This feels like blowing smoke into the media to distract from the two headlines this week. Economic numbers are being hidden because they are unflattering and US has passed 100k deaths.
It appears the route the Administration will take is removing CDA 230 protection status for Twitter. CDA 230 protects Twitter from being held legally responsible for hosting the comments of the users. Without the 230 shield, anyone could sue Twitter for a comment they didn't like. The cost of defending these lawsuits alone would bury Twitter in legal expenses.
IMO, such an executive order will be challenged in court, as there is no case law that supports the CDA 230 removal.
I don't get it. The entire CDA 230 thing strikes me as a kludge to begin with.
CDA 230 protects social media platforms from being sued for content submitted by their users, but why in the hell is this even an issue in the first place? We don't have laws that allow me to sue Walmart if somebody in Walmart says something libelous about me. Why are social media platforms at particular risk for this?
Okay, but if somebody send me a death threat via FedEx, it's not FedEx's fault. How did we end up in the situation where there's even a legal precedent for companies to be liable for the things their users do? Is there a legal precedent? Does CDA 230 solve a problem that doesn't exist?
> How did we end up in the situation where there's even a legal precedent for companies to be liable for the things their users do? Is there a legal precedent?
CDA 230 clarifies two previous cases. In one case Compuserve was found not liable [0], but in another prodigy was found as liable [1].
One major difference was that Prodigy had more 'content screening' and thus editorial control over the content.
CDA 230 'solves' this in a very ham-fisted way; You can't be held liable so long as you're not letting users do something that the government finds illegal to facilitate, with your 'protection' being contingent on compliance with certain removal requests.
IOW, the Feds and others can still hold a person/corporation liable if they host a website that wants to be the next silkroad or backpages.
But if someone's just hosting a general purpose imageboard and some people are posting content that violates that same law, the host isn't in hot water until they refuse to comply with a lawful removal request.
Probably, but Section 230 needs reform. If this makes that happen sooner - in court or congress - so be it. We cannot depend on congress to do anything, so maybe it's time to push the issue a little.
>Twitter should politely respond by closing his account
I've thought about this in the past. Why wouldn't they begin closing accounts they think are troublesome? There is no legal right to a twitter account. Except for public blowback, what would the net result be for twitter?
High profile individuals would think twice about using Twitter as a means of communication. Users would go to the platform that has the content they want.
This would be a loss for Twitter. They need Trump as much (or more) than he needs them.
Maybe not. I stopped using Twitter because they allow Trump to say whatever he wants without consequence and I refuse to use Twitter until they treat Trump the same as everyone else. So there's that.
An interesting idea. What would the consequences be? No one knows.
IMO the US is sitting on a powder keg when it comes to power-sharing between the government and Big Tech. What if Google's board took their ball and went home, shutting everything down and becoming a hedge fund? What Jack Dorsey gets fed up and does the same, or worse, loses his mind and forms a cabal that secretly uses Twitter to sew global conflict?
These extreme scenarios point to an ever-present reality: if things really go South between the US government and Big Tech, it won't be simple submission from the industry, it will be a disaster. The side that can threaten violence wins, but when the other side controls what counts as true, what sort of battle is that?
Oh wow, let's see how that would work with tariffs and taxes. The U.S. government can do a lot to screw with business operations, domestic or abroad. A bureaucrat sitting in an office at the DOE or Trade can hold up a shipment of controller boards for any number of reasons almost indefinitely; piracy, hacking, heck even conflict minerals.
Maybe it is worth asking ourselves if we are okay with the government having so much power that it can “do a lot to screw with business operations, domestic or abroad.” I agree that this is the case and seriously wish it wasn’t so.
And new politicians will replace old ones, and bygones will be forgotten - winds will change. I mean, twitter could just decide to completely ban Trump now in retaliation. Nothing he could do about that.
The method in which he is handling it is wrong, I think.
I get twitter, youtube, facebook, et. al. have their own rules and enforce them. The sites couldn't exist without the protections of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Their rules arguably work for something like porn (which never seems to make it past youtube filters) and threats of violence. What makes less sense to me is the arbitrary method in which opinions based posts are handled.
It becomes clearer when you see the newly (last 2 years) rules enforced when you realize it is advertising driving it all. If something rises to the level of impacting advertising, action is taken.
They are censoring not to make political points; they cannot do that for threat of losing 320 protection. They do it to protect revenue, which as public companies they have to do.
It's a difficult question and I welcome the President's move because it will contribute to us with finding an answer how to deal with this kind of problem.
Even though I don't think there's a mail vote fraud / the vaccine causes autism / the pandemic is planned etc. etc. but he has a point.
IANAL, but my understanding is that this would make it so that social media sites are more liable when they remove posts, so they need to be more careful in what they remove? Certain things should still be fine to remove (content that is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable), but they'll have to tread more carefully then before or risk being classified as a publisher and risk being sued?
You either believe social networks are like malls or like public parks. In a mall, you can't say whatever you want, you get kicked out because it's private property. In a park, you won't get kicked out.
If you believe social networks are like public parks, then they should be owned like public parks no?
And furthering this: Until access is 100% free for every person. Until every person has the tools and the devices necessary to access available to them, for free. The internet and specifically the walled gardens are NOT the public square. It is a country club, not a park. Every aspect of the web today requires money and contractual obligations with PRIVATE companies.
Want to make it public? Make access universal and free. Until then its a country club, not a public park.
That's not really what that decision says. It's much narrower than that.
It does not extend First Amendment protection to malls. It simply permits states to go beyond the First Amendment's protections in their enforcement of state laws.
My comment said nothing about the "First Amendment". Legal rights to free speech are larger than the first amendment to the US Constitution, and the general ideal of free speech is even larger than that.
edit-reply: You're arguing with me, but neither of your replies contains anything concrete that disagrees with what I said.
And if you say things that the law says you can't say on social media, you should be stopped.
Note I said "the law", which is created by the democratic process (in theory anyway. Stop laughing at the back.) This is as opposed to the whims of a private company.
As for what things the law should forbid you from saying, that's another matter, and orthogonal to this one.
Nope. You're wrong. Social networks should not be treated like private property because it serves as an agora. Being restricted by social networks only because you have a difference of opinion is effectively restriction of free speech. The government should treat them like public uni, and defend peoples' rights to speak in the platform from far left to far right.
The church tried Galilei for spreading fake news and misinformation in 1600s. We now know how dangerous shutting people up by force is.
The government should create a law to treat them as public places because our rights can be infringed. That doesn't mean Twitter should be funded publically.
You can talk to your boss and face consequences, but we're talking about the case of not being able to talk at all. I think you should learn how to follow a conversation.
If a utility company is privately owned and it's denying service because you have 'different opinion about utility prices' thus threatening your life will you stand it?
> You can talk to your boss and face consequences, but we're talking about the case of not being able to talk at all.
No, we're not. Trump's tweets are still there. He retains the ability to post. All Twitter did was exercise their own free speech by adding a note below it.
Yeah, how about your speech being marked retarded every time? The court has this power and it can declare a person incompetent. But does twitter have this kind of authority?
Also I was not talking about the link being left, I was talking about your account terminated.
There's no inherent right to go unchallenged when raising unsubstantiated claims. Providing facts-checking can be seen as a service in those cases where it is important that the public make informed decisions based on facts. Social media has been mandated to combat fake news, and this is within their mandate, as well as outright banning any person or post on their private platform.
It may be good to raise the issue how much power social media should have, but please don't conflate the issue with personal vendettas of some public figures, or too much toleration of relativistic alternative facts.
>It may be good to raise the issue how much power social media should have
I was specifically talking about this issue and it's the commentators that went to "personal vendettas or introduction of relativistic alternative facts."
Agree. People who pride themselves on being able to see fine distinctions and shades of gray, seem unable to comprehend that a virtual space, run by a private company, which is itself running on partially publicly funded infrastructure is an entirely new thing.
The intent of the 1st Amendment applies most strongly to political and religious views. Liberals love it when the 1st Amendment is used to defend communism, terrorists, or profane art. If Communists and Antifa were being squashed by Twitter, they'd be playing victim.
First amendment claims with respect to those things you state are loved by liberals are almost certainly to stop government censorship. That is after all what the First Amendment is about.
There is no applicability of the First Amendment with respect to what a private company may censor. This is why Trump may talk about "freedom" but his executive order will not be grounded on any First Amendment claim.
Rather, Trump will essentially force the interpretation that CDA 230 should only apply to "politically neutral" actors. The result will be that social media companies will not be able to "censor" content that might be political. Again, not because of the Bill of Rights but because the liability shield provided by CDA 230.
The practical result will be that all content that is not clearly illegal (and potentially content that is) will be fair game and unable to be censored as any censorship will risk a claim against political neutrality and jeopardize CDA 230 protection.
So? The president can sign all the executive orders he wants but if they infringe on your constitutional rights, which this one appears to be in violation of the First Amendment, then they're null and void. Oh sure, there's a legal hassle, but the companies he's going after have deep pockets to fight those legal battles and a vested interest in doing so.
We live in weird times where words like "censor" lose all the weight they had and should have these times when they are being misused to describe moderation.
We live in times where governments use censorship on wide scale for dangerous means. Mixing both things here is an insult for those who suffer under true censorship.
Basically, if content companies become liable for the content their users post, they will have to become much more heavy handed in what they remove. Trump has benefited more than anyone from how little social media companies actually police content.
I don’t think the current POTUS is smart enough to see it either way, but counterpoint: who prosecutes the offenses? FBI? DOJ? Both are lead by people abbointed by the current POTUS and have been beaten down into submission to his authoritarian impulses. If a lawsuit is brought, ultimately it would end up in SCOTUS, which also has a 5-4 majority in his favor.
So IMO this is going to let him continue to abuse social media to spread conspiracy theories while incentivizing social media companies to remove or ban users that even slightly tie the line, or invent rules and accuse such users of breaking them.
American institutions are not as strong as people think. They are squishy organizations manned by humans; and thus they can be corrupted. All of this stuff is very well studied by the way, it is straight out of the authoritarian playbook.
For those who want to argue the other way, consider the simple fact that he has not divested of his private businesses and continues to profit spectacularly from them and it’s not even on the news anymore.
CDA 230 protects Twitter against lawsuits for content their users post. Without 230, anyone who felt libeled (i.e. Joe Scarborough) could sue Twitter in civil court.
Actually, this may be what he wants. You force them to take heavy action handed responses (likely censoring). Then complain loudly about the coordinated efforts of social media giants against them. Sell it as the "establishment strikes back", walk your way to reelection.
There's no reason to think that they wouldn't be bullied and cajoled into keeping up one "side's" volatile posts and taking down the other's, precedent or reasonableness be damned. Particularly if that becomes the path of least federal blowback and shareholder impact.
This is how corporate ownership might try to incorporate toxic culture worldwide. They cannot do this if not for the cheerleading and silent 2/3 majority, that is currently not being bullied. Note: What a bully do to someone else by your support or lack of opposition, you will most likely be the next bully's victim. This is kind of karma: Don't expect to ever change the scorpion's own nature. Since Western individualistic cultures haven't really confronted bullies yet, this is the defining moment. There is nothing here that haven't already been subjected to other cultures in the past.
It's a good sentiment but I'd expect most companies to be more purely shorter term profit driven, especially under consistent and relentless pressure.
That they would eventually kowtow to their own nation's ideological pressure the same way they would eventually do so for, say, Saudi Arabia's or China's government to ensure unmolested access.
Even if the majority of users/citizens aren't part of the bullying clique, the people with the rod and the carrot are.
There exist alternatives: the Mastodon federation network and alt-right clone gab.ai.
The problem with letting people do what they want is that this was and will be abused for propaganda that sabotages elections - for example spreading lies about who is eligible to vote or that vote by mail is ripe for fraud.
Multiple platforms of this kind exist. And I'm glad they exist. But there's obviously a reason no one of them becomes mega-popular. This paradox is the biggest obstacle for the practical free speech argument (as opposed to the legal one).
This is so thoroughly depressing. There is a very real need for a debate about the place social networks have in the spread of misinformation, but no-one wanted to have it. Now we will anyway, but by debating it in the most hysterical terms possible. No good will come of it.
The ouroboros bites itself; having escalated all other debates to the most hysterical terms, and allowed the injection of far higher volumes of nonsense than it's feasible to fact-check, the fate of Twitter is going to be decided in that febrile environment.
The success of Twitter after the Arab Spring was that it became a revolution-causing technology. The downside of that is that it can cause a revolution whether you need one or not, and the outcomes of revolutions are usually much worse in the short term and often in the longer term.
(I note this is already flagged off the HN front page!)
Twitter was a second order effect from the fact right at that food became too expensive for the low-income countries.
> Looking at long-term trends in rain, crops, food prices and migration, they were able to determine how these factors contributed to social instability in the region.
> the outcomes of revolutions are usually much worse in the short term and often in the longer term
This is a pretty strong and unfounded statement. Would we even have the relatively free and democratic societies we exist in now without the revolutions of centuries past?
The US is a bit biased by considering its revolution a great success - which it was, for the white population. There was never a wholesale slave revolt, but the revolt of the slaveowners was successfully suppressed.
Conversely the UK never had a popular revolution and transitioned to constitutional monarchy (eg also Sweden).
France was very bad in the medium term; the Terror, subsequent invasion, Napoleon etc. Perhaps only a fully free society at the 5eme republic.
Much of the world by sheer number of countries got its freedom either at the end of WW2 or the Cold War.
I see revolutions similar to heavy mutations in evolution. Most of them leave society in a worse position, some, however, do bring long-lasting improvement to social governance.
With deplatforming, I come down on the side of viewing popular webapps as public venues - the concept of censorship most decidedly exists apart from the first amendment to the US Constitution. But this action is not censorship, rather it's adding some editorialization while leaving the original message intact. It's less intrusive than a site requiring a signin to view NSFW content. Politically, it seems analogous to a counter-protest facilitated by the venue being protested at.
And what legal basis could possibly be here? Implementing this action through legislation would be an uphill battle, never mind an executive order. Unless judges are also drinking the leave Trumpney alone Kool Aid, I don't think the hysterical "debate" is going to have much to do with the fate of Twitter. The only interesting thing here will be watching a man-child finally be told a hard "no", as the fallout from his ruinous actions finally starts catching up with him.
I'm not one to be naive, but it feels like justifying any executive order would require stretching logic quite thin. Executive orders generally get a pass because they function by instructing federal agencies how to operate. This one would seemingly be an attempt to directly order a private company to do something.
It might take one or two rounds of appeals to find a sensible judge that agrees the President doesn't have this power. But overall I wouldn't think Trump has been able to replace enough judges with stooges as to destroy the whole system.
I think this will end well. I'm not being sarcastic. I feel like this fight is a good thing.
Somehow my intuitive sense is that Trump and the tech companies openly butting heads over fundamental epistemology and values will result in a spectacular show that will strengthen us in the end.
Google, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit are pretty heavy handed when it comes to "censoring" content. This is annoying because somehow "rightwing / wrongthink" content is censored while "leftwing" content is fine as it is.
If they are not platforms and are publishers - they need to be treated as such.
I feel this needs to be extended all the way down - Why stop at social media? Let's go ahead and hit where this counts - Domain Registrars, DNS Hosts, Payment Processors and Web hosts.
The sad part is - if they do, the internet as we know won't exist anymore. But in all honesty, we are heading to it anyways - with all the internet companies consolidating - I don't think I'll loose a lot of sleep if Twitter if fined - They had it coming for a while anyways.
EDIT: If this comment does not follow the rules, I'm happy to delete it as it's inherently political imo. Also I'm happy to provide examples of the above claims as well.
I believe that at the heart of this move is the far right's confusion on the first amendment and the equal protection clause. They have perverted the principles so far from their spirit and past rulings, that they now believe being a-holes makes them a protected class... And yet, they still demand that its their right to refuse to bake a cake for an actual protected class... hmmm.
In the end. I foresee mountains of lawsuits against the right-wing media. Most of which do not have the resources to defend. They are literally cutting off their nose to spite their face. This is the definition of myopia and greed. So very Trump...
Be kind. These are just my opinions, and like always, I could be wrong :)
>"These platforms act like they are potted plants when [in reality] they are curators of user experiences, i.e. the man behind the curtain for everything we can see or hear,”
Nothing incorrect about this statement.
Worse still: if conservatives try to build their own platform (Gab), they are blacklisted across every mainstream developer platform.
I'm glad there is legislation for this.
>would address complaints that the online platforms are deceiving people by picking and choosing what content to allow or block instead of acting as politically neutral platforms or moderators.
The GP said "conservatives try to build their own platform (Gab)".
The parent said "If Gab is a conservative platform".
This is obviously a reasonable way to interpret the GP's sentence. You're also reasonable to disagree with that interpretation, but you're being unreasonably combative when you accuse the parent of putting words in the GP's mouth.
> Gab is an English-language social media platform known for its far-right userbase.[8] The site has been widely described as a "safe haven"[9] for extremists including neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and the alt-right.[10]
From Wikipedia.
OP isn’t putting any words in anyone’s mouth. They are referencing a well known fact about this establishment.
And your reasoning for that? Seriously, playing your word-puzzle is so interesting. I learn so much from you about how to present stupid arguments and get over with it.
Please don't do tedious right-leaning tit-for-tats on HN. I mean right-leaning on the page of course. A pyramid of whitespace to the left is a deadly sign.
I didn't mean to, but "if conservatives try to build their own platform " implies some direction to the platform. they would have said "try to build a platform".
Gab is not a "conservative" platform, it's a censorship free platform. It was born out of necessity because twitter was deplatforming normal people who just happen to have different political views.
You can go on Gab and post ultra-leftwing stuff, my little pony stuff, circuit board stuff, open an account to follow latest Antonio Banderas news, whatever you want.
There's no inherent human right to be on Twitter, access its contents or contribute to new content. It is private property and you give away the rights to publish your speech, as per their site policies. So removing content or accounts, is not by law censorship in such an arrangement. That people freely choose to use such arrangements and contribute to others' private property, is questionable.
It's a difference on how you view human rights. There are people that think not allowed access to the Internet human rights violation. I think not being allowed to post on twitter because you have an unpopular opinion is a violation of free speech.
A law can be added to protect this right like the right to be forgotten. We didn't think the right to be forgotten was even a right that is valuable to protect but here we are.
There's no right to a platform for free speech. Maybe there should be, but what that should mean is very difficult to assess. Taking a stab at platforms just because they're popular, isn't necessarily fair game.
Twitter and other social media are moderated in several ways. If your opinion is unpopular, it'll likely not be retweeted much, it may be moderated down by users and moderators, your account might even be banned. Private platforms are private, and regulating them would hinder freedoms to create and maintain diversity of such platforms in the future, ie. hinder competing platforms and innovation.
If such platforms become detrimental to society, that of course need to be addressed in some way. Right to be forgotten is a good example trying to balance out some of the imbalances.
It is. The supreme court saw that banning nudity in theaters, thus banning specific portion of speech in specific places is not infringing first amendment.
You have your freedom to enjoy nude in your home but not in theaters due to city regulations. That doesn't mean that the city is censoring.
I don't treat control of the speech that does cross the lines of the first amendment censorship because if it's not protected by the first amendment it's a violation of the law thus it's an act of justice.
Similarly we don't call stopping robbery and murder censorship of our acts.
This has not been my personal experience when trying to contribute. Also, the founder and original users, in conversation, explicitly labeled it as a place for conservatives. Of course they are careful not to include such language in official user-facing copy.
I he might have a point. if the platform creates content that content wouldn't be covered by section 230, I wouldn't think. Not a lawyer so don't know, but maybe.
The actual fact check leaned HEAVY on “if voting fraud increases or not with mail in ballots”. Speculation getting fact checked seems like it should be a no-no.
The fact check on “everyone gets a ballot” undoubtedly and rightfully should have been clarified. That was poorly worded bad information by the President. Again though, third bullet down and what they are back peddling to as the reason for it.
Unless I'm missing something, it's not a "this is wrong" flag. It's a "this is contended - here's a source of information" flag (for better or for worse).
I find the whole convoluted whack-a-mole approach to the problem of spreading misinformation to be so pathetic. Much like drugs, so long as there is demand for misinformation, we will always have a supplier. It doesn't matter how many regulations you throw at the problem of spreading it. Elections are won and lost on misinformation, and some elections can be "worth" tens of billions of dollars to the winner.
If you want to stop the effects of spreading misinformation, attack the demand side. Educate people. Or, on the more draconian side, don't let uneducated people vote.
You don't need to do a whack-a-mole with irrelevant trolls, just go after the biggest public figures spreading propaganda: Trump, Alex Jones and other alt-right figureheads. Their names are known, their online presences are an easy target.
German-Austrian alt-right organization "Identitäre Bewegung" all but collapsed once they were booted off social media.
This is not partisan to the right. And if you think it is, you're part of the problem. Trump and Alex Jones do not accurately represent reality, I agree. And America suffers because of it. But just yesterday, the hottest trending topic was "Make Whites Great Again," because someone found a photo of a guy who looked like the Minnesota cop wearing a MAGA hat, and edited America to White, and Twitter went ballistic thinking it was the cop who killed that guy. Buildings burned down and people got injured (maybe died) yesterday because of it.
I don't typically keep track of Twitter drama so I had to look this up. Apparently, the photo in question wasn't a 'shop, but rather a well-known troll specifically looking to stir shit up.
I'm not particularly sucked into the drama either, but I just want to note that this is a problem that transcends partisan politics. And if someone says the solution is to ban specific partisan targets, then they're more likely people who are part of the problem than people who are genuinely looking to fix it. This will never be fixed by people who think their side's misrepresentations of reality are for the greater good, but the other side's is destroying the world.
