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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

#941

Post by xiphias2 »

space_fountain wrote: post #907
xiphias2 wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is publishing everything any person tweets. Those 2 comments are nothing compared to the power of selectively blocking/publishing users tweets (which communication companies are not allowed to do), but at the same time not be responsible for copyright violations (which other types of media companies are ).

Not to pile on but really do read it. I see how you get to the White House's position but it's a stretch. There don't seem to be any condions tacked on. They don't publish other people's tweats. I think they could maybe be held liable for illegally removing tweats. The protection afforded for filtering does seem dependent on the motivation but I'm not aware of any laws restricting what content they're allowed to remo…

I was working at Google in 2007, and the type of filtering we had was very different from what Google does right now.

We had automated filtering of word lists that took down sites, that were hate words / porn related for protecting children.

Right now I'm paying monthly for Youtube Premium, but I see that the people I'm watching have to be extremely careful to not say a swear word by chance, or even say the name of the COVID-19 virus, because they are scared of losing their revenue stream. I don't see this as fair, because Youtube got so popular _because_ it was allowed to publish anything without being responsible for copyright violations. It would be great for them to do fact checking as long as they are politically consistent.

In EU at least we have the GDPR that limits companies from using our data however they want to, but in the US at this point they need some kind of counterbalance.

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

#942

Post by techntoke »

artificial wrote: post #827
techntoke wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have none except Trump's Twitter feed.

From the mouth of Richard Grenell: https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/126602867937061683...

A twitter post? All the intelligence agencies said their was Russia collusion. Remember the President said... Russia, if you're listening?

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

#943

Post by epakai »

chongli wrote: post #879
colejohnson66 wrote: post #864

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's not akin to a reply tweet. It was attached directly to his message. It's like if you sent out political campaign literature in the mail and the post office attached a "fact check" sticker to it. That is very obvious editorializing. If Twitter wants to give their opinions, they should do it through their own official accounts. Inserting content into other people's tweets is not participating on a level playing fi…

Twitter's opinions posted next to others still belong to Twitter though. Of course they're liable for the things they say directly.

Section 230 is specifically about removing liability for content they aren't directly responsible for. If you don't want Twitter to have control over their what you post on their platform the only reasonable solution is post elsewhere.

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

#944

Post by space_fountain »

xiphias2 wrote: post #941
space_fountain wrote: post #907

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to pile on but really do read it. I see how you get to the White House's position but it's a stretch. There don't seem to be any condions tacked on. They don't publish other people's tweats. I think they could maybe be held liable for illegally removing tweats. The protection afforded for filtering does seem dependent on the motivation but I'm not aware of any laws restricting what content they're allowed to remo…

I was working at Google in 2007, and the type of filtering we had was very different from what Google does right now. We had automated filtering of word lists that took down sites, that were hate words / porn related for protecting children. Right now I'm paying monthly for Youtube Premium, but I see that the people I'm watching have to be extremely careful to not say a swear word by chance, or even say the name of t…

Hum, also a YouTube premium subscriber. I think I see the demonization issue as somewhat separate. It's the result of negative news driving advertisers to fear their ads will be places adjacent to content they disagree with leading to negative publicity right? YouTube's options seemed to be either create tools for ad buyers to better manage the political palatability of the content their ads were placed next to or have the big spenders abandon them.

Regardless I wasn't comment on the morality of what big tech companies were doing only the legality. Nothing in https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 suggests to me that the protections are in anyway contingent on not removing certain content and certainty nothing suggests its contingent on not publishing content yourself in different contexts.

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

#945

Post by codezero »

nsajko wrote: post #354
codezero wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the premise is directing the agencies not to spend money on those platforms that violate the EO.

But does the US government even now buy any of Twitter's advertisement?

I don’t know. Would be a pretty shallow threat if not maybe?

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

#946

Post by epakai »

nautilus12 wrote: post #791
SllX wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone that spends too much time at the bar might mistake that for the town square, as might someone who spends too much time on Twitter. The more foolish aspect of this is that the President doesn’t have a direct means of striking back against what Twitter actually did (post a Get the Facts link), so he’s trying to punish them by reinterpreting Section 230. This EO definitely has some teeth, but there are provision…

Is he reinterpreting 230? I've seen both sides of the spectrum say that social media companies have been interpreting 230 too broadly

He's continuing a push from Republicans to reframe section 230 immunity as only applying to "neutral" platforms [1]. The problem is this then gives the government a big stick to control them on relatively subjective grounds.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

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

#947

Post by RandomTisk »

freehunter wrote: post #863
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What of the President's freedom of speech? In one possible (IMO likely) context that it will be viewed in by courts or at least the FCC, Twitter edited this President's speech to contradict himself.

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

#948

Post by Mirioron »

likeclockwork wrote: post #824
Mirioron wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can twist the Constitution in both directions. You could say that the value of free speech is so important to society that it is codified on the Constitution. These companies that become big enough platforms should respect that value. You could also say that the Constitution provides free speech protections to everyone. These companies should benefit from those same protections, thus the government shouldn't be a…

I defy anyone to write a rule with any kind of specificity for the first case. User count? Great, while the user count is It doesn't work! If it could work, please, anyone who reads this comment: Many of us are programmers here, propose a rule that doesn't fall apart. The second interpretation is at least consistent, even if it does protect corporations. If Twitter is the devil just leave Twitter, no one has to use i…

>If it could work, please, anyone who reads this comment: Many of us are programmers here, propose a rule that doesn't fall apart.

Legislation has an easy out here: "you'll know it when you see it." Courts would decide and they already need to decide on these distinctions.

>If Twitter is the devil just leave Twitter, no one has to use it. Gab exists. We have no legal right to access the people who are on Twitter.

There's also no reason why the government has to give special protections to Twitter and other sites like it.

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

#949

Post by esoterica »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #754
esoterica wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is obviously not true; Twitter was widely used long before Trump and the vast majority of the current user base does not follow Trump at all.

>This is obviously not true; Follow numbers matter little, if at all. In fact follower numbers are a rounding error in this context. Trump's tweet's reach is on the order of billions of people; hundreds of news organizations cite his tweets on a weekly (sometimes daily) basis, and orders of magnitude more bloggers do so as well. It's absolutely true, but people may not like to acknowledge that.

> Trump's tweet's reach is on the order of billions of people

I think you vastly overestimate the number of extremely online politics people who pay close attention to Trump's tweets. People use Twitter to follow their friends and celebrities, not because of Trump. Only a minuscule fraction of the attention that Twitter receives is attributable to him.

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

#950

Post by bePoliteAlways »

One more thing to consider if twitter/facebook are publisher or not is see how they earn money? They earn money in very similar way like a publisher does, by advertisement. Like any publisher they will want to make sure that content on their platform is "advertiser friendly".
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