Posted on 05/27/2020 12:22:09 PM PDT by RandFan
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) will announce today that he is working with Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee to craft legislation that would strip social media giants of their Section 230 legal immunity if they fact check content on their platforms, according to a copy of his podcast which Breitbart News exclusively obtained.
On the Florida conservative’s podcast, Hot Takes with Matt Gaetz, he said that he is working on a bill that would prevent social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google from fact-checking content on their platforms. Gaetz’s announcement follows as Twitter decided to fact check President Donald Trump’s tweet on Tuesday.
Twitter tried to fact check the president over Trump’s tweet, claiming that mail-in ballot would lead to increased voter fraud.
After Twitter fact-checked Trump’s post, the president threatened to regulate or shut down social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
What is to say that Trump loses the election in November and a new court upholds the virtues of Facebook, Twitter, and Google? Then they can regulate the media to their platform.
The legislation is not needed or required. It is a slippery slope. If we can regulate those companies by fiat (sic?) then what is to say that OAN and Rush Limbaugh cannot regulate as well?
There is a legal difference between a platform and a publisher. A platform is simply a method of distribution. Anyone who uses it is solely responsible for the content. A publisher, on the other hand, is taking responsibility for the content they publish and makes editorial decisions accordingly.
The difference is important: platforms are immune from lawsuits for defamation because they hold no responsibility for the content on their platform. Publishers are not immune because they are the ones deciding what gets published.
This is not new legislation, it’s recognition of a decision that firms like Twitter have made: they decided to become publishers. Remove the legal protections they had as platforms and put them into the same legal category as newspapers and networks.
Hearing rumors around DC that Trump is preparing an Executive Order THIS WEEK to stop censorship by Big Tech.
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