Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

881–890 of 1001 posts

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

#881

Post by javagram »

jbeam wrote: post #804
2019-nCoV wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where have Fox News editorialised users content?

The point of the order is to say “publishers” do not have Section 230 immunity and that Twitters actions constitute making it a publisher. Fox News is already publisher under any reasonable definition.

Under section 230, Fox News is not liable to suit if someone not affiliated with Fox posts illegal content on their comments on their website.

They are liable to suit if Fox News employees post illegal content on their website.

Twitter has the exact same treatment under the law today. It’s not liable for suit when Trump tweets lies about Joe Scarborough. But if @jack or @TwitterSafety tweeted the same lies, it could be sued in court for libel and section 230 would not be a defense.

Fox and twitter are already equal in eyes of the law today.

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

#882

Post by Fjolsvith »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #843
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>factual information Well... if you really want to get into it. Twitter can’t “fact check” the original statement. Because it was a prediction. It hasn’t happened yet. It’s unlikely to be mass scale fraud, of course, but it’s a future event. It’s his opinion / prediction. As wrong as it is, that isn’t something they should “fact check”. Twitter picked a really bad tweet to make a stand on. Like it or not, they chose…

I’m gonna nitpick, but they didn’t editorialize it. They posted their view in the form of a reply. Editorialization would mean changing what he wrote. Literally the root word of “editorialization” is edit.

Twitter as a company didn't even have a presence on Twitter until they posted the fact check.

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

#883

Post by Fjolsvith »

closeparen wrote: post #589
xiphias2 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be as simple as you write if social media companies would take responsibility for the publishing rights for what they publish, but they don't. For a long time they are picking and choosing the laws they want to abide by.

What exactly would be the public benefit of social media companies taking responsibility for user content? As far as I can see this framework does a fair job of making the same remedies available, just against the authors instead of the social media companies.

They will be able to silence those views they don't like and promote the ones they do. It will become readily apparent which side of the fence a social media company is on.

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

#884

Post by Fjolsvith »

thomaslord wrote: post #714
throwaways1232 wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are just using Trump's tweet to promote their own point of view.

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

#885

Post by newacct583 »

chongli wrote: post #868
newacct583 wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disq…

Um... can you cite the explanation of why the safe harbor provisions of the CDA are conditioned on being a neutral platform? That's not how I understand the law.

You're stretching. Twitter did a fact check on the president and he can't handle it, so he's trying to harm the company using the levers of government. And that is ALL that is happening.

The legalese that you're misunderstanding is just cover. And the proof is that no one wants Twitter to be liable for the speech of its posters, because if they were then Trump (who literally just days ago falsely accused a guy of murder on that very platform) would be thrown off instantly.

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

#886

Post by stale2002 »

roganp wrote: post #695
stale2002 wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So as soon as they make any kind of restriction on the use of their platform they become publishers? That's quite a stretch. That would have the same effect: it would require them to provide unfettered access for anyone, for any purpose.

> That would have the same effect

If they don't like the section 230 laws, that already exist, then they should go lobby Congress to change it or something.

But right now, if you act as a publisher, then you lose certain protections. That's how that law works.

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

#887

Post by gamblor956 »

caseysoftware wrote: post #838
belltaco wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's probably no decision because it's black and white. For example, many media outlets stopped carrying full Trump press conferences live. https://www.indiewire.com/2020/04/cnn-msnbc-not-airing-trump...

Please don't imply gamblor956 is just making things up. That's inappropriate. I'm looking forward to reading one of the many cases. It's always good to understand a) what the law says and b) how it's interpreted. They're rarely 1:1.

West Virginia v. Barnett. Rumsfield v Forum.

There are more.

The answers you want are the first search result in Google and Bing for first amendment and compelled speech and are covered by the Wikipedia page on the First Amendment.

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

#888

Post by tekknik »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #866
tekknik wrote: post #857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The existence of the link in the first place. You have to be pretty far removed from reality to not know Twitter execs have a left lean to their bias. So the a completely unbiased person will notice that only some tweets show this link and could build a bias based on other psychological factors, such as wanting acceptance from a seemingly majority of peers.

I am for neutrality. I’m also a realist. IFF they could pull this off universally, in that all tweets are subject to these same fact checks, then I’m all for it. Removing personal biases of the person doing the fact checks will be a challenge but we can achieve this through multiple fact checkers with specific biases. Like the bulls and bears statements you find with stocks. But we cannot achieve this, we lack both the peoplepower and technology given Twitters scale. Short of it being universally applied to all accounts it can’t meet the definition of neutral. Therefor, don’t do it at all. Instead someone else using Twitter can reply to his tweets with the fact check. This keeps Twitters hands and potential biases entirely out of a very complicated topic.

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

#889

Post by Fjolsvith »

threatofrain wrote: post #786
hintymad wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that section 230 is about First Amendment. I thought it was about whether a company can be shielded from law suit on the content published on the company's website. That is, how to classify a company as a platform or as a publisher.

First amendment is the issue as we're contemplating who should be liable for the consequences of bad speech. If FB is liable than FB is incentivized to censor risky people; if I'm liable then I might watch what I say on Yelp or Wikipedia. Right now we have a situation where the platform owner can collect the fruits of popularity, while the platform users experience basically no-liability gossip, such as empirical cla…

> while the platform users experience basically no-liability gossip, such as empirical claims about businesses.

Not true. You can be sued for Libel on Twitter and Facebook [1].

https://slate.com/technology/2012/11/libel-on-twitter-you-ca...

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

#890

Post by gamblor956 »

visarga wrote: post #659
gamblor956 wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter matters to political discourse, knitting doesn't. Doesn't matter. Twitter is a privately owned platform not a public one. SCOTUS has already said that simply being open to the public does not make a business a public platform, see Pruneyard v Robins , applying this reasoning to privately-owned malls. And yes, that makes all the difference, since SCOTUS has repeatedly held that publicly owned spaces like publi…

There is a large gap between the Twitter user base and the number of visitors in a mall. Are you saying that quantity doesn't matter, we should uphold the principle on its own? I think the more people use a platform, the more society needs to regulate it to its benefit.

Yes. On a relative basis for decades malls were a larger part of American life than Twitter is or ever was. The fraction of people that actually use Twitter is extremely small once you leave SV and Hollywood.
Post reply on HN