Justice Department to Propose Limiting Internet Firms’ Protections. The action follows President Trump’s executive order seeking to weaken broad immunity enjoyed by Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.

Wall Street Journal ^ | June 17, 2020 7:00 am ET | Brent Kendall and John D. McKinnon

[karpov]

The Justice Department is set to propose a roll back of legal protections that online platforms have enjoyed for more than two decades, in an effort to make tech companies more responsible in how they police their content, according to a Trump administration official.

The department’s proposed reforms, to be announced as soon as Wednesday, are designed to spur online platforms to be more aggressive in addressing illicit and harmful conduct on their sites, and to be fairer and more consistent in their decisions to take down content they find objectionable, the official said.

The Justice Department proposal is a legislative plan that would have to be adopted by Congress.

The move represents an escalation in the continuing clash between the Trump administration and big tech firms such as Twitter Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit and Facebook Inc.

Last month, President Trump signed an executive order that sought to target the legal protections of social media companies, responding to concerns among some conservatives about alleged online censorship by the platforms. The executive order sought to impose limits on legal immunity for social-media firms when they are deemed to unfairly curb users’ speech, for instance by deleting their posts or suspending their accounts

...

The proposal’s restrictions on platforms’ content-moderation practices would be extensive.

For instance, the department will propose to strike from federal law a provision that allows platforms to delete content that they merely deem to be “objectionable.”

The proposal also would give some teeth to an existing “good faith” standard that platforms are supposed to use in their content-moderation decisions. The aim would be to require platforms to adhere to their terms of service as well as their public claims about their practices. Platforms also would have to provide reasonable explanations of their decisions.

[9YearLurker]

Our country will be gone before any such bill passes.

Trump should not have been talked out of dealing with this three years ago.

[sickoflibs]

RE:”That means this is all talk and political posturing, not real action. Can you imagine congress taking this up and passing it in any form similar to this. Not going to happen, especially during an election year.”

Thanks, that's what I mean’t by my '????' in my #2

No one will care about this, it's like 2011 Paul Ryan's 'Reform Medicare' budget resolution .