Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrisco255 | Hacker News Reader

He's not "telling" the courts anything, he's telling the FTC, FCC, etc to interpret 230 as intended, where a social media site can now be interpreted as a publisher and not as a neutral platform if they engage in active editorial decision making (i.e. feed manipulation, shadow banning, editorial injections, etc). If Twitter wants to challenge the Federal Government on this, they'll have to do battle in court. In the meantime, the Federal government will withdraw all paid advertising from the platform if they choose that route. He's also holding the FTC out, which deals with antitrust law. So Twitter could hit 3 different ways. In my opinion, they have far more to lose by fighting this than simply letting users choose who to follow and who to engage with and what speech to listen to.

View on HN

> telling the FTC, FCC, etc to interpret 230 as intended, where a social media site

1) CDA section 230 was written before the phrase "social media" was invented, when the Internet barely existed, and many people were still on AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy.

2) Section 230 was, in fact, intended for exactly the opposite purpose. It was written because previous court rulings indicated that moderating could make you more liable, and legislators realized that was precisely the opposite of what they wanted to encourage ("nobody would have any incentive to keep the internet civil"), so they wrote section 230 to make sure that sites weren't liable if they moderate but don't catch everything.

Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati... for details.

I'm surprised the FEC isn't involved as well. It would seem like a donation in kind to block candidates and elected officials from twitter.

> He's not "telling" the courts anything

Yes, he is. He is telling the FCC, etc., to issue regulations “clarifying” section 230; regulations clarifying law exist specifically to guide the courts in application, and courts grant such regulations (where properly authorized under statute) great deference, which Trump clearly hopes to benefit from.

The FCC is an executive branch department. So telling the FCC is not telling the courts. The FCC and FTC can make certain moves and it's up to Twitter to sue the Federal Government to contend with them. And then, the courts get to decide on the matter. But until then, let's not pretend 230c is the most well-defined precedent in legal history.

> So telling the FCC is not telling the courts.

“Clarifying” regulation specifically is a message to the courts on interpretation; directing executive agencies to craft clarifying regulation is directing subordinate executive officers to tell the courts.

Courts aren’t part of the executive branch. Independent judiciary is supposed to mean something...

> Courts aren’t part of the executive branch.

Correct but irrelevant.

I can tell people things over whom I don't have directive authority. “Clarifying” regulations are exactly the executive telling the courts how the law should be interpreted.

Courts can disregard them (and, in principle, will if they don't find them the issuing agency to have been empowered to enforce the law and thereby entrusted with that interpretive role, and even if they are authorized, they deference granted to them is not unlimited) but the fact that someone might not follow your direction to them doesn't mean you haven't given them direction.

No.

EOs tell the EXECUTIVE BRANCH how to enforce laws.

They do not tell the courts how to interpret them.

> EOs tell the EXECUTIVE BRANCH how to enforce laws.

Yes, EOs tell executive branch officers what to do.

One of the things this EO tells certain executive branch officers to do is to tell the courts how to interpret Section 230 by way of adopting “clarifying” regulations.

Believe whatever you want.

Courts ignore executive orders - especially ones from republican presidents, essentially always.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com