Trump to sign executive order on social media amid Twitter furor
politico.com
politico.com
I’m very surprised how little discussion I’ve seen on HN about what this means for everyone here building public, community-building websites.
IMO, such an executive order will be challenged in court, as there is no case law that supports the CDA 230 removal.
CDA 230 protects social media platforms from being sued for content submitted by their users, but why in the hell is this even an issue in the first place? We don't have laws that allow me to sue Walmart if somebody in Walmart says something libelous about me. Why are social media platforms at particular risk for this?
I've thought about this in the past. Why wouldn't they begin closing accounts they think are troublesome? There is no legal right to a twitter account. Except for public blowback, what would the net result be for twitter?
"We arent censoring you, but our algorithm now treats you as spam."
This would be a loss for Twitter. They need Trump as much (or more) than he needs them.
IMO the US is sitting on a powder keg when it comes to power-sharing between the government and Big Tech. What if Google's board took their ball and went home, shutting everything down and becoming a hedge fund? What Jack Dorsey gets fed up and does the same, or worse, loses his mind and forms a cabal that secretly uses Twitter to sew global conflict?
These extreme scenarios point to an ever-present reality: if things really go South between the US government and Big Tech, it won't be simple submission from the industry, it will be a disaster. The side that can threaten violence wins, but when the other side controls what counts as true, what sort of battle is that?
I get twitter, youtube, facebook, et. al. have their own rules and enforce them. The sites couldn't exist without the protections of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Their rules arguably work for something like porn (which never seems to make it past youtube filters) and threats of violence. What makes less sense to me is the arbitrary method in which opinions based posts are handled.
It becomes clearer when you see the newly (last 2 years) rules enforced when you realize it is advertising driving it all. If something rises to the level of impacting advertising, action is taken.
They are censoring not to make political points; they cannot do that for threat of losing 320 protection. They do it to protect revenue, which as public companies they have to do.
Even though I don't think there's a mail vote fraud / the vaccine causes autism / the pandemic is planned etc. etc. but he has a point.
If you believe social networks are like public parks, then they should be owned like public parks no?
Want to make it public? Make access universal and free. Until then its a country club, not a public park.
For this topic though, nobody has been kicked out, silenced, or censored. Twitter has added a competing message.
It does not extend First Amendment protection to malls. It simply permits states to go beyond the First Amendment's protections in their enforcement of state laws.
edit-reply: You're arguing with me, but neither of your replies contains anything concrete that disagrees with what I said.
Yes, that's what "go beyond the First Amendment" means.
You have free speech rights in malls in some states, because of state laws expanding the right past what the Constitution guarantees.
Note I said "the law", which is created by the democratic process (in theory anyway. Stop laughing at the back.) This is as opposed to the whims of a private company.
As for what things the law should forbid you from saying, that's another matter, and orthogonal to this one.
The church tried Galilei for spreading fake news and misinformation in 1600s. We now know how dangerous shutting people up by force is.
You want the government funding Twitter's operations?
Incidentally, you can definitely get banned from public university campuses for misbehaving.
Misbehaving != alternative opinion.
Public universities have additional restrictions because they are organs of the state. Twitter is very definitively not in that category.
If a utility company is privately owned and it's denying service because you have 'different opinion about utility prices' thus threatening your life will you stand it?
No, we're not. Trump's tweets are still there. He retains the ability to post. All Twitter did was exercise their own free speech by adding a note below it.
Also I was not talking about the link being left, I was talking about your account terminated.
It may be good to raise the issue how much power social media should have, but please don't conflate the issue with personal vendettas of some public figures, or too much toleration of relativistic alternative facts.
I was specifically talking about this issue and it's the commentators that went to "personal vendettas or introduction of relativistic alternative facts."
The intent of the 1st Amendment applies most strongly to political and religious views. Liberals love it when the 1st Amendment is used to defend communism, terrorists, or profane art. If Communists and Antifa were being squashed by Twitter, they'd be playing victim.
This is entirely and old thing. Every private company runs on publicly funded infrastructure. Roads, sewers, etc...
There is no applicability of the First Amendment with respect to what a private company may censor. This is why Trump may talk about "freedom" but his executive order will not be grounded on any First Amendment claim.
Rather, Trump will essentially force the interpretation that CDA 230 should only apply to "politically neutral" actors. The result will be that social media companies will not be able to "censor" content that might be political. Again, not because of the Bill of Rights but because the liability shield provided by CDA 230.
The practical result will be that all content that is not clearly illegal (and potentially content that is) will be fair game and unable to be censored as any censorship will risk a claim against political neutrality and jeopardize CDA 230 protection.
At this point we should probably wait until something actually happens, and then hopefully the discussion will have details to be grounded in.
We live in times where governments use censorship on wide scale for dangerous means. Mixing both things here is an insult for those who suffer under true censorship.
Basically, if content companies become liable for the content their users post, they will have to become much more heavy handed in what they remove. Trump has benefited more than anyone from how little social media companies actually police content.
So IMO this is going to let him continue to abuse social media to spread conspiracy theories while incentivizing social media companies to remove or ban users that even slightly tie the line, or invent rules and accuse such users of breaking them.
American institutions are not as strong as people think. They are squishy organizations manned by humans; and thus they can be corrupted. All of this stuff is very well studied by the way, it is straight out of the authoritarian playbook.
For those who want to argue the other way, consider the simple fact that he has not divested of his private businesses and continues to profit spectacularly from them and it’s not even on the news anymore.
CDA 230 protects Twitter against lawsuits for content their users post. Without 230, anyone who felt libeled (i.e. Joe Scarborough) could sue Twitter in civil court.
That they would eventually kowtow to their own nation's ideological pressure the same way they would eventually do so for, say, Saudi Arabia's or China's government to ensure unmolested access.
Even if the majority of users/citizens aren't part of the bullying clique, the people with the rod and the carrot are.
The problem with letting people do what they want is that this was and will be abused for propaganda that sabotages elections - for example spreading lies about who is eligible to vote or that vote by mail is ripe for fraud.
The success of Twitter after the Arab Spring was that it became a revolution-causing technology. The downside of that is that it can cause a revolution whether you need one or not, and the outcomes of revolutions are usually much worse in the short term and often in the longer term.
(I note this is already flagged off the HN front page!)
> Looking at long-term trends in rain, crops, food prices and migration, they were able to determine how these factors contributed to social instability in the region.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-an...
This is a pretty strong and unfounded statement. Would we even have the relatively free and democratic societies we exist in now without the revolutions of centuries past?
Conversely the UK never had a popular revolution and transitioned to constitutional monarchy (eg also Sweden).
France was very bad in the medium term; the Terror, subsequent invasion, Napoleon etc. Perhaps only a fully free society at the 5eme republic.
Much of the world by sheer number of countries got its freedom either at the end of WW2 or the Cold War.
Cuba and Haiti are still going badly.
And what legal basis could possibly be here? Implementing this action through legislation would be an uphill battle, never mind an executive order. Unless judges are also drinking the leave Trumpney alone Kool Aid, I don't think the hysterical "debate" is going to have much to do with the fate of Twitter. The only interesting thing here will be watching a man-child finally be told a hard "no", as the fallout from his ruinous actions finally starts catching up with him.
I have some bad news about the past three years of judicial appointments...
It might take one or two rounds of appeals to find a sensible judge that agrees the President doesn't have this power. But overall I wouldn't think Trump has been able to replace enough judges with stooges as to destroy the whole system.
Somehow my intuitive sense is that Trump and the tech companies openly butting heads over fundamental epistemology and values will result in a spectacular show that will strengthen us in the end.
Google, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit are pretty heavy handed when it comes to "censoring" content. This is annoying because somehow "rightwing / wrongthink" content is censored while "leftwing" content is fine as it is.
If they are not platforms and are publishers - they need to be treated as such.
I feel this needs to be extended all the way down - Why stop at social media? Let's go ahead and hit where this counts - Domain Registrars, DNS Hosts, Payment Processors and Web hosts.
The sad part is - if they do, the internet as we know won't exist anymore. But in all honesty, we are heading to it anyways - with all the internet companies consolidating - I don't think I'll loose a lot of sleep if Twitter if fined - They had it coming for a while anyways.
EDIT: If this comment does not follow the rules, I'm happy to delete it as it's inherently political imo. Also I'm happy to provide examples of the above claims as well.
In the end. I foresee mountains of lawsuits against the right-wing media. Most of which do not have the resources to defend. They are literally cutting off their nose to spite their face. This is the definition of myopia and greed. So very Trump...
Be kind. These are just my opinions, and like always, I could be wrong :)
Nothing incorrect about this statement.
Worse still: if conservatives try to build their own platform (Gab), they are blacklisted across every mainstream developer platform.
I'm glad there is legislation for this.
>would address complaints that the online platforms are deceiving people by picking and choosing what content to allow or block instead of acting as politically neutral platforms or moderators.
This is great news!
The parent said "If Gab is a conservative platform".
This is obviously a reasonable way to interpret the GP's sentence. You're also reasonable to disagree with that interpretation, but you're being unreasonably combative when you accuse the parent of putting words in the GP's mouth.
From Wikipedia.
OP isn’t putting any words in anyone’s mouth. They are referencing a well known fact about this establishment.
If tor is known for it's pedophile userbase, does it make the platform itself pedophile?
I know why. Because it's not a pedophile platform and Gab is not a conservative platform.
EDIT: my apologies that's what they meant
You can go on Gab and post ultra-leftwing stuff, my little pony stuff, circuit board stuff, open an account to follow latest Antonio Banderas news, whatever you want.
Gab is not censorship free. They've banned users.
US law states that speech like doxxing are not free speech thus restricting it is not censorship.
"Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, User Contributions must NOT: Be obscene, sexually explicit or pornographic."
A law can be added to protect this right like the right to be forgotten. We didn't think the right to be forgotten was even a right that is valuable to protect but here we are.
Twitter and other social media are moderated in several ways. If your opinion is unpopular, it'll likely not be retweeted much, it may be moderated down by users and moderators, your account might even be banned. Private platforms are private, and regulating them would hinder freedoms to create and maintain diversity of such platforms in the future, ie. hinder competing platforms and innovation.
If such platforms become detrimental to society, that of course need to be addressed in some way. Right to be forgotten is a good example trying to balance out some of the imbalances.
You have your freedom to enjoy nude in your home but not in theaters due to city regulations. That doesn't mean that the city is censoring.
Similarly we don't call stopping robbery and murder censorship of our acts.
This has not been my personal experience when trying to contribute. Also, the founder and original users, in conversation, explicitly labeled it as a place for conservatives. Of course they are careful not to include such language in official user-facing copy.
The actual fact check leaned HEAVY on “if voting fraud increases or not with mail in ballots”. Speculation getting fact checked seems like it should be a no-no.
The fact check on “everyone gets a ballot” undoubtedly and rightfully should have been clarified. That was poorly worded bad information by the President. Again though, third bullet down and what they are back peddling to as the reason for it.
Twitter screwed this up.
If it's poorly worded, shouldn't the president clarify?
If you want to stop the effects of spreading misinformation, attack the demand side. Educate people. Or, on the more draconian side, don't let uneducated people vote.
German-Austrian alt-right organization "Identitäre Bewegung" all but collapsed once they were booted off social media.
Buildings burned down because four cops murdered a black person.