet you're just an innocent platform, not a publisher!
If your site is sufficiently widely used, you can even cut out step 2 and replace it with organic human beings.
That doesn't mean that it wouldn't work. Adult websites have been accused of something similar: as the version goes, they'll take your (illegally published) video down on request, no questions asked, but "someone" will upload it again later.
I've never heard of anyone being prosecuted for this, though, which means that either it isn't true, or it is and your plan would work just fine.
> The Cox-Wyden Amendment: Section 230
> Worried about the future of free speech online and responding directly to Stratton Oakmont, Representatives Chris Cox (R-CA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced an amendment to the Communications Decency Act that would end up becoming Section 230. The amendment specifically made sure that "providers of an interactive computer service" would not be treated as publishers of third-party content. Unlike publications like newspapers that are accountable for the content they print, online services would be relieved of this liability. Section 230 had two purposes: the first was to "encourage the unfettered and unregulated development of free speech on the Internet," as one judge put it; the other was to allow online services to implement their own standards for policing content and provide for child safety. Seeing the crucial importance of the amendment, the House passed it 420-4.
"encourage the unfettered and unregulated development of free speech on the Internet," as one judge put it" is being forgotten by a lot of comments here.
EDIT: I seem to get downvoted on anything remotely political on HN. So I am glad this EO was passed and hoping it gets enforced.
Thankfully, one of the authors of the section in question has actually stated exactly what it means: https://twitter.com/RonWyden/status/1266052221072019456
"As the co-author of Section 230, let me make this clear: there is nothing in the law about political neutrality. It does not say companies like Twitter are forced to carry misinformation about voting, especially from the president."
And no. A public library terminal is not universal access...
Sure, there are material differences between - let's say local politics, where the bar is showing up at the town hall - and getting on Twitter. But that difference is becoming more and more meaningless. Especially that the nexus of power seems to be shifting away from the physical and more toward the virtual/digital.
The power and money in Big Tech result from platforms where network effects leave users, businesses, competitors, even other countries unable to switch to or create viable alternatives. In theory they can, but in practice, they have to be where everyone else is.
If Twitter, for example, were an open protocol that you accessed through your ISP like email to join the world conversation, their own opinions wouldn't matter more than anyone else's. If instead there is a single company that decides who gets to say what on their platform, and network effects build a castle wall, regulations should force a change (such as opening the protocol) to make alternatives viable.
yeah, twitter could implement plug-in choose-your-own fact checking, but that would create a scary market outside twitter's control. Since the number of twitter users is roughly finite this could mean a reduction in attention share to twitter proper...
It's like they've never even been to a movie theater where they need to shut the hell up or leave.
And here we have a US president signing an executive order in response to being moderated on a web site after years of arguably excessive tolerance of his b.s.
I'm not sure how much more embarrassed I can get for my country.
I've only ever heard people complaining that people misunderstand the first amendment. I've yet to see someone say they believe the first amendment governs and protects against private censorship.
However, I constantly see people conflating the concept of free speech and the first amendment. Free speech is an ideological principle, not a law.
If you read the first section of the EO it is clear that they are attempting to make an argument that Twitter, by moderating/curating/screening, is no longer protected by section 230, as defined by the famous 90s court cases regarding prodigy, aol, and compuserve. [0] [1]
Spurious argument or not you are mischaracterizing the situation.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeran_v._America_Online,_Inc.
Every election season, I’ve said, “These are some of the worst candidates I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure how much lower the bar can get.” And then it gets lower.
"encourage the unfettered and unregulated development of free speech on the Internet," as one judge put it;".
It's a confusion between the First Amendment and the principle of free expression, which is kinda forgivable given how closely they are related.
The second issue at hand is the catalyst for this change. Jack Dorsey picked a fight with a giant orange toddler. For some reason the American people entrusted this giant orange toddler with the full authority of the executive branch of the United States of America. The orange toddler decided throw a fit and use this power that is meant to better the American public to retaliate against this personal attack. This second issue is the one that makes me sad to be a registered Republican and an American.
What Twitter wants, though selective undocumented "curating" of its platform, is the ability to slander, intimidate, harass, terrorize and verbally abuse whomever they don't like, without actually being drug infront of a jury and tried for crimes.
Telco's wanted the same government exemption that USPS had; someone mailed a letter with a bomb, they can't be held responsable. This was something the courts were likely to give them anyway.
Intentionally promoting a user's post containing a manifesto about assassinating a standing president is no different than USPS mailing millions of manifesto letters to people. One mechanism is simply more automated.
He goes "I will build a wall spanning a continent to stop mexicans" and you see deep debate about how effective it would be, the price, the logistics of it... it's clearly a dumb idea, why does everyone pretend it's not and engage in deep consideration of it?
Now I'm seeing the same thing. Extensive debates about public opinion, the first amendment and the difficulties of moderating a service with millions of subscribers, when it is painfully obvious that the only reasoning by the president is "they messed with me so I'm going to get revenge".
And in fact, Twitter’s civil leadership policy has been allowing such users (including Trump) extra leeway.
The fact that Trump is mad about this shows that what he’s concerned about isn’t his own freedoms of speech are being impinged on, but that his freedom from accountability in discourse might be threatened.
I honestly used to be proud to be an American. Now I am so ashamed that when I travel (or back in the days when I traveled) I lie and say I'm a Canadian.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v....
Twitter is a California company.
> movie theater where they need to shut the hell up or leave.
This has nothing to do with anything. The 1A has always been understood as a freedom of content, not form. Noise ordinances and rules are constitutional.
I'd be pretty disturbed if an ISP all of a sudden prevented me from contacting wikipedia, or throttled my access to competitors. The ISP is private, but it's not really in the spirit of freedom to do so.
Similarly, if an airline said they won't sell me a ticket because I'm going to a rally for a particular politician. Or if the post office (or fedex) wouldn't carry my letter to the editor because they disagree with my opinion. Or if I couldn't get basic banking, insurance, or other business services because my legal business is politically unpopular.
There also is some legal murkiness because a federal judge ruled that Trump couldn't block people on Twitter[1].
[1] https://www.governing.com/topics/politics/gov-twitter-facebo...
Just wait until tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that...
The first amendment is there from preventing the government from controlling the speech. Exactly what Trump is doing to Twitter right now.
Once upon a time, the rights of citizens only protected them from the federal government's actions. States could (and did) infringe on these rights. Corporations were much less powerful at this time, so were not much of a concern.
We ended up fighting a war over this, and one result was the 14th amendment, which binds the states to also protect these important rights.
Now a days, corporations are powerful enough to infringe these rights. We've dealt with this in the past when "trust busting" was more of a thing. There is established precedent for not allowing monopolies to infringe on people's rights.
There's nothing special about the "private sector" that allows big corporations to infringe people's rights without due process.
If someone tweets that you are a murderer, you can't sue Twitter (or rather, if you do, Twitter will be protected by Section 230).
However, suppose Twitter announces the following policy: "Any tweet which calls someone a murderer, shall be deleted, unless the alleged murderer is gulli1010". Should you be allowed to sue Twitter then? That's a more nuanced question. And what if the above policy isn't an official policy but is a de facto policy?
That is, there are some private companies, like ISPs, that are seen as part of the basic plumbing of the internet, and which are generally not allowed to editorialize their content (for example, through net neutrality rules). However, there are others, like Yelp, which are seen as publishers of edited and curated content, even if some of the content was written by users and not the company itself.
The question is, have Twitter and Facebook (etc.) become dominant enough that they are essentially utilities, or are they editors of content like Yelp?
If that statement is true then it's a sad day in America. That means that competition is dead and monopoly wins.
This isnt how the presidency is supposed to be used. He got mad and hes trying to silence his critics. Enough with the twitter is right or wrong.. Publisher vs platform. This is the conversation that needs to be had.
There is no reason an EO of this nature should be slid across the desk. A blind judge could see hes reacting to being checked.
There is a “reply” button underneath all of his tweets, you know?
First, the administration must formulate the rule itself. In formulating the rule, it must also provide supporting documentation justifying the rulemaking, which must include a record of the data looked at in deciding upon the need for the rule, research and conclusions drawn from that data. If the research is external to the agency, they must also justify the selection of research used in drafting the rulemaking.
Once the proposed rule is published in the federal register, there is a comment period of at least 60 days or up to 180 days (depending on the complexity of the rule).
The administration must then spend time reviewing the comments. It doesn't need to respond to comments individually but it does need to address all of the issues raised by those comments, especially if the issues raise constitutional concerns.
Assuming that they get that out of the way without modifying the proposed rule (which could trigger another comment period, depending on the extent of the changes), the final version of the rule must then be published in the federal register.
A final rule does not take effect until at least 30 days after it is published in the federal register. There are very few rules which can be ex post facto (generally only rules that grant additional rights or freedoms, or which are tax-related).
So, even assuming the the crackerjacks in the Trump Administration could get a proposed rule out tomorrow, and review comments after the comment period in one day, they're still looking at 92 days before the rule could take effect, or approximately the end of August.
Note:this doesn't include challenges to the rule proceeding through the federal court system. While SCOTUS could theoretically hear emergency appeals to a temporary injunction or district court ruling on the merits, they've refused to grant appeals in much less contentious cases where they ultimate sided with the administration. If they were to do so, the ruling would come in the middle of the electoral cycle, and it would likely result in the Democrats taking the House, Senate, and Presidency. And then they could simply override the rule using the APA in January.
Trump's order is not rulemaking. It's just an order to the federal agencies to start drafting a rule that would strip social media companies of CDA protection. Executive agencies have been designated the power to make legislative rules by laws of Congress (which sets forth the required procedure described above) but this grant does not extend to the Executive Office itself (i.e., the president).
As the Axios article notes, a very conservative appeals court just ruled that under the CDA, social media companies aren't public forums for first amendment purposes, so the agencies would also have to come up with a conforming legal justification explaining why social media platforms are public spaces or otherwise subject to the infringement of their private first amendment rights.
Historically, leaders like this are not rare. They're just rare in US history. In the US, they've rarely advanced beyond the mayor level. (See Tweed Ring, Pendergast machine, Daley machine, etc.) Huey Long made it to one term as Louisiana governor; he's the best known US example of the type.
Although, I will say that if you've ever moderated a forum or subreddit, you probably know that when you ban a user for stepping over the line one too many times, "I'm gonna shut this place down!" is a pretty common first response. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and we won't have to find out what happens when the President and the first amendment come to blows.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nratv-dan-bongino-my-life-is-...
But to be fair, I've seen a lot of supposed progressives on Twitter suddenly finding themselves very concerned with the rights of private businesses.
>The working group will also monitor or create watch-lists of users based on their interactions with content or other users.[1]
I'm sure there are plenty of "small government" and libertarian-leaning folks who are now in favor of government watch lists based off who and what US citizens interact with on social media.
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/article/twitter-trump-executive-orde...
Regardless, for me this goes back to the Covington Catholic incident. Nick Sandmann sued the Washington Post, NBC, and CNN for defamation and settled. He had a pretty strong case. I think being able to sue for defamation is reasonable and not necessarily indicative of big government support.
But Twitter can't be sued but that was where the videos of him were posted and it was where a Twitter mob formed and peopled doxed him and started to call for Nick's head. I remember seeing it all happen in real time on Friday on Twitter. By Sunday the news outlets were running with it.
At that time, Twitter wasn't flagging content as misleading however, they were banning harmful rhetoric. I guess to me that sort of activity that happened in January 2019 is harmful rhetoric. The ability to let an angry mob defame someone like that and even threaten someone is something Twitter should take responsibility for. Every other publishing platform is held to those standards. If Twitter is profiting from the use which may include activities like defaming someone, then it makes sense that victims are entitled to some compensation from them in addition to any users. Although I appreciate there are fine legal arguments to be made here.
And for the record, it seems like fairly normal discourse on Twitter to expose people with personal information for specifically being racist, misogynist, etc. without any evidence required and people usually condone this. This definitely can be damaging and I think people who are victims of this justly ought to be able to recover losses. Twitter doesn't seem to have much interest in stopping it like they do other forms of harmful speech so I think victims ought to be able to get justice and that has nothing to do with Trump's tweeting habits.
1. These protections shouldn't be necessary in the first place. The first amendment should make most copyright enforcement, libel suits, etc. illegal. Of course, that's not the world we live in.
2. Freedom of association (being able to turn people away from your business) is absolutely a fundamental right, but I have zero sympathy for progressives when they get screwed on this, because they've done more than anyone in US history to eliminate freedom of association. They made this bed, now they have to lie in it. When you give the government the power to force people to work with parties they don't want to, obviously that's going to turn around and bite you in the ass at some point when you lose control of the institutions that decide how you're allowed to choose who you work with.
So, on net, this sucks and I wish it was very different, but I have no sympathy whatsoever for the people who brought this upon themselves.
The government should only be as large as the entities threatening it's citizens rights.
The scale of "small" is relative, especially when dealing with large multinational corporations.
I’ve been on that side before and it’s not pretty! Lots of long nights for those folks.
For half of the people out there, believe it or not, this is Trump sticking up for people's free speech on Twitter.
For the other half, this is Trump attempting to eliminate free speech on Twitter and other places.
In my opinion, eliminating the protections could have a negative effect on free speech. But it also seems like a very bad outcome in general for the companies that they would want to avoid. So it seems like this is being used as a threat to try to get them to take free speech more seriously, so they can avoid that policing.
Another thing is the website or whatever collecting instances of censorship. That seems to indicate that they are genuinely trying to help reduce censorship. Does it not?
Edit: I find it funny someone claiming it was due to fact checking downvotes me because I fact checked them.
From 5 days ago: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/23/21268433/president-trump-...
However, I do think Twitter could have handled it differently. For example, every time you're looking at posts from any blue-checked elected official, perhaps links could show up on the right hand side column for several fact-check websites. It would be nice to have arrangements with major newspapers, both left and right leaning, so un-paywalled news analysis can be one click away, too. This would help some people who truly want to be better informed.
Even Trump owns his tweets and Twitter owns the rest of the webpage.
From a few days ago (prior to Trump being fact checked): https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/23/21268433/president-trump-...
The Citizens United v. FEC decision indicates that corporations have free speech rights similar to those of individuals. Logically, if you agree with that part of the decision, then you should also agree that the government can't punish Twitter for doing this, and vice versa.
Yet very few people seem to hold either of those combinations of views. There are a few principled civil libertarians who are fine with both super-PACs and what Twitter did here. There are a few principled fair campaign advocates who think it's theoretically permissible, if inadvisable, for the government to stop what Twitter did here.
Most people seem to take one of the inconsistent positions.
While I don't agree with this weird S230 opposition, the general sentiment that people expect to have a similar protection for free speech that they enjoy in our public squares, street corners, libraries and parks in the online alternatives to these things... isn't really a crazy one.
It's also a tenshion that exists in offline form. Increasingly there are gigantic public "downtown" areas which are privately owned (on land taken from the public through eminent domain then sold to developers), where people's free speech is heavily curtailed.
The general idea that just because the physical manifestation (or legal structure) behind our traditional public spaces is changing our effective right to free speech shouldn't change seems like a reasonable idea to me.
Also the general idea that twitter itself should automatically be free from regulation in how it restricts others due to its own free speech seems extremely specious to me. Twitter is a business, it operates to make money. While businesses have free speech right, commercial operations have a strictly lower level of rights in many areas. Twitter has only refrained from banning the president, who regularly and flagrantly violates their rules, because he makes them money. If twitter consisted primarily of its owners speech no one would visit it. It is effectively a place of public accommodation and its value stems entirely from the public's use of it. We traditionally impose significant regulation on how private businesses that serve the public operate, including extensive rules ensuring equality of access and against discrimination.
This executive order seems pretty foolish overall. But a law that set a threshold where a service like twitter become a "public forum"-- places where the public use is the whole point-- and they had to meet a much higher standard when they wanted to silence people or ideas (beyond "our AI picked you at random, tough luck") and had provide effective modes of redress might be important to preserving people's effective freedom of speech in the long run.
Individuals have the freedom of speech, but the can also be sued for liable for the things they say. Twitter can't be sued, because they are "re-transmitting" information. That's why Elon was sued for his "pedo guy" tweet and not twitter. Am I missing something here?
It seems like it makes corporations more like people in that if they curate content [in some vaguely biased way] then they can be held liable for that act. Because by doing that they are exercising their freedom of speech.
I think an interesting question is what will become the threshold for acceptable curation. Is it just illegal content, ex. CP. It seems like this has the potential for more legislation defining speech.
It is not dissimilar to the original immigration bans where they were struck down initially because Trump openly expressed the intent that they were designed to achieve an outcome based on race, even though in technical implementation an argument could be made that they were not.
Even Trump owns his tweets' content and Twitter owns the rest of the webpage.
Fact check: As a member of the executive, not legislative branch, Trump does not have the authority to modify existing legislation.
I think adding context, trying to be more rational (even and especially with using tools/technology) is something everyone, who isn't so lucky as to have been born into a life of careless dumbness, values.
Trump definitely depends on Twitter far more than Twitter depends on Trump. He could move to Facebook/Instagram, but I just don't see that being a move he would want to do, partly because the type of communication doesn't seem to be the same, and partly because it would be a huge admission of defeat, where he couldn't bully a person or company into doing what he wanted.
Twitter would likely see a big dip in usage, at least for a short period, as some Trump loyalists boycotted it, but I imagine a lot of them would be back. There's also the rights of a private companies to control their own service which is a traditional Republican belief, but I doubt that would matter much, as the current political climate doesn't seem conducive to politicians adhering to past beliefs, not matter whcih side of the divide they are on.
I mean, if section 230 were to be weakened, they would probably _have_ to, to protect themselves from liability. For libel, for a start.
I fully agree. Ban the president for literally no other reason than the lulz. Just to troll him. But then they did the typical limp dick liberal thing and tried to to high-road a troll, once again giving the troll the upper hand.
You can't high-road a troll. Now they're stuck in a position of having to maintain their haughty better-than-thou "white knights of facts" position for as long as they can, all while being attacked from every angle. Every time they try to position themselves as knowing better, the facade cracks a bit. They'll be dealing with baseless accusations, but each one will still push the point that maybe they don't know what they're doing. That maybe it was a bad idea.
When dealing with a troll, just say you did because you felt like it and leave it at that. If someone calls you dumb, double down. You wanted to, so you did. No regrets.
Seriously, people (liberal especially) have no understanding of trolls whatsoever and it's a massive unpatched security threat to the country.
Some stuff is plausible but wrong, like taking certain antiviral drugs to combat Covid. Others completely defy everything we know about physics, like 5G spreading Covid. And some stuff is true, like staying at home breaking the chain of transmission. But people believe all of the above and none of the above appear different or are treated differently on social media sites.
Some of the opinions and statements that influential people say are dangerous and either harm directly or cause others to harm and a lot of them build on existing divisions further breaking apart our communities.
A few days ago we had an earthquake in my home city, our liberal prime minister was having a live interview when it happened. On news sites when they played the interview the comments were full of people saying it was Trump blowing up tunnels which were being used to traffic children as sex slaves by the liberal government.
That's obviously insane, not least because I live on a group of islands 3,000 kilometres away from the next country and that's one hell of a tunnel, but also because that's not a thing that governments do in transparent and well run democracies.
Unfortunately there's a subset of the population who are unstable and prone to believe anything, and the fact that it's discredited probably drives them to believe it more. But there's a much larger subset who are susceptible to arguments but not critical of them and may be more inclined to see reason if given information backing that up.
So, the question is how do you debunk blatant falsehoods while still balancing peoples freedom to believe what they want.
What examples of this unfairness are being referred to? I never understand why journalist don't press harder and follow up with obvious questions. Same with "many people are saying" style statements.
The premise is also false - the shield from [liability] applies regardless of the political affiliation, motivation, or actions of the platform. He's trying to convince people that Twitter had some kind of duty to remain neutral, but they really don't. Twitter would have just as strong of a case under current law if they came out and said "yep, no conservative viewpoints allowed here."
The "unfairness" is a fact check that got attached to a couple of his tweets: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12652558351245393....
Journalists do press him for details, but they get answers like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNlSRd2w5IA.
> Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996 (a common name for Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996) is a landmark piece of Internet legislation in the United States, codified at 47 U.S.C. § 230. Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an "interactive computer service" who publish information provided by third-party users ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
Through his action, the president appears to be directing the executive branch to use a more narrow interpretation of Section 230 than has been used previously:
> ... Section 230 was not intended to allow a handful of companies to grow into titans controlling vital avenues for our national discourse under the guise of promoting open forums for debate, and then to provide those behemoths blanket immunity when they use their power to censor content and silence viewpoints that they dislike. When an interactive computer service provider removes or restricts access to content and its actions do not meet the criteria of subparagraph (c)(2)(A), it is engaged in editorial conduct. It is the policy of the United States that such a provider should properly lose the limited liability shield of subparagraph (c)(2)(A) and be exposed to liability like any traditional editor and publisher that is not an online provider.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or...
(c)(2)(A) reads:
> (c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material
> (2) Civil liabilityNo provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
> (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
To summarize, the president is directing his administration to disregard "Good Samaritan" protections for services that don't strictly meet the exception given in (c)(2)(A).
The phrases "good faith" and "otherwise objectionable" seem broad enough to allow just about any form of censorship a company might want to engage in, while continuing to enjoy Good Samaritan protection.
If so, what exactly does the administration gain here?
He doesn't care about the truth, and is trying to take advantage of our desire for neutrality and free speech to push lies. It's possible for us to be nuanced, and not let him ruin Twitter/Facebook/etc with bad-faith arguments.
On a more serious note, I have been dipping my toes into Rust and it seems fun. I suppose, I'll have a more considered opinion of it once I actually build something substantial with it.
To be fair, the problem is not with the sites themselves. They are private companies and [within the law] can do whatever the hell they like with regard to who can use their platforms and what they can say while doing so.
The problem is that these type of sites [and especially Twitter] have been elevated by the rest of the world and transformed from being outlets for vacuous chatter into being the official conduit for 'news', for any lazy journalist who can't be bothered to research a story properly.
Even on such esteemed organisations as the BBC and Reuters, it's becoming increasingly common to see news articles in which the 'sources' are little more than lists of what various parties said on Twitter. And on a smaller and even local level, more and more companies are only contactable through their Twitter accounts or Facebook pages. I even got message from the UK Government's unemployment service a few days ago, informing me that they would be announcing nee vacancies on their Twitter account, from now on.
Now, as I said, that's not Twitter or Facebook's fault. It's the rest of the worlds fault for increasingly elevating them to this pseudo-official status. But it does create the situation whereby anyone who's not on Twitter or Facebook is increasingly disenfranchised from having their viewpoint heard or from participating in the great and small issues of the day.
And what if Twitter or Facebook decide to ban a user or suspend an account? That user has no recourse but to plead with the company in question to reinstate them, which is entirely arbitrary decision. There is no legal recourse, as there would be if some authority tried to remove a person's vote or to ban them from speaking, writing or otherwise putting forward their opinions in the 'real world'.
As chance would have it, I've run into this myself. About a year ago, I logged into my Twitter account to find that it had been suspended as had my business Twitter account --with no reason given and nothing that I had done [that I can see] to have justified this. I never verbally attacked anyone or posted anything dodgy. I can only think my accounts were mistakenly caught up in one of Twitter's periodic automated sweeps, after which they proudly announce they've removed X-million bot accounts.
The only recourse is to fill in a form asking them to review the account suspension. Which, needless to say results in nothing but an autoreply, assigning you a case number. And then... nothing.
Likewise, as chance would have it, just today I logged into a Facebook page I'd set up for my business to find a message saying that had been suspended for "suspicious activity". Again, nothing I can see that i've done that could possibly justify that. In fact, I don't do FB at all. So I don't even interact with that account apart from to occasionally post links to the latest 'thing' I've made and am selling on Amazon. I've not even added any friends to my FB account, so I couldn't have 'offended' any one! In order to lift that suspension I was asked to verify my mobile phone number [OK... with great reluctance] and then upload a photograph of myself, so they can 'verify' me [WTF? Am i applying for a passport to the fucking internet now?
Now, I know those last few paragraphs sound like I'm just whining and crying because I can't use Twitter or Facebook any more. I'm honestly not. I couldn't give a flying fk about either of them. I only created accounts on both because [as I intimated above], with the state of the internet today, we've arrived at a point, where, for a lot of people, Twitter and Facebook ARE the internet. It's where they talk to their friends, where they arrange their social lives, where they do their shopping, where they read their news, where they run their businesses and where they exist online. So, sometimes, you've just got to swallow the rising vomit and at least establish a token presence there, just so people know you exist.
Anyway, given that's the state we're in, should all that vast mass of human commerce and interaction be dependent on the whims of a couple of monstrously rich individuals and a couple of monstrously rich corporations? It's a toughie.
On the one hand, I'm generally opposed to government interference in how people run their lives or their businesses. On the other hand, I believe in freedom of expression and freedom of access to the media and the government, which isn't dispensed or withheld at the whim of a few individuals.
Or maybe Brussels like the Eclipse foundati did?
If we accept corporations as people, I wish some of the ones with actual power had the backbone to do a bit of civil disobedience, instead of rolling over at the first sign of trouble. Twitter should double down and add a fact-check sticker to every single Trump lie, past and current — to hell with lawsuits and the FCC. Otherwise, we'll "maybe parts of this sound reasonable" our way straight into a goose-stepping, thought-shaping, Republican-ruled dictatorship. Surely, even the people who scoffed at this idea a few years ago can see this future taking shape.
I am aghast that there's any support for this in the once-countercultural Silicon Valley. It's abhorrent and shameful, and it makes me fear that maybe the gravity well is already too large to escape. Meanwhile, people like Zuckerberg and Musk are tripping over themselves to appease the ruling party.
(Just a reminder that earlier today, Trump retweeted a video declaring that "the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat." I suppose this is one of those good old fashioned Republican values that our liberal bias works so hard to suppress.)
There are hundreds of documented cases of people being convicted of mail in ballot voter fraud. In Paterson NJ there was an all mail election recently that is causing significant problems. I shudder at the thought of that playing out on a national scale.
Yet in spite of those facts, Twitter feels that Trump's warnings are somehow wrong. In light of the facts I think his fear is justified.
Twitter is a private company but we restrict the activities of private companies all the time. I see no reason why we shouldn't have a serious conversation about placing special restrictions on internet platforms' ability to censor users.
Twitter's "fact check" singles out a specific Trump tweet. It's clearly a human intervention by Twitter staff, not user generated content. The subject of Trump's tweet was a political dispute, and while Trump certainly had false statements in his tweet, that's basically par for the course on Twitter.
This raises a bunch of questions. Why is Twitter singling out Trump for his false statements? If AOC or Bernie Sanders make false or misleading statements about economics (which they frequently do), will those also receive fact checks and warning labels?
We have seen this also with the coronavirus breakout. Medium and other publishers removed posts based that were sanguine data analysis (nothing inflammatory) because they were against the prevailing media sentiment. For example this Medium post [1] was removed based on its content. It did not contain anything inflammatory, violent, or otherwise unsavory. Medium just didn't like what it said.
At what point does Twitter or Medium cease to be a neutral discussion platform, and become more like a publisher that pushes a specific narrative (like Fox News, the New York Times, CNN, etc.). They are certainly within their rights do curate/moderate their platform, but if this continues, we need to start thinking of these companies less like user driven platforms, and more like opinionated publishers.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200321144004/https:/medium.com...
What does "neutral discussion platform" even mean? My understanding is that Fox News, New York Times, CNN, etc, all benefit from protections against what users post in places like comments sections, etc.
This whole "neutrality" aspect seems like a talking point meant to attack social media platforms from a strawman perspective of "Only 'neutral' platforms are allowed protections from liability" that doesn't seem to actually be related to the law itself.
I don't think there is legal basis for Trump's order, but Twitter is wading into murky territory with their actions.
I wouldn't consider basic moderation activities as "murky territory".
They aren't. They've labeled other tweets before.
> If AOC or Bernie Sanders make false or misleading statements about economics (which they frequently do), will those also receive fact checks and warning labels?
Presumably, yes.
About time. Social media should have been commoditized and decentralized by now, joining the group of email, DNS etc. Social media companies enjoyed milking free user content for 15 years, it's about time people take hold of their own intellectual property in the fediverse.
I don't think that companies that achieve near-monopoly status should have the right to arbitrarily cancel, shadow ban, hide from search, delete content, flag content, "fact check", label, or otherwise interfere with users' use of the service.
This is not a "free speech" issue, it's a "when you have monopoly power and positioning in the market, there are no alternatives" issue. Visa refusing to process CC payments because they don't like your politics, is not a power that I want them to have.
If you're a tiny boutique company, discriminate to your heart's content. When you get big, I don't want you to have that power anymore. If you don't like it, then eschew the current fashion of companies to value growth over all else.
The threshold you've suggested seems way too low. 1M customers or $10M/year revenue isn't "near-monopoly", it's barely a player in the game.
So where's the line? I think anti-vaxxers should be censored because their viewpoint causes actual harm to people, but they would obviously argue otherwise. You can say that anything that causes harm is not permitted and call that a non-discriminatory term of service, but whenever you apply it, the person you're applying it against is going to claim discrimination.
A lot of people don't like FB's stance of letting anything go in terms of political ads, but they don't have a good alternative, because otherwise any stance they take will face claims of discrimination. In that case, I think the government should be defining what is acceptable content for political ads and leaving it to FB to enforce, but of course the people in government are more biased than anyone.
It is, to say the least, a tough problem.
That is not censoring a conservative viewpoint. It's just giving people some facts. Here's Trump's opinion, here's some data, make your own decision.
I am sure that if Joe Biden started tweeting random conspiracy theories, Twitter would fact check those. But he doesn't, so we don't get to see that in action. Just because a conservative person in power tends to lie and start conspiracy theories on social media, doesn't mean the platform is biased against conservatives. It just means that they're not going to publish falsehoods without a little asterisk.
Do you think it's really a coincidence that the side that promotes racism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc is the side getting 'censored'?
Seems like a natural result to me.