Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

> "Rather than resort to censorship, social media companies can offer users tools that block unwanted content, including content that could be hurtful or offensive."

I think this is an interesting idea, but I think it would effectively mean de facto speech censorship like HN has with flagged/dead comments. Sure they exist, but most users don't have them on, and the larger the forum, the more annoying having them on will be. Given the amount of spam/hate comments on Twitter, no sane user would ever turn that feature on. So you end up right back where we are now, only by technicality they aren't censored. I suppose a positive, but then it gets right back into editorialization arguments re what content is flagged or "blocked".

> Social media companies must act to prevent this type of conduct.

Even if most can agree here, this doesn't appear to lay out concrete policies, nor does anyone appear to have any proposed that align with these main points that I know of. I didn't watch the media specifically so if you have any detail on those specifics or any concrete recommendations they make, a summary would be very much appreciated.

2. What was drafted last summer was legislation. Legislation that would likely not stand up to political or legal resistance. This is an executive order to make an end-run around all that "bureaucracy".

> has little to do with the recent twitter news.

This fails the plausibility test. This came hot on the heels of this incident, Trump _said_ it was related to this incident, and that he'd be doing this as result, and the last several years are packed with a multitude of examples of exactly that: Trump knee-jerking an angry response (words, actions, both) to those who he deems to have slighted him.

I've learned that Trump is an incredibly dull instrument, but the points he raises (when you get past the verbal diarrhea) tend to be things that some significant fraction of his "base" care about or that are not actually novel policy ideas. "The wall" as he describes it is dumb. But it has existed in some form since the 1990s (albeit only segments) and the way he describes it is a simple symbol for people that tend not to know how to "solve" problems related to (illegal?) immigration.

Most average people don't care about policy details so they don't know how to argue them to "win the argument". Trump gives them a sports team to cheer for and simple slogans to shout so they feel like they are participating.

> when it is painfully obvious that the only reasoning by the president is "they messed with me so I'm going to get revenge".

The problems that Trump has with social media companies go back far more than 2 days and a fact checking link. His Attorney Generals (both Barr and Sessions) have been working with Republican state Attorneys General for years to craft a response to what they see is "liberal Silicon Valley techies banning (or shadowbanning or remonetizing or ...) conservative voices". Trump doesn't see a downside to taking this action.

The interesting thing is that there are far more than just political American conservatives that want to see regulation of {YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc}. Elizabeth Warren wrote a detailed essay on medium.com about why they should be more strictly regulated. A crazy YouTuber from San Diego got so pissed at YouTube for banning her account or demonetizing her channel that she drove up to San Bruno (not sure exactly which city/location) and shot up the building. There are quite a few stories of vague ToS being enforced in a not-so-predictable manner which leaves end users with banned accounts (which may be the nexus to more important accounts like email accounts).