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Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

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Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#861

Post by freehunter »

free_rms wrote: post #842
viscanti wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like having the president attack Twitter for their speech (adding extra speech that suggests that some shared information is disputed) is the actual violation of Free Speech. The First Amendment says that the federal government can't stifle free speech, which seems like what is happening here.

Bedhead's point still stands in isolation from this week's bullshit, though. Trump will be on to some other highly divisive circus act next week. The question of whether Twitter is a public square will persist.

The laws of America already provide a way to resolve that though. If one company is becoming too powerful and unfairly damaging competition because of it, anti-trust exists.

Arguably twitter isn’t even that powerful except that the president uses it as an official communications platform. Before this current administration, Twitter was circling the drain. It was an afterthought in modern social media. The president pretty much singlehandedly made twitter as important as they are today. If the president doesn’t like twitters TOS he could switch to Facebook and have an even greater reach than he does today. So it’s hard to argue that twitter is actually the problem, but if they are, the easy answer is stop using their platform and switch to a competitor.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#862

Post by perl4ever »

thephyber wrote: post #689
perl4ever wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know the Fairness Doctrine was a mechanism to prevent the juxtaposition of opposing views.

> to prevent the juxtaposition of opposing views The way I interpreted it, your parent comment was arguing the opposite of the way you framed it. It's a long run-on sentence, but the `;` is meant to be interpreted as "start a new sentence that is related to the previous one"

I don't know what it was arguing. It seemed to be implying that the Fairness Doctrine created a protected space. Didn't it do the opposite?

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#863

Post by freehunter »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #837
remarkEon wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He’s doing an end run around Congress using Executive Orders in an attempt to get what he wants now. And you can thank the previous guy in charge for setting this precedent, that you can do whatever you want via Executive Order. I have little sympathy here. >as the Constitution is written, he cannot force a private website to carry his speech Not quite sure this is actually the question at hand. It's about choice of…

What? No. Executive order is an order to the executive branch from it's boss the President. It's not going around Congress at all- it's separate from Congress. It's not changing law. All Presidents do this and are allowed to. You can't do whatever you want via executive order. This is Trump telling the FCC, one of his departments, how to operate, which he can do, as much as I disagree with it.

The powers of the executive branch are not unlimited and not every order is Constitutionally valid. Especially ones restricting freedom of speech by private individuals.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#864

Post by colejohnson66 »

chongli wrote: post #836
colejohnson66 wrote: post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Section 230 does not say “any form of moderation or editorialization makes them liable.” In fact, this what §230(c)(1) says: > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. Enforcing section 230 would actually mean that Twitter is not liable for what Trump posts. Which is already the case. If Tru…

Yes, I read the Wikipedia article as well. Read the section on application and limits: In analyzing the availability of the immunity offered by Section 230, courts generally apply a three-prong test. A defendant must satisfy each of the three prongs to gain the benefit of the immunity:[9] 1. The defendant must be a "provider or user" of an "interactive computer service." 2. The cause of action asserted by the plainti…

> Imagine if dang, the moderator here on HN, decided to edit people's posts with addenda or disclaimers about the factual content of the writing. That'd make him an editor too, rather than a moderator, and then should in fairness be subject to all of the liabilities that publishers face.

Sure, that’d be editing, but what Twitter did was not editing. It’s akin to a reply tweet that was pinned to the top. They did not edit Trump’s tweet at all.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#865

Post by AgentME »

remarkEon wrote: post #785

I don't know why everyone here is upset by this. Isn't this what we wanted? An actual policy debate, decided by the three branches of government - the executive, congress, the Courts - about what kinds of regulations these super powerful social media companies should have to submit to. Don't fool yourselves, if Facebook or Twitter wanted to swing an election they absolutely have the power to do that . Isn't that a pr…

The concept of regulation in this space may make sense, but that doesn't mean just any regulation will do, and the fact that it's come in the form of government retaliation to Twitter publishing a fact check of a public official is scary.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#866

Post by sixstringtheory »

tekknik wrote: post #857
sixstringtheory wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have to speak in hypotheticals here. There are plenty of examples: voat, gab, TD, etc. What laws are/were being pushed by liberal politicians to use the force of law to shut them up? Please do link to government documents or quotes from elected officials.

It’s not a question of laws used, more psychological factors. Some people seeing those statements made by twitter may believe them blindly. We need people reading into important topics like this and forming opinions without being bated. Part of the problem you’ll also see in this thread. The downvotes here set the tone for the comment the viewer is about to read. Why is it’s view changed at all? Nothing this commente…

What statement was made by Twitter that could be followed blindly? All I saw was "Get the facts about mail in ballots".

You can only infer a bias on that based on your own preconceived notion about Twitter's biases. A completely ignorant and unbiased individual may just as likely think "Twitter wants to show me why Trump is right" as they are to think "Twitter wants to show me why Trump is wrong".

If you really want to have people

> reading into important topics like this and forming opinions without being bated (sic)

then you should be all for this kind of neutrally positioned link to more information. I'm certainly open to entertaining alternatives, though.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#867

Post by dnautics »

gowld wrote: post #859
dnautics wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the same token though, as per the tweets assertion (I have not read the EO personally) it looks like a good chunk of the teeth of this bill is "preventing the government from advertising on a platform that doesn't X", not "creating legal consequences for a company that doesn't X", which is... Not at all the same.

They are in part the same, as the Supreme Court has ruled. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Ag... As HN is fond of saying, judges are smart enough to see through attempts to hack the law.

And yet taking a person across state lines to kill them in a different jurisdiction is federal crime thanks to the interstate commerce clause.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#868

Post by chongli »

newacct583 wrote: post #700
viscanti wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like having the president attack Twitter for their speech (adding extra speech that suggests that some shared information is disputed) is the actual violation of Free Speech. The First Amendment says that the federal government can't stifle free speech, which seems like what is happening here.

That's exactly it. Twitter disseminated the president's words as he wrote them to everyone that wanted to see it. They also said it was wrong. Fundamentally the whole exercise is an attempt to conflate Twitters (first amendment!) right to speak its own opinions with somehow "restricting" the rights of their subscribers. And that's insane. Just look at how many people in this very thread are buying into the frame by d…

It would be different (and fine) if Twitter replied to his tweets with their rejoinders, posting on a level playing field with everyone else. They didn't do that. They abused their position as controllers of the site to insert their opinion into his posts.

Twitter stepped beyond the bounds of being a neutral platform with moderation. They took up the mantle of editor and began editing people's posts. This should disqualify their safe harbour protections under the Communications Decency Act. This has nothing to do with the first amendment.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#869

Post by dyslexit »

remarkEon wrote: post #813
naikrovek wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And you can thank the previous guy in charge for setting this precedent, that you can do whatever you want via Executive Order. I have little sympathy here. If you truly think that Obama invented the Executive Order or was the first to use them frequently, you are laughably misinformed. Use of Executive Order has been common for at least 150 years.

I don't. I wasn't clear. EO abuses have been ongoing for at least 150 years, like you said. I'm merely pointing out that we're now only worried about it because Trump is bad and thus now EOs are bad.

This isn't true. Both Bush and Obama were criticized for them (probably other Presidents as well, I just wasn't following politics before then). But that's not what your original statement said:

> And you can thank the previous guy in charge for setting this precedent, that you can do whatever you want via Executive Order.

That statement is just pure bias, not fact.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#870

Post by digitalmk »

derefr wrote: post #677
bedhead wrote: post #227

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.

Now I'm curious what the historical precedent is for this. What happens (first-amendment-wise) when a company town has a literal private-property town square? Could the company control speech in "its" town square? For that matter: what about malls? Or university campuses? Or public transit infrastructure provided by private government contractors? What are your free-speech rights when in one of these (privately-owned…

This (almost) exact scenario played out in Marsh v. Alabama (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama). If the town is, for all intents and purposes, acting like a traditional town, and with the public having access to it, first amendment rights hold.

Also, worth reading up on Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Community_Access_Cor...)

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