Draft of Executive Order on Online Censorship [pdf]

Language matters. Fascism is certainly authoritarian but way, way worse than current matters. It waters down the horrors suffered by those who lived under the yoke of it.

Which would also apply to any news outlet with a moderated comment section, including Fox News, no?

The large tech platforms are defacto digital public squares. The recent trend they’ve taken on to censor content they disagree with is unacceptable and bad for society. And yes, it is evidence of them behaving as a publisher. This censorship trend was bad enough previously, but it has become a lot worse and more egregious during COVID-19, where only the word of certain public agencies are allowed, even though they’ve been wrong several times. Various platforms have deleted many reasonable COVID blog posts that go against the grain, even if they’re logical and worthy of consideration.

I’m glad this move from the President will shine a light on the issue. In the least it may result in viable alternatives to Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, and Google springing up.

That text is quoted from Section 230. The reason Section 230 was introduced is that, long ago, if platforms did literally any moderation on their site, they were considered to be taking an editorial role and liable for all the things they failed to moderate (e.g., if someone posted libel, the platform would have liability for it), so there was an incentive not to moderate at all, because you wouldn't get it 100% right. For pre-online platforms this was fairly reasonable (e.g., you could hold a newspaper responsible for its columnists publishing libel) but it put a serious damper in real-time user-contributed online forum.

Section 230 said that if a platform acts in good faith for those moderation reasons you list, that doesn't cause them to gain liability - they're still in the same place as if they didn't moderate. If they exercised active editorial control, then they'd be responsible (e.g., you can't just host a pro-harassment forum and solicit other people to post harassing comments and expect Section 230 to protect you), but as long as you only do normal moderation of obviously bad stuff, you're fine.

This draft executive order says, we're interpreting that part of Section 230 to specifically not count "deceptive or pretextual actions restricting online content" as normal moderation, presumably including things like flagging Trump's tweets for misinformation.

That leaves Twitter with two choices: 1) forfeit Section 230 protection and be responsible for all the content on their site (i.e., they'd have to heavily and reliably moderate every single tweet) or 2) stop flagging Trump's tweets for misinformation and do even less moderation so they maintain Section 230 protections.

> America, when are you going to give up on this idiot?

Let me put it this way: he's a terrific final act. A great summation of what has been a story with its ups-and-downs, but is primarily a lesson in what not to do.

> I’m genuinely curious, what’s the last straw?

Is there evidence for the idea that large changes to political structures are made on the basis of last straws? I surmise that this is not a terribly useful lens.

> He takes a dump on the Whitehouse lawn in order to show how powerful he is?

My experience is that very few Americans have any pride for the whitehouse lawn (and for the things I presume for which you are using it as a metaphor). The grandeur of the American state is not a source of inspiration for us.

> My view of America has forever changed, no matter who comes next.

Then I suspect your view has become more acute and more accurate. Our government has failed us for generations, but done so with a slick veneer of statesmanship and sobriety. This idiot, as you rightly say, is giving what we've endured a face.