Trump To Order Review of Law Protecting Social Media Firms After Twitter Spat (thehill.com) 420
President Trump will sign an executive order later today that mandates a review of a law that shields companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook from being held liable for the content appearing on their platforms after fact checks for the first time were added to two of his tweets. From a news report: The executive order Trump is expected to sign would direct the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to propose and clarify regulations stipulated under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, according to a draft copy obtained by multiple news outlets. Section 230 protects social media platforms from facing lawsuits over what users share, though there are exceptions when it comes to copyright violations and breaches of federal criminal law. The move is set to come as Trump rails against Silicon Valley over Twitter's decision earlier this week to add a fact-check label to two of his tweets about mail-in voting. Trump, who has repeatedly accused the tech giants of political bias, has cast the decision as an attempt to "silence" conservatives and threatened to shut down social media sites altogether.
Shooting himself in the foot (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Shooting himself in the foot (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Shooting himself in the foot (Score:5, Funny)
Shhhhhhhhh. Quiet. He might hear you.
I for one am all for giving the president all the rope he needs to hang himself with.
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Shhhhhhhhh. Quiet. He might hear you.
I for one am all for giving the president all the rope he needs to hang himself with.
In completely unrelated new, rope factories cite they are running out.
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With all the miles of rope he already has, as much as I'd like to see it happen, if it was going to happen, it would have already. We're fucked.
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Is it still illegal to aid the president in this endeavour?
Asking for a friend.
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It might also make Twitter decide to take some action against him, to try to influence the election and get someone who won't trash their business model elected.
sad times (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty sure most of the past presidents are rolling in their graves over seeing the current president wanting to be protected from criticism.
The offie of the President is the chief public servant of the country, but I just don't think he gets it. His job is to do what the people want or need him to do. Criticism is the feedback that lets him know if the People think he's doing a good job protecting their interests. The only reason you'd have to suppress criticism is if you don't want to see how unappy the people are with how you're doing your job?
He just seems to be more interested in his own agenda than doing what's right for the people, and doesn't want to hear the complaints.
Despots, Dictators, and Kings all over the world have a fix for this, they simply have a law that says you get arrested if you insult or criticize them. I thought that was a major hallmark that it's not a Democracy. And yet here we are, with Trump asking for exactly that law.
Re:sad times (Score:5, Interesting)
A point to consider is that the president today has far, far more power than was envisioned at the founding. It was never planned to be a super-star national leader, or that each incoming president would be expected to fire half the federal agency leaders and re-appoint an 'administration' of his own.
Foundation is crumbling for Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
I can get why Trump is so upset over this, even given that Twitter didn't censor him or "restrict his rights" or whatever. All they did was add a link to a news story on their page next to what he posted.
To Trump anything and everything is a PR issue and nothing more or less. Facts don't matter. What matters is whether his excitable base is going to sufficiently intimidate all GOP senators and congressmen into not defying him in any meaningful way. Or in fact any way at all. Trump has no chance of survival at all without 150% Senate backing.
So to do this he has to be feeding his base constant crap like what he posted. His base has no idea or doesn't care whether he is lying. They will guzzle poison if he just tells them if it might work. They will go out and demonstrate with their stupid misspelled signs and vote against any Republican senator that dares blink wrong.
In fact I doubt that the Twitter "fact check" link really had any effect at all. The people who are true believers in Trump won't give a damn about what CNN says anyway. To them anything that criticizes Trump is automatically part of the media conspiracy against Trump. Circular reasoning but it works for them.
But Trump seems to have correctly recognized that his one major asset and the most potent weapon he has is now under attack. If he someone fails to stop this he probably believes he will draw many more such attacks. So the fear and the fury is understandable.
How strong is this "Foundation"? (Score:2)
I would think that most people have given up following Trump's Twitter feed and let the news media report on the particularly egregious ones.
The tweets themselves are tedious, difficult to read, continually contradictory and the replies consist of flame-fests with no real substantive discussions or new information.
I'm not really sure how positive for Mr. Trump his tweets are in shoring up his base or bringing in new converts.
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Yep. I can deal with Trump- much harder to deal with all the idiots who support him still. That is far more of a problem than one fascist leader.
Hitler would have been just one more disgruntled veteran yelling on a street corner if it weren't for the legions of Brownshirts behind him.
Disagree with the basis, agree with the review (Score:2)
His basis for attacking (let's be honest) social media companies is his typical narcissistic bullshit...BUT I ENTIRELY agree with removing social media companies' protections.
If they edit content, they're not a carrier and SHOULD BE responsible for the content.
If they are simply a carrier, they don't get to edit content. The phone company doesn't listen in on your conversation and bleep out swear words. That's a carrier. The USPS doesn't filter your letters and take out libelous statements. That's a car
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A case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, then?
But it's really an impossible problem. If you prevent social media companies from selectively deleting or moderating content, then they would be unable to enforce their AUP and wuld swiftly be flooded with pornography and weird memes - it would only take a few people to ruin it for everyone else. More seriously for them, no-one is going to want to advertise on that cesspit. If you do allow them to delete and moderate, then it's impossible for them
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Good (Score:2)
Throw a monkey wrench into social media.
Hypocrites (Score:3, Interesting)
Radio used to be governed by a mutual agreement between government and industry called the Fairness Doctrine. It required stations to present both sides of a political story or claim. However, when AM talk radio became dominated by the right, right-leaning politicians successfully ended the doctrine, citing "free speech" and reduction of regulation.
I can see a similar mutual agreement forming around social media, but in fairness, bring it back to radio also.
Waaah (Score:2)
On the law: I still remember an internet before social media platforms, so let any website exist that uses any mechanism to skew a discussion - nbd. Votes, likes, admin'ing, replies, dox'ing, flamebait - the general membership of any site already skews a topic by the loudest voices of the userbase. If the platform plays along - to remove exploitative, incorrect, harmful, illegal or whatever it feels like then that's fully within their sandbox. If someone doesn't like the rules of the game let them play el
Without Section 230 the Internet becomes Cable TV (Score:2)
Without Section 230 only the biggest broadcasters can risk having content on their website, and even then user created content cannot be allowed.
That's the point. The Internet democratized information. It made it possible, for example, to share videos like this [cnn.com] and this [youtube.com].
The powers that be do not want that. They want us to only consume approved media censored by them. If they strike down Section 230 they get that. The Inte
Re:1st Amendment (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's also how the media spread lies and unsubstantiated rumors.
Trump has been in media a long time. It's not hard to guess that part of his success is understanding how the media operates and uses that to his advantage.
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We do need sarcasm tags, I agree.
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Considering the 1st Amendment says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.", and the President is not Congress, technically it doesn't restrict him anyways.
I for one, however, am hopeful people will finally realize the office of president has been gaining for too much power in
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Considering the 1st Amendment says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.", and the President is not Congress, technically it doesn't restrict him anyways.
If they make that argument and it prevails, be prepared for the next Democratic president to make an EO regarding firearms. Republicans might want to make sure this is a hill they're really willing to die on.
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Hence the second part of my point. The office of president and this Executive Order thing has gotten way out of hand. And it's been a bipartisan effort the make the office of president more and more powerful.
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Hence the second part of my point. The office of president and this Executive Order thing has gotten way out of hand. And it's been a bipartisan effort the make the office of president more and more powerful.
It's mostly a combination of 2 factors: our 2 party system and the inability of politicians to look further than the next election cycle. It's very rare for a political party to hold both houses of Congress and the presidency (usually it's the presidency and one side of congress at most), so in order to get what they want they have to try and force it through Congress or go through the presidecny have your members in congress stonewall any attempt to stop the Executive. And they have to get their policies
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Social media companies enjoy special privileges under copyright laws (nothing to do with the 1st amendment). They get special treatment by only being a platform. However their many actions to censor, curate and editorialize have shown that they are in fact a publisher. Publishers do not get to enjoy these privileges.
The presumed changes don't infringe social media companies 1st amendment rights. They are still free to publish whatever they want within the law (including copyright law). They would presumably
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Right. Social media getting the best deal ever for any kind of platform or publisher, getting the protections and rights of both, has nothing to do with it.
Name any other publisher that gets the same platform protections. Name any other platform that gets the same publisher protections and rights.
Either the law is wrong or the court interpretation is wrong to create the current situation. It must be fixed. The little guy gets silenced, dog piled, sued, and slandered while these multi-billion dollar corporat
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Re:Totalitarian (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong clocks are still right twice a day.
Whereas Trump may be doing this for self serving and evil reasons, I've always thought that Facebook and Youtube, the major sources of flat earthing and vaccine denial, should enjoy the same requirements that newspapers enjoy regarding accountability for what they publish
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>You can't talk about the real issues because Trump makes it all about himself.
That is not an excuse. It doesn't matter if Trump is doing something right for the wrong reasons. What matters is that something right needs to be done.
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Re:Totalitarian (Score:5, Insightful)
"It doesn't matter if Trump is doing something right for the wrong reasons. What matters is that something right needs to be done."
"Something right"
I have no confidence that a Trump led effort will result in something right being done. His motivations matter. A review of the laws governing social media platforms could lead to useful changes. However this administration is more likely to try to get revenge on people or companies that Trump is pissed off at.
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If you wait for the "right" person, you will never get "something right".
The structure of government is based in part to get bad people to do the right thing.
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The amusing thing about all of this is that the people arguing here should stop to consider that both sides might well be correct. Trump is certainly acting like an autocrat. However that doesn't make Twitter and Facebook the good guys.
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I've always thought that Facebook and Youtube, the major sources of flat earthing and vaccine denial, should enjoy the same requirements that newspapers enjoy regarding accountability for what they publish
Which are what, exactly? Newspapers are free to publish all the flat-earth and anti-vax stuff they want. There just isn't usually a big enough a market for junk like that in the geographic areas they serve.
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Re:Totalitarian (Score:5, Insightful)
The primary responsibility lies with authors, not newspapers.
If Donald Trump wrote an editorial in which he falsely accused someone, say Joe Scarborough, of murder, and then a newspaper published it, Donald Trump would be the primary responsible party in the libel case. The paper wouldn't be a target, as long as they clearly identified the author.
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STOPPED clocks are right twice a day (Score:4, Insightful)
A "Wrong" clock is always wrong.
I'm not sure how the phrase fits into the conversation.
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Newspapers and broadcast television = the content is generated by employees of the company.
Social media = the content is generated by everyone, people not employed by the company.
Like it or not, they are different and therefore need different requirements.
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Wrong clocks are still right twice a day.
A stopped clock is right twice a day, assuming that it is a 12 hour clock. A clock that is is accurate, but set wrong (for example 10 mins fast), is never right. A clock that gains or loses time is correct rarely (related to the beat frequency of correct time vs. the speed of the clock).
Re:Totalitarian (Score:5, Insightful)
The best immune system against propaganda is an electorate able and willing to tell bullshit from reality.
In other words, I don't see this happen any time soon.
He fights back when harms him politically (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump can't keep his mouth shut and always fights back.
When gold star families criticize his handling of condolence calls, he fights back hard, keeping a feud going. That looks TERRIBLE, definitely hurts him politically, but he can't seem to help himself - he always fights back when he feels attacked.
> this is all about Trump maintaining power
I don't think he's that sophisticated or subtle. Clinton would make a political calculation. Trump felt attacked by Twitter, so he instinctively fights back - consequences be damned.
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He's a narcissist, what did you expect?
Re:Totalitarian (Score:5, Insightful)
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> Twitter is a private commercial entity
Read my first comment again. "Social media getting the best deal ever for any kind of platform or publisher, getting the protections and rights of both,"
Yes, Twitter gets to pretend they have all the protections no other platform in history gets and able to abuse that position.
Do you understand?
>an executive order.
To review the law. Again, something needs to change.
>How could this possibly end up well for the American people?
Because most Americans don't have
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With an electorate too uninformed and without the tools to tell misinformation from information (and who'd have any kind of incentive to change that?), misinformation is at the very least as evil as censorship.
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We also can't rule out threats to 230 from both sides, trying to twist the arms of the social media companies to censor "of their own free will" in ways different politicians want, to avoid that. Or worse, being broken up as too large or dominant, you know, for "purely unrelated reasons."
In this context, it sure as hell is not "of their own free will." It's like a reporter in the Hoffa movie getting a gift of a "guy's dick and balls" (DeVito's words) in a jar with the note, "Thinking of you!", choosing to
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Umm... When was he censored? They didn't delete his post. They didn't modify his post. So he was not censored.
All they did was post a link to some fact checking on if his statement was true. You can believe or disbelieve the fact checking, but his post was never changed or deleted. So he was not censored.
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Do you know about company towns [wikipedia.org]? The internet and Social media have become effective virtual company towns. Reviewing and resolving the erosion of rights in a company towns is the job of the government; to protect the rights of Americans.
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Yes, Twitter gets to pretend they have all the protections no other platform in history gets and able to abuse that position.
As an aside, telephone companies seem to get similar protections. I can't sue a phone company for allowing people to call me who I don't want to call to me.
But, okay. Fair enough. Your solution? Twitter is now liable along with whoever posts the information?
Okay. So, if I were Twitter, I'd add even more controls. Next time somebody even suggests that, say, someone should inject bleach, I'd shut that down post-haste because now I'm liable if some idiot does it.
Be careful what you wish for...
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Yes, Twitter gets to pretend they have all the protections no other platform in history gets and able to abuse that position.
Twitter's fact checking isn't protected under section 230. It's protected under libel laws. Section 230 protects content that comes from "others". It's the reason we can't sue Twitter for Trump's lies. But Twitter's fact checking comes from them. That's libel laws. And Trump hasn't made it any kind of secret that he dislikes the current libel laws. And part of me thinks, Trump knows that the fact checking falls under libel laws and can't stand it. So he's making an EO to take a swipe at libel in an
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Trump threatened to yank WaPo's press credentials during the election so they made it their mission to write daily headlines about him.
Re: Totalitarian (Score:3)
If your problem is mainly who Twitter cited in their fact checking, then the solution is not removing liability protections. If you care about facts, the solution is to compel these companies to provide unbiased facts. I suspect you don't really want that though, you want revenge.
There are plenty of other non-partisan sources on the lack of voter fraud. Here's one: https://www.brennancenter.org/... [brennancenter.org]
Also, let's not forget, Trump disbanded his voter fraud commission. If it's such an issue, why would he do that
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Here's a more current, more on-topic, and less biased source [ballotpedia.org].
Heck, even the liberal New York Times has warned "Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises [nytimes.com]". Twitter's "fact checking" was a blatant and deliberate misrepresentation of facts .
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the solution is to compel these companies to provide unbiased facts
Fortunately, the first amendment says you can't do that.
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So this was the precursor to the con artist refusing to hand over documents when he was (and is) being investigated? That Mueller couldn't get all the information he needed so wasn't able to make a full and complete report?
What's wrong with doing a large all encompassing study to determine what level of various ty
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By linking an opinion article by CNN and Washington Post? Wow. And you believe that to be honest non-biased "fact checking"? I have a bridge to sell you.
The problem with this line of attack is whenever someone responds with "Exactly which FACTS are incorrect?" the response from Trump supporters is either silence or "rofl fuckin LIBtARD moran!"
If Trump and his supporters are angry about FACTS that contradict them then explain why the facts presented are wrong. But they NEVER can and they never do. Al
Re:Totalitarian (Score:5, Insightful)
Unbelievable.
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"Section 230" is what gives forum hosting providers like Twitter immunity from prosecution from, say, libel suits, as long as what they publish is solely user-supplied content.
That's not correct. They can editorialize and publish their own material; they just need to identify user-supplied content.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Twitter has almost never "editorialized", barring a few announcements from @jack.
Instead what it has been doing has been controlling, sometimes in very sneaky ways (see "shadowbanning") what content its users can post, or that other people can see.
That is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. Not editorials.
Re:Totalitarian (Score:5, Informative)
Controlling content is also known as 'editing'. It's perfectly legal under 230, and the first amendment.
For an example, look at ... SlashDot. They have multiple mechanisms for controlling what content users see. In addition to moderating by pseudonymous users, the editors select stories, remove posts, ban users, etc.
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Though to be honest, that isn't really what they were doing, anyway.
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(I'll take your description of Section 230 protection at face value - I did not look it up)
The problem with something like Section 230 protection is that inevitably platforms come up with situations that they must filter for. If they don't, they will have an unusable platform (or very likely illegal somewhere). Any filtering is by its nature political. Does a platform allow porn? Violence? Snuff videos? Copyrighted material? (If they do, they likely will be forced out of business by one government or anothe
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It must be fixed. The little guy gets silenced, dog piled, sued, and slandered while these multi-billion dollar corporations get all the protections they could dream of.
Dude, did you just call Trump "little"? Are you trying to get tweetstormed?
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Dude, this issue doesn't just affect Trump. He is just the most prominent example because POTUS.
Call it a broken clock or whatever. This is a problem that transcends Trump. Yes, the little guy on the internet is being abused by huge corporations with an axe to grind. Remember Covington kids? Remember the meme created with CNN and the wrestling gif? Remember Facebook de-platforming? Remember Twitter banning?
Re:Totalitarian (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, this issue doesn't just affect Trump. He is just the most prominent example because POTUS.
Call it a broken clock or whatever. This is a problem that transcends Trump. Yes, the little guy on the internet is being abused by huge corporations with an axe to grind. Remember Covington kids? Remember the meme created with CNN and the wrestling gif? Remember Facebook de-platforming? Remember Twitter banning?
I was making a joke on the fact that the one thing above all else that drives Trump is his fear of being belittled, demonstrated to be inadequate, or in any other way shown to be insignificant. It can be seen in his reactions to the most basic of insults, the way he has to brand his name on everything, his physical appearance (the bad tan, the worse combover), even the way he talks (the reliance on superlatives to the point of exaggeration and excess). And this whole twitter spat plays right into that fear because they are publicly declaring that he is wrong and, by doing so, they have made themselves his enemy.
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"The guy with the little hands gets silenced" FTFY
Re:Totalitarian (Score:4, Funny)
How about Slashdot? User generated content, sometimes the editors comment on stories and of course they have a big say in selecting them in the first place.
Maybe Trump should set up his own social network. Call it Trumper or something, basically clone Twitter except the way he wants it, see how that works out. I mean he's a genius businessman with a string of non-bankrupt companies, I'm sure he can do it.
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Don't worry, Trump already has one of his good pals trying to buy enough Twitter stock to take control of the company and sack its current CEO.
Of course, republicans in general, and Trump supporters in particular, would have absolutely no problem with the idea of the governement taking control of the media, and would see in this no threat whatsoever to democracy.
As long as it was a republican governement, of course.
Go ahead, trumptards, mod me down also. So much for your precious "freedom of speech".
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Now at least no one can deny that Trump is a totalitarian leader.
I take it you've never met a Trump supporter.
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Right now, these social media sights have become largely one of the de facto methods for the expression of public option.
The whole public.
Right now, these sites...if allowed to keep the ability to edit, censor, remove, editorialize at their will....basically gives them HUGE power over not only the US, but also other countries around the world.
They can suppress whatever they do not agree with or that doesn't fit
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The owners of these platforms have the right to free speech too. Answering speech you disagree with, using your own free speech, as Twitter did by commenting on the President's obvious falsehoods, is USING free speech, it is NOT censorship.
When you post a notice on someone else's private property, say a note board in a supermarket, the supermarket is not liable for your post. Even if they take down some notices, while leaving yours up. And if they take down your notice while leaving others up, they are not
Re:Totalitarian (Score:5, Insightful)
Our system is rolling over at a frantic pace. Over the last forty years or so, the consolidation of control into fewer and fewer hands has left our institutions unable to do anything except provide excuses. They no longer understand how to speak truth to power.
The president is literally flouting the constitution, there are no checks and balances. He laughs at the emoluments clause. He shits all over congressional oversight. His lackeys in the senate protect him from any consequences. He is packing the courts with sycophants and toadies. He is staffing all departments with yes men and firing any who dare oppose him.
Do not count on anything to remove this man from power. He WILL contest this next election and refuse to leave office. And his violent right wing militia supporters will use violence to keep him there. Be ready.
Re: Totalitarian (Score:4, Insightful)
Think Trump has any real power? Check out Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent. Consolidation of media power in the 1980s had become obscene. Media is bought and sold for!!! And now? You have a tightly bound group of media conglomerates controlling the narrative.
I love the idea of fact checking, but remember when Facebook started doing this and used "vetted" sources like Snopes? That's a guy and his cat! What makes them an authority? Most of their pages are just as logically shaky as Trump's one-off sound bites. It usually boils down to one shaky fact dug up by the cat and the guy's analysis.
You need to see through the veiled attempt. They muddy the waters by posting opinion rather than fact and then post false facts and finally offer a tiny retraction long after everyone's attention on the matter has dissolved. The news media are notorious for this! Trump trolls CNN, they have aneurysms, they rip him to shreds with attacks just as cheap, and only a particular type can stand either group! Twitter is setting itself up for this exchange, we know whose side Jack is on, and it ain't gonna be pretty! Much less pretty than the frosted tips on Jack's beard.
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The law protects platforms that do not intervene in the content that is shared on their sites. As soon as they start censoring, changing, or augmenting the things that users post, based on a belief system, they become a publisher and are no longer protected by 230.
This is pretty clear-cut law that has been decided on many times in various circuits.
They didn't intervene, they simply added a link. They did not in any way hide, change, or remove his tweet. In fact, one could argue that Twitter adding that fact check link could itself be considered "speech" and therefore protected by the 1st Amendment.
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It should also be said the moment they censor something that is not against their rules, or inconsistently apply their rules, then they de-facto approve of, endorse, and support literally everything on their service.
And no they don't get to put a cute disclaimer on their site that says otherwise.
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So, Twitter should strickly enforce its terms of service and ban Trump's account then ?
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There are no internet common carriers, not even the ISP, which is most unfortunate.
Re:Existing law seems fine (Score:5, Insightful)
However twitter didn't edit his comment. They replied to his tweet and asked their users to fact check what he said.
It's no different that me replying to his tweet and telling people to fact check.
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Twitter hasn't been a common carrier for a few years now. They are a service provider according to the FCC, so there is nothing at all they can do to gain common carrier protections.
That's the entire reason trump is going after section 230, since that is the only protection that applies to a service provider.
You should probably know a little bit about the law before commenting on it.
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If you make that change Twitter will just ban Trump. The current rules say they can remove content for almost any reason they like and keep their common carrier status, so if they can't post their own responses to Trump they can just delete his account instead.
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From what I understand, the law is fine but the court interpretation of that law is not. The intent was that the government would assume platform and extend those protections under the idea that those services would stay unbiased and neutral. The courts have taken that to mean they are always treated as platforms even if they editorialize or curate content.
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They aren't editing the content. The original content is still present and unedited. They are adding their opinion alongside the content.
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Now Trump has probably issued more executive orders that Obama in all of his eight years
If only there were sites that listed the numbers and rates of executive orders issued by each President [wikipedia.org] so that we could make factual statements instead of casting spurious aspersions with no basis in fact. If only!
This isn't a partisan issue. Both sides—up to and including the current administration—abuse executive orders either by issuing more than they should or by issuing ones that attempt to usurp authority where they shouldn't, and this is not a new phenomena. In fact, contrary to modern t
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Nope. Read Section 230(c) of the law which explicitly allows these actions.
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Bingo!
I'm not sure why people don't realize this. I know a few people that feel strongly on this matter and they think that if they can take Twitter to court and get some ruling that changes it so that now things have to either be A) Completely open, no moderation, for safe harbor or
B) More strongly moderated to avoid harassment and threats; they think Twitter will go with A -- news flash, they won't. Twitter will go with B. They'll turn the platform into a gated community where you have to get approval to