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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

#951

Post by perf1 »

thomaslord wrote: post #734
jtbayly wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspapers do that because they are liable for what they publish. Twitter is not liable for what it publishes. Why should it not be liable? The answer is because they are just providing a platform and others are publishing. But the moment they use their platform to modify and censor what people publish, then they should probably be liable, right?

I don't see why they should be. If someone uploads their library of child porn encoded to base64 split across tons of tweets, do you want Twitter to have a choice between removing that content and continuing to operate? We have 3 options here: 1. No moderation allowed whatsoever on a site without a court order. That obviously leads to a terrible, toxic community with lots of reprehensible content that the average per…

Why have a Supreme Court or even normal Judges if Laws are only allowed to be this binary? Why not option 4 you are allowed to censor if you give reason and the reason is in your TOS. But you are for example not allowed to Edit (Fact Check), Censor or manipulate Votes of your political opponents, or loose your libel protections.

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

#952

Post by tigershark »

Mirioron wrote: post #499
pas wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in this case what does the Constitution say? And where does the Constitution say that a corporation spending money is speech?

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…

How on earth adding a small disclaimer at the bottom of trump lies to prevent misinformation on the electoral process is against free speech?

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

#953

Post by gamblor956 »

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…

People have successfully pursued defamation cases for posts to Facebook and other social media platforms.

Section 230 shields Facebook from liability for these posts, not the users. And Facebook generally responds to subpoenas from a court for IP address data that can be used to identify a the user behind a libelous post...

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

#954

Post by gamblor956 »

meragrin_ wrote: post #476
cdolan wrote: post #2

The biggest takeaway, looking past the headline: “This week a federal appeals court, ruling in a case brought by conservative activists against social media companies, affirmed that private websites are not public spaces and social media companies don't have First Amendment obligations. Any truly strong limits to Section 230 would almost certainly require action by Congress.”

There is already a ruling by the Supreme Court where social media sites are referred as the modern public square. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1194_08l1.pdf

Not, it doesn't.

The case was about a government trying to restrict a sex offender from accessing web sites where he could engage in first amendment activities like commenting. The court ruled that they could not, absent a sufficient showing that the restrictions on the appellant's internet usage were necessary to prevent the sex offender from re-offending.

In fact the express language of the ruling states that social media sites are a means for accessing the public square, not that these sites are the public square. Moreover, these dicta statements (i.e., non-binding commentary) are a direct reference to the first amendment mall cases, which similarly involved activities that could occur in a public square. The mall cases held that private malls could ban speech because they were private facilities, thus they were not public squares even though the public could (and frequently did) engage in traditional public square activities in the mall.

TLDR: the private-public distinction matters for First Amendment law. The First Amendment only applies to public properties and public agencies, not private properties or persons.

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

#955

Post by perf1 »

belltaco wrote: post #773
partyboat1586 wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is essentially a big public square the results of which end up getting printed by mainstream press. Publishers are also under more legal restrictions than Twitter is.

No, publishers can be as biased as they want, unlike the new requirements here.

Twitter can also go the publisher route and be biased as much as they want.

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

#956

Post by gamblor956 »

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.

In the US, Congress must explicitly delegate rulemaking powers to an executive agency. Absent such delegation, they cannot issue rules that would change the execution or implementation of the relevant statute. (Rules in this context are federal agency interpretations defining or implementing statutes passed by Congress.)

It appears that Congress did not delegate to the FCC the power to make rules under/implementing the CDA, so regardless of Trump's order, the FCC can do precisely diddly squat about changing the rules of the CDA.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/legal-experts...

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

#957

Post by perf1 »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #855
ColanR wrote: post #852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> repealing Section 230 I don't see how this is repealing anything. It seems like the order is saying that if a company wants Section 230 protection, they have to be very strict about not editorializing anything, and if they do even a little bit, they have to go all the way.

Which, in essence, is repealing it. It’s saying, if you do anything, it’s editorialization. That was how it was before Section 230.

They are allowed to police things that are against their TOS. They just aren't allowed to be biased.

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

#958

Post by evan_ »

takeda wrote: post #912
evan_ wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The President can only play in the mall fountain or whatever if the mall management says he can. If they want to boot him they can. The president is not a king.

You know well that it's not how it works in real life. Everyone would be afraid of repercussions to their business, kind of like the article we are currently discussing.

it's not how it works if you don't want to get harassed and attacked on twitter (and not on twitter), but you won't actually go to jail over it.

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

#959

Post by xiphias2 »

space_fountain wrote: post #944
xiphias2 wrote: post #941

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

You can't separate demonetization from the question of publishing. Traditional media uses ads revenue for compensating content creators, but at the same time has a responsability for having copyright for every content they publish. Also just by the decision of demonetizing Alphabet gets farther from being just a communications medium earning money from helping the spread of information and getting to be a decider of what those users can communicate with eachother (Joe Rogan is a great recent example).

When a new law is being created, often it is created _because_ something legal, but immoral is being done by a person/company.

Also the law you refer to is a law inside the U.S., but Alphabet earns more than 50% of revenue (and most views) outside US. It was doing illegal business in the EU multiple times on grand scale and was given fines for it.

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

#960

Post by belorn »

thomaslord wrote: post #734
jtbayly wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspapers do that because they are liable for what they publish. Twitter is not liable for what it publishes. Why should it not be liable? The answer is because they are just providing a platform and others are publishing. But the moment they use their platform to modify and censor what people publish, then they should probably be liable, right?

I don't see why they should be. If someone uploads their library of child porn encoded to base64 split across tons of tweets, do you want Twitter to have a choice between removing that content and continuing to operate? We have 3 options here: 1. No moderation allowed whatsoever on a site without a court order. That obviously leads to a terrible, toxic community with lots of reprehensible content that the average per…

There exist many more options and law is notorious for having grey zones where the complexity of context, and intent and outcomes.

In the specific example of child porn, would removing it be protected speech and a copyrightable work? To my knowledge, no, it is not.

However telling someone "this seems fishy, you might want to read up on it.", attached to someone else copyrighted work, is to me speech. It is also a copyrightable work if its original enough. It could also be a defined as a derivative work if it includes major copyrightable elements of the original, which in this context is likely.

The difference between removing child porn and creating derivative work is one that I don't think courts will have a problem to distinguish between. Both may end up being described as moderation, but the outcome, intent and context is very different.

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