You're just repeating what the current state of affairs is. Doesn't mean it has to stay that way.
Then perhaps let us debate that in a reasoned and considered manner, rather than an executive order that Trump himself describe as a lashing out at Twitter.
The executive order signed today is far too detailed and far too nuanced to support the idea that its cause for existence is Trump being upset at Twitter a few days ago. This has been being prepared for a long time.
The problem with Twitter and Facebook is that the lines are getting blurry with regards to public vs private. Like it or not, a couple tech platforms are the de facto new town squares. Not saying I have any answers, just saying it's definitely not a clear issue anymore.
Furthermore (IANAL) there's a long history of conflict around the boundaries of private vs. public. "Private" clubs (as with companies) are subject to civil rights and other equal protection legislation (sometimes) for example in a way that your outdoor BBQ isn't.
What law did Twitter fail to abide by in linking a tweet to factual information?
The fatal mistake which will cost the FAANGs billions is in becoming editors rather than facilitators by appending links to Twitter users posts. This doesn't scale (will all posts not edited/ appended to/rubber stamped by Twitter be considered 'true?) and also blows out the already stretched meaning of Section 230. This opens the door to much greater regulation of BigTech internationally. 'Section 230 says that "No p…
there are numerous examples when google removes websites from search results because of violating SEO rules and other rules of google. 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.
Violating SEO rules is bad and these sites should be removed that can be understood. 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.
This is not what's happening on Twitter. They're not removing tweets.
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 like they've never even been to a movie theater where they need to shut the hell up or leave. And here we have a US president signing an executive order in response to being moderated on a web site after years of arguably excessive tolerance of his b.s. I'm n…
> I'm not sure how much more embarrassed I can get for my country. Every election season, I’ve said, “These are some of the worst candidates I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure how much lower the bar can get.” And then it gets lower.
I submit one of the reasons our candidates are so bad is that our discourse refuses to hold them to account. Instead of taking a position and punishing bad acts, we excuse them by telling ourselves the other side "would have been" just as bad. So the lesson successful candidates take away is that they don't need to adhere to principles, because their voters will find some mental excuse (like you just did!) to vote for them anyway.
If you don't want this to happen you can't vote for the administration (not "candidates") who did it. Nothing changes until someone starts losing elections. But my guess is you aren't willing to go that far, because of something about Biden.
Here is the text of the executive order (draft): https://www.scribd.com/document/463379849/Draft-Executive-Or... Here is the audio version: https://playthis.link/https://pastebin.com/0mzv8heR
Thank you! After reading several contradictory and confusing articles, I found the actual order very clear. I would encourage others to take a look.
Agreed! I've started reading the actual laws and legal orders much more often recently. I'd already been in the habit of diving into source code when confused about how a (software) library/tool works, and I figured this wasn't all that different.
I've been surprised twofold:
1. to find out how often journalistic coverage is misleading or incomplete
2. to find out how often the legal text is actually fairly succinct and coherent, even to a layperson like myself
Or maybe we think that giving the government the power to tell private companies which speech they must allow is more authoritarian than letting the companies decide for themselves. Whenever there are tricky balancing questions like this, I always err on the side of the party that doesn't have a monopoly on violence.
Extending free speech laws to cover companies which acts as public forums is not the same as the government telling companies what they are allowed to say and do. If you think that free speech laws are fine for governments then you should also think it is fine for certain companies which grew too powerful and influential.
How do you think those laws will be enforced, if not the government telling companies "you must allow this defamatory and/or untrue content on your servers"? Facebook and Twitter can't censor me, because I am not a customer of either company, and neither has a law enforcement wing. The government, on the other hand, has unlimited firepower and I have no choice whether to "do business" with it. So yes, I will absolutely apply different standards to each.
Not in any way that matters, and certainly not in the legal sense. In a legal sense, Twitter is your neighbor's backyard, and your neighbor is telling you to stop lying about sleeping with his wife or get the fuck out of his yard.
In the legal sense, replies to tweets of government officials have indeed been public square since 2018. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-twitter/trump-u...
As a member of the government, Trump cannot selectively choose who can or cannot view things that are the public duty of his office. He can't ban people from watching White House videos on Youtube and he can't block people on his public facing government account.
This does not mean that Twitter or Youtube cannot ban them from their site or control what they do on their site. It means the government cannot selectively enforce who can or cannot view their content. If Trump came over to your home and asked to hold a SOTU, you have the right to turn him away. However if you agreed to let him hold a SOTU and he decides to turn away your friends because he doesn't like them, that would be against the law.
You are misunderstanding free speech, it isn't a literal statement. Free speech is about being allowed to express ideas, not disrupting classrooms or harassing others. If you are allowed to express your idea after waiting for your turn, then your speech wasn't suppressed even if people told you to be quiet for a while.
"The ideal of free speech and its merits applies just as well to private actors and we should try to live up to it whenever we can." What exactly does this mean if it doesn't apply to actively telling people when and where they can speak?
It is fine to police disruptions, but you shouldn't police ideas. If all conservatives are told to wait for their turns while it is fine for liberals to just blurt things out then it isn't free speech. However if everyone is forced to wait and a conservative gets banned for talking out of turn then it is still free speech, he got banned for disrupting and not for his message.
It is hard/impossible to create laws around it since it is hard to formally define, but often it is obvious when it is infringed in practice just that we can't litigate it.