You can argue that twitter is also restricting others' free expression, but that is their right, while the government preventing twitter from doing so is a 1A violation.
What do social media companies "publish"? In this case, the only thing twitter published was a link to information about mail-in voting[0]. That's it. They did so in the context of a tweet. So at worst, twitter would be liable for any illegal content in either President Trump's original tweet, or in the content I linked at [0]. That is what current US law says.
To change that would require an act of congress or a supreme court ruling. The court is unlikely to rule in favor of Trump[1], as the conservative justices favor businesses rights. So that leaves a new law/amendment to the existing law. That would need to pass the house, which seems unlikely as well.
[0]: https://twitter.com/i/events/1265330601034256384
[1]: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200528/01321044592/two-t...
We had automated filtering of word lists that took down sites, that were hate words / porn related for protecting children.
Right now I'm paying monthly for Youtube Premium, but I see that the people I'm watching have to be extremely careful to not say a swear word by chance, or even say the name of the COVID-19 virus, because they are scared of losing their revenue stream. I don't see this as fair, because Youtube got so popular _because_ it was allowed to publish anything without being responsible for copyright violations. It would be great for them to do fact checking as long as they are politically consistent.
In EU at least we have the GDPR that limits companies from using our data however they want to, but in the US at this point they need some kind of counterbalance.
Regardless I wasn't comment on the morality of what big tech companies were doing only the legality. Nothing in https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 suggests to me that the protections are in anyway contingent on not removing certain content and certainty nothing suggests its contingent on not publishing content yourself in different contexts.
When a new law is being created, often it is created _because_ something legal, but immoral is being done by a person/company.
Also the law you refer to is a law inside the U.S., but Alphabet earns more than 50% of revenue (and most views) outside US. It was doing illegal business in the EU multiple times on grand scale and was given fines for it.
'Section 230 says that "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" (47 U.S.C. § 230). In other words, online intermediaries that host or republish speech are protected against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do. The protected intermediaries include not only regular Internet Service Providers (ISPs), but also a range of "interactive computer service providers," including basically any online service that publishes third-party content. Though there are important exceptions for certain criminal and intellectual property-based claims, CDA 230 creates a broad protection that has allowed innovation and free speech online to flourish'.
Well... if you really want to get into it. Twitter can’t “fact check” the original statement. Because it was a prediction.
It hasn’t happened yet. It’s unlikely to be mass scale fraud, of course, but it’s a future event.
It’s his opinion / prediction. As wrong as it is, that isn’t something they should “fact check”.
Twitter picked a really bad tweet to make a stand on. Like it or not, they chose to editorialize someone else’s content, that’s a publisher.
They didn’t have to “break a law” to now be liable for other content they “publish”. That’s all the EO is, that Section 230 doesn’t apply to publishers.
They are a private company and can do as they like... but if they’re going to “take ownership” of information on their service they are breaking the spirit of neutral carriers and Section 230.
This seems like an odd hill to die on. Surely they could have fact checked 100 different Trump tweets with actual misinformation and not just his concerns/prediction.
I am of the opinion they wanted to do this for awhile, planned it out poorly, and pulled the trigger at the wrong tweet.
Section 230 has nothing to do with neutral carriers. Section 230 does not mention, imply, or otherwise suggest that there is such thing as a "carrier", much less that one need be "neutral".
Here's what it 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
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of 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
There's a bunch more, but it's all fluff or irrelevant. There are no relevant obligations (there is one obligation that the law has, it relates to kid-friendly modes in websites).
Note that there is no categorization as "publisher" or "platform". You are protected from certain kinds of content. The New York Times, who clearly publishes their own content, still has Section 230 protections for comments made in the comment box on their articles, because that content is not made by the NYT, but by another individual.
Under section 230, you can only lose protection on a specific piece of content if you are deemed to be the publisher of that specific piece of content. So the worst thing that can happen to twitter here is that they are determined to be the publisher of Trump's tweet for the purposes of things like libel and copyright lawsuits.
Given that, can you explain what spirit of the law is violated, and what spirit of "neutral carriers" (do you mean common carriers?) is related or to this?
"I believe that if we allow people to leave their homes, everyone will die of Covid-19". Narrator: "There is no evidence that everyone will die of Covid-19, in fact there is plenty of evidence that everyone will not die of Covid-19".
At which point you claim that the original statement, because it included opinion, could not be fact checked, even though presenting sources that counter the priors required for the claims to make sense is a completely reasonable thing to do.
Once a company becomes too big like Twitter, Google, Facebook, they have a moral obligation to stay neutral.
Interesting how opinions expressing a viewpoint that differs from the hive mind gets down-voted.
This happens. Frequently.
Replace "Huff post et al" with "Tiananmen Square" and search while inside China.
Specific to the US, the 1st amendment prevents the restriction of speech by government, which in some cases overlaps into private enterprise.
numerous examples when google removes apps from their appstore.
even numerous examples when they are abusing search and prioritise their own products instead of competitors.
same for amazon.
corporate interests are not moral, dont forget that.
Is it good for the democracy if Google removes all results from new sites it doesn't agree with? It should remain neutral as much as possible and not tamper with its search results.
Correction: they're using their own service to promote their own point of view.
I honestly think there are real issues with the public means of communication being privately owned by a smallish number of entities, but it does free expression no good to make the fight about letting lies, disinformation, and other forms of untruth to flow unimpeded.
If news providers and other knowledge providers are allowed to curate what data they present then I don't think it's reasonable to demand that Google be held to a higher standard. Further, literally nothing is stopping you from creating your own knowledge aggregator if you feel that Google is doing a bad job of displaying pertinent data.
Another argument is that they have legal protections as content providers. However, the same protections don't apply to content publishers. If their censorship places them in the publisher category, they could open themselves to lawsuits. YouTube is an example that usually comes up. If a user uploads an illegal video, YouTube has protections against lawsuits. As a publisher, they would have more liability for the content they host.