Law Trump issues EO to reclassify social media as publishers, legally liable for user content

[Cool Hand Luke]

"Shadow banning" isn't a real thing. And banning people who violate the terms is fine. No one can universally editorialize.

shadow banning happened on this site.

 

[Jack V Savage]

shadow banning happened on this site.

Talking about Twitter here.

But if people want to use that as a pretext for shutting down free speech on SD, I'd object to that, too.

 

[Jack V Savage]

Stop tolerating abuses of power just because they are against someone you don't like.

It WILL come back to bite you.

This is exactly what I'm saying. You guys think that "well, why do liberals need free speech? They're evil monsters." But tolerating this kind of thing will have bad consequences for everyone.

The corporate dems LOVED russiagate and ukrainegate. Now its come back to bite them.

I don't think anyone loves having a corrupt president.

If you allow Social media to selectively editorialize, don't complain for a second when your political opponents have control of the platform and do it back. It WILL happen. You will have nobody to blame but yourselves for allowing them to control and influence speech now.

There is no way to have an unbiased Ministry of Truth. The fact that social media are even attempting to create one should be alarming to everyone.

You're saying that you want the gov't to be able to declare someone "neutral" before they are allowed to speak freely. That would be the end of political freedom in America.

 

[giusti825]

It's just a value difference, as I've said. Some of us believe that anyone should be able to criticize the gov't, even if they're not approved by the gov't.



"Shadow banning" isn't a real thing. And banning people who violate the terms is fine. No one can universally editorialize.



The decision to flag inaccurate claims is made by people.



It's much broader than Twitter. The president is sending a message that no criticism will be tolerated, and generally that his political opponents do not have the right to speak.

Shadow banning isnt real? Are you kidding me?

Plenty If anti watt activists have had their Social media alerted by administrators so that whenthey post, they can see it, but noone else can. I have seen this demonstrated many times.

They hey no notification that their paying rights have been altered but they are the only ones who can view their posts and their replies to other posts. This is intended to both cut the person or of the conversation as well as discourage them from posting as their posts will get no responses.

This has been happening for a few years now.

I too believe that anyone should be allowed to criticised the government as an individual. That individual can face libel charges for what they wrote.

But a corporation cant enjoy a legal protection greeting them from the need to editorialize and then abuse that protection by selectively influencing the discourse on a platform.

If a Twitter employee would have personally replied to the president tweet....no problem.

For the platform itself, that is not supposed to be trying to interfere in the discourse to be selectively editing and all the fuckery is unacceptable.

 

[Jack V Savage]

I too believe that anyone should be allowed to criticised the government as an individual. That individual can face libel charges for what they wrote.

What Trump wants to do in response to being fact-checked is to make some people liable for what other people say. It's not yet illegal to say that the president said something factually untrue.

 

[Scerpi]

I firmly believe we should be able to say whatever we want. Preventing corporations from altering and editorializing the public discourse is a step in the right direction.

Yes, it's clear that Trump was pissed about being fact checked.

He did this for the wrong reasons, but it was still the right thing to do.

Twitter is a platform, not a publisher.

If They want to be a publisher, that's no problem, they just lose a platforms legal protections.

They cant claim to be a platform and editorialize like a publisher... especially when the editorializing becomes selective.

Social media companies should not be fact checking. They incorrectly fact checked a journalist claiming that the attack in Douma was staged.

Turned out twitters fact check was wrong because they got their info from the same people who orchestrated the event; the state department.

Do you have no complaints when the intelligence community and state department are the source for Twitter's "facts?"

I don't want ANYONE; state or corporation, fact-checking public discourse with bogus appeals to authority.

Let the public discourse happen and let the participants in that conversation parse out the truth for themselves.

In short:

Government should not intervene in speech, but the government should have a role when corporations try to limit or control speech.

Freedom of speech is a principle. We should stand up to any interference in speech whether they are by a state or a corporation.

Well said...

Twitter/Facebook/Youtube (and other similar platforms) need to decide what service they are trying to provide. If they're going to edit/delete/ban/etc... then they better be ready for the inevitable backlash and lawsuits when they don't do it fairly or with bias.

And it's apparently obvious it's impossible to do it... Especially on Twitter where a majority of the active users are anonymous shit posters anyway.

 

[Cool Hand Luke]

Talking about Twitter here.

But if people want to use that as a pretext for shutting down free speech on SD, I'd object to that, too.

I'm aware of what we're talking about - but I'm not saying we should be shutting down free speech at all - and this is the purpose of Trump's EO - censuring or fact checking his posts is a free speech violation, even if you deem them untrue.

 

[Ruprecht]

Entirely unenforceable unless the US decides to implement an American imitation of the Great Firewall of China and block sites which fail to comply with their "publishing" requirements.
We have no such protections for Social Media here in Oz, just the opposite in fact with laws making them liable for the distribution of content such as the Christchurch shooting video and "manifesto", and there have been zero prosecutions.
Utterly toothless.
The courts also decided that companies can be liable for defamation for comments under postings on their facebook pages which they control.

 

[giusti825]

This is exactly what I'm saying. You guys think that "well, why do liberals need free speech? They're evil monsters." But tolerating this kind of thing will have bad consequences for everyone.



I don't think anyone loves having a corrupt president.



You're saying that you want the gov't to be able to declare someone "neutral" before they are allowed to speak freely. That would be the end of political freedom in America.

How do you keep missing my specific distinction of people vs corporations, individuals vs social media conglomerates? Its a pretty simple distinction.

Individuals can say what they want.

Corporate entities, in this case platforms, with special liability protections can't put their legal protection in jeopardy by performing publisher functions and then complain that they are being targeted.

The social media companies are doing things they're not supposed to.

I have no problem with individuals correcting anyone.

Social media companies are not people. They have a special liability protection in exchange for not having to perform publisher functions in such an insane amount of content. They are forfeiting that protection by choosing to selectively perform publisher functions.

Once again, in no uncertain terms, i am pro free speech. It is an INDIVIDUAL right both in principle and constitutionally, but that's not what this is.

This is a company trying to enjoy legal protections they are forfeiting through their own misbehavior.

This is holding social media accountable for overstepping their bounds as a liability -shielded platform.

I don't want the day to come where twitter has a right wing owner doing the same fuckery to others, which WILL happen if we don't stop social media from what they're doing now.

 

[Jack V Savage]

I'm aware of what we're talking about - but I'm not saying we should be shutting down free speech at all - and this is the purpose of Trump's EO - censuring or fact checking his posts is a free speech violation, even if you deem them untrue.

The purpose of Trump's EO is to shut down free speech. Fact-checking a post is not a free-speech violation at all. That's the heart of this, IMO. To a lot of people, someone criticizing the gov't is a violation of free speech, while others think that it is an exercise of it--the specific type of exercise that we most need to protect.

 

[Cool Hand Luke]

The purpose of Trump's EO is to shut down free speech. Fact-checking a post is not a free-speech violation at all. That's the heart of this, IMO. To a lot of people, someone criticizing the gov't is a violation of free speech, while others think that it is an exercise of it--the specific type of exercise that we most need to protect.

I just don't see how you can relate this to him being the one shutting down free speech when it's clear that it is vice versa. If anything this EO is going to have the opposite effect and force social media to play fair to all political idealogies.

 

[Jack V Savage]

How do you keep missing my specific distinction of people vs corporations, individuals vs social media conglomerates? Its a pretty simple distinction.

I don't recognize it as legitimate.

Individuals can say what they want.

Unless they want to fact-check a false statement made by a gov't official, apparently.

Once again, in no uncertain terms, i am pro free speech. It is an INDIVIDUAL right both in principle and constitutionally, but that's not what this is.

It actually is not, as our first amendment also guarantees a free press, as it is understood that people communicate through institutions. The notion that if the gov't certifies you as "neutral" (which fact-checking the president threatens), you can speak freely, but otherwise you cannot is abhorrent to people who truly believe in free speech as a principle.

 

[Jack V Savage]

I just don't see how you can relate this to him being the one shutting down free speech when it's clear that it is vice versa. If anything this EO is going to have the opposite effect and force social media to play fair to all political idealogies.

He is the one trying to shut down free speech. Twitter fact-checked a post of his. That's their right as Americans. And in response, he wants to shut Twitter down. The gov't doesn't get to decide that you're "playing fair to all political ideologies" before they let you speak freely. If you believe that they do, you don't believe in free speech as a principle.

 

[Cool Hand Luke]

He is the one trying to shut down free speech. Twitter fact-checked a post of his. That's their right as Americans. And in response, he wants to shut Twitter down. The gov't doesn't get to decide that you're "playing fair to all political ideologies" before they let you speak freely. If you believe that they do, you don't believe in free speech as a principle.

Yes, but that is the point of this whole discussion. Are they a publisher or platform?

 

[Jack V Savage]

Yes, but that is the point of this whole discussion. Are they a publisher or platform?

I don't think it's the point. It doesn't matter what the gov't wants to call them. Nowhere in the first amendment does it say that if the gov't decides that you're "neutral" you have the right to speak freely, but otherwise, you do not. And there's no defensible philosophical basis for such a distinction.

 

[Cool Hand Luke]

I don't think it's the point. It doesn't matter what the gov't wants to call them. Nowhere in the first amendment does it say that if the gov't decides that you're "neutral" you have the right to speak freely, but otherwise, you do not. And there's no defensible philosophical basis for such a distinction.

Fair enough, we can just disagree to agree here. Enjoy the day.

 

[Jack V Savage]

Fair enough, we can just disagree to agree here. Enjoy the day.

Yeah, I was saying this from the start. It's just about whether you think that people should be free to criticize the gov't or not. Fundamental values thing.

The liberal idea is that we want a regime based on science and that if people are free to speak, the truth eventually comes out. And further that that inevitably means they will disagree with the gov't at times. Since all vested interests will at times be subject to criticism, to maintain a science-based regime, we need to elevate freedom of speech to a fundamental principle. But that's a pretty radical departure from previous regimes, and the logic behind it has never been accepted by the right or the illiberal left.

 

[giusti825]

That would kill the platform because there are millions upon millions of Twitter users, probably thousands of new ones a day, so to expect Twitter to carefully curate that volume is just ridiculous. The very nature of the platform makes its untenable which would mean it would have to radically change. Imagine if Twitter, to conform to this, only allowed verified, blue check mark accounts to post and carefully curated their posts. Would be lame.

This is EXACTLY the reason they get the section 230 protections. They get treated like a platform precisely because curating that much content becomes impossible.

But when they decide, "we want to edtorialize....but just this guy or this group," you can see the problem.

They enjoy the legal protection so they don't have to act as a publisher, so them choosing to selectively edit, shadow-ban, and fact check would give them an insane amount of power.

I have no problem with that as long as they give up the liability protection.

Curate everything or butt out. But dont think you get to pick and choose what you edit while not being liable for what's posted on your site.

 

[HomeCheese]

Can we FINALLY post nudes on here? No more censorship!

 

[giusti825]

Sure I believe something needs to be done as well but let's look at the specifics here. Is Trump writing this EO due to bipartisan momentum for this kind of law or because he was unhappy about his tweet being fact checked and because he perceives tech companies as being against him? To me all signs point to the latter. Being right for the wrong reason matters because it can lead to the wrong solution to a legitimate problem.

This is actually one of my main concerns here. While I agree this is an important step to prevent corporate overreach into speech, i am seriously worried about Trump not understanding the "Platform vs. Publisher" problem.

He cares for the wrong reasons. Here's hoping that being right for the wrong reason turns out better than being outright wrong.