Posted on 05/28/2020 5:37:47 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
President Trump signed an executive order to reign in social media giants on Thursday.
The order comes after Twitter added a fact check label to one of the president’s tweets about mail-in ballots. What’s in the order?
Reigning in of Section 230 protections
The order does not remove Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA), but it would cut federal funding for tech companies that engage in censorship and political conduct, as well as remove statutory liability protections.
Section 230 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.” In other words, online platforms that host or republish speech are protected from a wide range of laws that could otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do. (Copyright law, which has a strong constitutional foundation, ordinarily does require sites like Twitter to remove offending content, or face liability.)
"My executive order calls for new regulations under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to make it so that social media companies that engage in censoring any political conduct will not be able to keep their liability shield," the president said.
“Immunity should not extend beyond its text and purpose to provide protection for those who purport to provide users a forum for free and open speech, but in reality use their power over a vital means of communication to engage in deceptive or pretextual actions stifling free and...
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Here’s the link for what’s in it.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/
yep ... and here’s the white house synopsis:
In the next few hours, you may hear a lot about this Executive Order. Leftwing media will claim it addresses a fake problem because tech bias doesn’t exist. Democrats in Congress will say the President is exceeding his authority. Some in the Beltway establishment will say the order doesn’t do that much in the first place.
All of these are lies. Here are a few of the key actions in President Trump’s order:
Makes it U.S. policy that platforms who selectively edit, censor, or are not acting in “good faith” with regards to content will not receive the liability protection included in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
Directs the Commerce Department to petition the FCC to make clarifying rules on Section 230 in line with U.S. policy
Helps stop millions of taxpayer dollars from being wasted by federal agencies on advertising with biased social media platforms
Ensures the Justice Department will review more than 16,000 complaints about politically motivated censorship that were collected by the White House in advance of a Social Media Summit held last year
Mobilizes State Attorneys General—who have massive subpoena and consumer protection authorities—to ensure social media platforms are not engaging in unfair or deceptive acts or practices
Acts as federal law and lists the many ways in which tech platforms act with bias against viewpoints they disagree with
Massive corporations that treat millions of American citizens unfairly shouldn’t expect special privileges and protections under the law. With President Trump’s Executive Order today, our country is one step closer to having an honest, fair public debate.
I think twitter has already backed off. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if both sides now just let it fade away.
Thank you for an exceptional explanation!
I don't think so. Jim has always had a pretty responsible policy, and Freepers don't dox each other, or libel each other, or call for violence upon each other. We are pretty free with insults to public figures, but that's legal.
I understood from reading FR's pages and agreements before joining that it represented itself as a discussion forum with certain philosophical assumptions. It certainly has never seemed to present itself as a neutral public utility. Constitutional protections of free speech seem to me to be explicitly aimed at protecting such digitized "broadsides" as we see here.
I think FR would be considered the contrary situation to FB and Twit, which claim to have no point of view except "community standards" of niceness--which they uphold principally when judging conservative political speech, it seems.
I don't know, opening them up to lawsuits takes it out of anyone's hands. It could end up being the Wild West in terms of lawsuits.
And I dearly hope they lose federal funding... I didn't even know they got it in the first place! Why should they? They are rich enough already.
I think Trump is setting up to thwart FB, Google, and Twit’s plan to distort all digital content on Earth between now and November to manipulate the electorate like Pavlov’s dog to hate the President and vote against him.
It means Internet hosts that are not engaged in the content cannot be held liable for those that post the content. If they do censor, contribute, or engage in any way then they can be held liable.
Internet hosts MUST censor criminal content from their site per federal law, but that has strict definitions and is very limited in scope. However, if a host goes into providing content then they lose their host status.
How is this important?
If a poster posts libel on a web site, the site, if not a host but a contributor, can also be sued for that libel.
Every single website that hosts content should take seriously the liability of libel. Deep pockets like Google, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., are all deeply concerned about existential lawsuits that can put them out of business.
Bump
I want to see Laura Loomer and Alex Jones back online where ever they choose to be. Perhaps with some compensation for being individually targeted and “edited” for their views.
Like a shot across the bow?
If that is what this does, and conferences, it would be fantastic. I am more afraid this will just be a political talking point, where the election. Rather than concrete actions, such as stopping the Censureship of conservative voices including the president’s.
This is promising, I just read the full text of the executive order, and I’m impressed that it seems well thought out, contrary to some of the things that the White House has put out in the last couple years which have gotten shut down before the ink dried. I suspect that twitters actions yesterday were in direct anticipation of this executive order.
Thank you guys
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