Biting the hand that feeds him. I think this is a strategic miscalculation.
Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies
531–540 of 1001 posts
Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jack Dorsey has responded to this question multiple times in several places-- I heard him address it in the Making Sense podcast by Sam Harris some time in the past year. He seemed to show a firm grasp of the nuances involved. Here is a quote from him: "Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate,” [...] “It would…
Dorsey is right to want to encourage broader discussion across the political spectrum on topics. But the current fact-checking approach is flawed as it requires human judgment, which is hobbled by people's biases and potential lack of topical expertise. A better approach may be to offer a resource page that shows every news article on the topic, with guidelines on political leaning, how credible each article is etc s…
The page you linked doesn't contain explanation at all, what is a very important part of fact checking (if it can be automated, it can be tricked). It should probably contain a mix of automatic links with multiple independent human fact checkings that explain why a side should be picked over the other.
Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies
#533Earlier quoted context omitted.
Again, this has been drafted since at least last summer and has little to do with the recent twitter news. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/28/politics/trump-twitter-social... . > consistent with a draft order whose text CNN first reported last summer
If it has little to do with the recent twitter news, why is it signed today instead of last week?
They were probably waiting for one of the social media platforms to screw up somehow.
Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What's surprising is how often I encounter fellow Americans mistakenly asserting the first amendment extends beyond government and into the private sector. It's a confusion between the First Amendment and the principle of free expression, which is kinda forgivable given how closely they are related.
Not at all, they're directly at odds in this case. The President using presidential authority to restrict what twitter can say on their own platform is directly violating the first amendment to restrict twitter's free expression. 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.
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Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies
#535After just under four years of scorched earth resistance we now get this new EO. I am only surprised he waited this long.
And to think, just this morning you were claiming the text of this order was probably a forgery because it was so shoddy and inconsistent.
Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies
#536Of course this is being handled ham-handedly, but it seems to me that section 230 is a ludicrous piece of legislative malfeasance that allows content publishers to duck the legal responsibilities of publishing while profiting from behavior that is obviously publishing. I can't see how a Twitter/FB feed is substantively different from a curated "letters to the editor" section in a newspaper and I cannot for the life o…
Should YCombinator be responsible for the comment you just posted here?
Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies
#537Earlier quoted context omitted.
But a private company can take action to impede everyone’s access to an official’s statements if they “suppress” those statements... that would mean Twitter has to allow anything any public official, at least in the US, broadcasts via that medium...
You're getting downvoted to oblivion but I think that's a fundamental question in all of this. Does a private company have the authority to impede access to Official Statements? If so, under what conditions? If no, is it "never"?
This fundamental question has already been addressed by the courts many times.
The answer is yes to your first question. A private company is not required to make available "Official Statements" (whatever that means) using its own resources. The government (in the US at least) must pay for publication and dissemination of "Official Statements."
Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies
#538Until the tools, devices and technology needed to access the internet are free and universally available to all without restriction, these sites/services are no more of a public square than a country club is a public park. And no. A public library terminal is not universal access...
Nothing is "free", there are always constraints and opportunity costs. For example if there's a rally in DC, how many people can go there? It costs a lot of money, they have to get time off work, organize transport and lodging, etc.
Sure, there are material differences between - let's say local politics, where the bar is showing up at the town hall - and getting on Twitter. But that difference is becoming more and more meaningless. Especially that the nexus of power seems to be shifting away from the physical and more toward the virtual/digital.
Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter is not equivalent to some obscure knitting forum. It is huge. So huge that it gets quoted in nearly every mainstream media article. Twitter matters to political discourse, knitting doesn't.
The owners of printing presses have even more power, but the government does not mandate open access to those machines for dispensing speech. Unfettered access to twitter is not akin to free speech.
Newspapers are publishers, and are subject to rules and regulations for being publishers.
Twitter would not be mandate to open up access to everyone. Instead, the proposed legal changes would merely treat them as publishers, if they act like publishers, and therefore twitter would not have liability protections anymore.
Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
The order does not say that they don't have the right to fact check. It simply says that they don't have the right to fact check and enjoy section 230 immunity.
FoxNews.com has comments on their website. By the logic of the order, Fox News should also lose their immunity and be liable for suit for anything posted by commenters to their online articles.
Where have Fox News editorialised users content?