Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/trump-executive-order-social-media-protections-8a53f1c6-3c05-4844-98a3-071373b497a8.html?stream=technology&utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alerts_technology <comment><AUTHOR> The biggest takeaway, looking past the headline:

"This week a federal appeals court, ruling in a case brought by conservative activists against social media companies, affirmed that private websites are not public spaces and social media companies don't have First Amendment obligations.

Any truly strong limits to Section 230 would almost certainly require action by Congress."

<comment><USER4> Its an interesting thought experiment to assess in what ways Twitter is a "private website".

It really is a public web space that is operated by a private company, but I can't help but feel that the nuances and similarities of what Twitter really is and what responsibility they truly hold in society is above the courts comprehension.

<comment><USER5> >It really is a public web space that is operated by a private company

No, it isn't, any more than a store is a public space because it has windows the public can see into. You have to sign up for a Twitter account and accept their terms of service to post on the site. It's a private platform run by a private company for its own private business interests.

<comment><USER6> I think that's a simplistic view. No one is arguing Twitter is comparable to a store with a display window. The reality is that Tweets are broadcasted to billions of people. It's a new reality. It's a newspaper where anyone and everyone is authoring anything, including presidents, and with the roll of a die, the message is amplified to a multiple of the expected audience.

Twitter may technically be a private platform run by a private company, but the issue not one of semantics, it's about ethics and morals and how we compose a society with mighty power imbalances, fortified by new tech.

<comment><USER7> Newspapers have restricted what they publish for centuries.

They don't allow libellous, defamatory, salacious or inappropriate comments for example.

So it sounds 'new tech' hasn't really changed anything.

<comment><USER8> Newspapers do that because they are liable for what they publish. Twitter is not liable for what it publishes. Why should it not be liable? The answer is because they are just providing a platform and others are publishing. But the moment they use their platform to modify and censor what people publish, then they should probably be liable, right?

<comment><USER9> I don't see why they should be.

If someone uploads their library of child porn encoded to base64 split across tons of tweets, do you want Twitter to have a choice between removing that content and continuing to operate?

We have 3 options here:

1\. No moderation allowed whatsoever on a site without a court order. That obviously leads to a terrible, toxic community with lots of reprehensible content that the average person wouldn't want to participate in.

2\. A good faith effort at moderation. This allows the most reprehensible, highest-impact content to be removed and allows users to participate in the moderation process.

3\. No content can be published without moderation, on any site anywhere. Want to post a Facebook status? Have fun paying $20 for the privilege of waiting 48 hours for a human to review it.

All of this is irrelevant though, because this executive order is not targeted at censorship. It's targeted at a private individual who voluntarily, _for free_ , passed on a message from one person to many other people and decided to tell them "this seems fishy, you might want to read up on it."

<comment><USER10> Twitter is actually required by law to remove child porn, not being forced to keep it up, that would be insane. This isn't a call for no moderation, it is a call for a neutral platform when companies are on the verge of monopolies. They are definitely monopolize your followers, switching platforms is not even a choice. You can work you're entire life building a channel and audience on social media site and they can take it away in a heartbeat and you don't even get a chance to let your followers know what happened, e-mail them even, let them know where they can find you going forward. That's not the worst part, the worst part is they can and do do it without any reason whatsoever, it could be just because someone at the company dislikes what you said. Again this is not about moderation, this is about companies that were built off of being a neutral platform that cannot be sued for liability, like a phone company but are now using their monopoly over your follower's information to hold over you and control what you say. If anything what really needs to be in legislation is rights to notify followers where else they can find you if you are banned or censored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't know why everyone here is upset by this. Isn't this what we wanted? An actual policy debate, decided by the three branches of government - <USER2> executive, congress, the Courts - about what kinds of regulations these super powerful social media companies should have to submit to.

Don't fool yourselves, if Facebook or Twitter wanted to swing an election _they absolutely have the power to do that_. Isn't that a problem that government is supposed to solve? I'm sorry, and I don't like the guy in charge right now either, but regulation really is the only answer here. Maybe calm down for a minute and let this make its way through the Circuit Courts, refined, watered down, etc etc.

All of that aside, I want my distributed and independent internet back. Maybe we should just be teaching our kids the command line from now on because that might be the only way that we can communicate over this protocol in a civil way.

<comment><USER12> I think some people are upset because he's not going the proper route. He's doing an end run around Congress using Executive Orders in an attempt to get what he wants _now_. Because he knows that something like this would be held up in Congress by the Democrats.

Others are upset because, as the Constitution is written, he cannot force a private website to carry his speech (the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected "compelled speech"). Although, yes, we should wait for the courts to (hopefully) strike it down.

There's also the fact that repealing Section 230 would be absolutely detrimental to the internet. Sure, decentralize it all, but, as it stands now, that's not what the majority of the public want; They want centralization because it makes things easier. Facebook, Twitter, Google/YouTube, etc. are the size they are today _because_ they're centralized; it makes finding what you want easier.

<comment><USER11> >He's doing an end run around Congress using Executive Orders in an attempt to get what he wants now.

And you can thank the previous guy in charge for setting this precedent, that you can do whatever you want via Executive Order. I have little sympathy here.

>as the Constitution is written, he cannot force a private website to carry his speech

Not quite sure this is actually the question at hand. It's about choice of moderation is it not? In any case ... thankfully we have a Court system that is designed to handle these types of questions.

>There's also the fact that repealing Section 230 would be absolutely detrimental to the internet.

Not following you. Maybe the social media and tech companies have to hire a lot more layers instead of bloating their HR departments. Probably a good development imo, since HR people like to pretend they work in tech but what they really do is bureaucracy.

<comment><USER13> What? No. Executive order is an order to the executive branch from it's boss the President. It's not going around Congress at all- it's separate from Congress. It's not changing law. All Presidents do this and are allowed to.

You can't do whatever you want via executive order. This is Trump telling the FCC, one of his departments, how to operate, which he can do, as much as I disagree with it.

<comment><USER14> The powers of the executive branch are not unlimited and not every order is Constitutionally valid. Especially ones restricting freedom of speech by private individuals.

<comment><USER13> You're right, I'm merely defending the executive order and outlining it's not a magic wand that lets the President do everything they want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The problem with Twitter and Facebook is that the lines are getting blurry with regards to public vs private. Like it or not, a couple tech platforms are the de facto new town squares. Not saying I have any answers, just saying it's definitely not a clear issue anymore.

<comment><USER16> _Like it or not, a couple tech platforms are the de facto new town squares._

I'd agree, but de facto is not de jure. And if we're going to make them into public spaces legally, it's certainly not going to happen through an executive order. It would require an act of Congress, similar to the restrictions and obligations placed on broadcasters.

<comment><USER17> Except that SCOTUS has already at least flirted with the idea (see Packingham v. North Carolina, 2017). Also the executive order in question doesn't have anything to do with public spaces but rather Section 230 protections; the argument is that fact checking is a form of editorializing.

<comment><USER18> See also this HN discussion about a case[1], where a judge ruled that Trump can't block people on Twitter.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135945)

[1] Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump, 17-cv-5205, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York

<comment><USER19> It seems significant that Twitter wasn't a party to that case. People seem to be enthusiastically conflating it with some sort of ruling on what Twitter can or must do. I'm not sure if you are, but even bringing it up worries me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wanted to share a debate on topic " _Constitutional Free Speech Principles Can Save Social Media Companies from Themselves_ ".

[https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/constitutional...](https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/constitutional- free-speech-principles-can-save-social-media-companies-themselves).

Main Points from the page.

\- The First Amendment is content-neutral and provides a nonpolitical framework for regulating speech. It would behoove social media companies to abide by it.

\- Rather than resort to censorship, social media companies can offer users tools that block unwanted content, including content that could be hurtful or offensive.

\- Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms have become the new public square. Rather than resorting to corporate speech policies, these companies should promote free speech principles in the U.S. and abroad.

\- Social media companies are global. The U.S. Constitution is based on American values and, therefore, should not be used to regulate international platforms.

\- The spread of hateful digital content dilutes meaningful discourse and, in some cases, causes emotional and physical harm. Social media companies have a duty to offer safe, welcoming platforms for users.

From election interference to "fake news," nefarious actors are using social media to undermine democracies and deepen partisan divides. Social media companies must act to prevent this type of conduct.

The Debaters

David French - Senior Writer, National Review

Corynne McSherry - Legal Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Nathaniel Persily - Professor, Stanford Law

Marietje Schaake - International Policy Director, Stanford's Cyber Policy Center & Fmr. Member, European Parliament

<comment><USER21> Is the problem not precisely that there are very apparent and relevant conflicts between these points? Reconciling free speech with "offer[ing a] safe, welcoming platforms for users" is exactly what's at play here when it comes to TOS and deleting content.

> "Rather than resort to censorship, social media companies can offer users > tools that block unwanted content, including content that could be hurtful > or offensive."

I think this is an interesting idea, but I think it would effectively mean de facto speech censorship like HN has with flagged/dead comments. Sure they exist, but most users don't have them on, and the larger the forum, the more annoying having them on will be. Given the amount of spam/hate comments on Twitter, no sane user would ever turn that feature on. So you end up right back where we are now, only by technicality they aren't censored. I suppose a positive, but then it gets right back into editorialization arguments re what content is flagged or "blocked".

> Social media companies must act to prevent this type of conduct.

Even if most can agree here, this doesn't appear to lay out concrete policies, nor does anyone appear to have any proposed that align with these main points that I know of. I didn't watch the media specifically so if you have any detail on those specifics or any concrete recommendations they make, a summary would be very much appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Regardless of ones views pertaining to the current president, does anyone feel comfortable with so called "fact checking"? I do not like anyone acting as the sole arbiter of truth, whether it be the president, the pope, or the random fellow screaming in the park. I prefer that corporations trust their users to make their own choices about what people say instead of making edits or including addendum's to peoples posts. The people made the platform successful, let the people decide what is wrong and what is right, what is true and what is false, what is fact is and what is fiction.

<comment><USER23> > ... does anyone feel comfortable with so called "fact checking"?

This has nothing to do with any real person, but is just a hypothetical situation pertaining to this question in your post:

Let's say an account X with many followers calls you a pedophile. You're not, of course, so you responded and said you weren't, but since the followers tend to like X, they don't listen to you. X's followers then dox you, find your address, and start making threats to you outside of the realm of social media.

Does the model of "the people decide what is wrong and what is right, what is true and what is false, what is fact is and what is fiction" hold up here?

<comment><USER24> Fact checkers are necessary because otherwise people will believe a bad thing and commit crimes? Committing crimes like threatening people is not the natural outcome of the freedom to decide for yourself what you believe.

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure the term "natural outcome" is very meaningful. Things either happen or they don't. It's a _possible_ outcome and possible enough to merit discussion.

But let's take bad effect down a notch, from a crime to just an unpleasant consequence if you want. Let's say instead of getting doxxed and physically threatened, you just get turned down for a job offer instead. What about that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here is the text of the executive order (draft): [https://www.scribd.com/document/463379849/Draft-Executive- Or...](https://www.scribd.com/document/463379849/Draft-Executive-Order-on- Social-Media)

Here is the audio version: [https://playthis.link/https://pastebin.com/0mzv8heR](https://playthis.link/https://pastebin.com/0mzv8heR)

<comment><USER26> Thank you! After reading several contradictory and confusing articles, I found the actual order very clear. I would encourage others to take a look.

<comment><USER27> Agreed! I've started reading the actual laws and legal orders much more often recently. I'd already been in the habit of diving into source code when confused about how a (software) library/tool works, and I figured this wasn't all that different.

I've been surprised twofold:

1\. to find out how often journalistic coverage is misleading or incomplete

2\. to find out how often the legal text is actually fairly succinct and coherent, even to a layperson like myself

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Oh my goodness is he a big dumb stupid moron.

At the risk of this being downvoted to oblivion, why doesn't he think that Twitter, a privately run company, has the right to fact-check claims made on their site? Even if there were some secret evil liberal agenda on Twitter, which there absolutely is not, why aren't they allowed to do that exactly? Is he planning on holding Fox News to the same standard and make them put less racism apologia on their network?

<comment><USER29> Well, is Verizon allowed to use packet injection to "fact check" a website you view over their internet connection?

Because seems to be presenting themselves as a neutral platform, which they have shown themselves to not be.

EDIT: Just to clarify, obviously Twitter is not presenting themselves to users as a neutral platform. But for legal purposes, they are cloaking themselves in the same privileged status as a phone company, when they clearly are not.

<comment><USER28> A) Twitter has never presented itself as a neutral platform. They've banned white supremacists, dangerous conspiracy nuts like Alex Jones, and even left- leaning people like Destiny when he joked about how he was going to bomb Comcast.

B) Verizon (Comcast, Spectrum, etc...) are closer to something like a utility. I wouldn't be supportive of a water or electricity company not providing services to people I disagree with. Twitter is not a utility, it's a glorified fortune-cookie-sharing site. It's a not a "right", and there's no reason that you should feel entitled to it.

<comment><USER30> Twitter is _the_ place where political discourse happens not just _a_ place where it happens. It's an unfortunate state of affairs that they happen to be a private company with a bias.

<comment><USER31> Here's simple fact check. Twitter is not _the_ place where political discourse happens. You're discussing politics on HN right now.

<comment><USER30> It's the place that regularly gets quoted on major networks and newspapers. This is a minority website with nowhere near as much impact.

<comment><USER31> That still doesn't make it _the_ place for political discourse. Reddit gets quoted quite often. Tons of politicians do AMA on Reddit and Facebook. Just because Trump is on Twitter doesn't make it special.

<comment><USER32> That's not how these kinds of "facts" work. If someone tried to use this during some kind of proceeding the court will determine this. (Using a jury or not, expert witnesses or not, doesn't matter.)

Usually fact checking "services" like snopes.com, politifact, or WaPo with the pinocchio heads, have a consistent model about what they are willing to touch, how they approach it, and how they determine factualness, etc.

Just throwing out that Twitter is or isn't _the_ platform makes no sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Sometimes I wonder why Twitter doesn't just ban his account like they would any other troll on the internet.

<comment><USER34> Jack Dorsey has responded to this question multiple times in several places-- I heard him address it in the Making Sense podcast by Sam Harris some time in the past year. He seemed to show a firm grasp of the nuances involved.

Here is a quote from him: "Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate," [...] "It would also not silence that leader, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions."

He apparently feels there will be wider discussion from all parts of the political spectrum if things are left as they are. Should Trump move to a platform where he has more control over the format, it might just make it easier for him to suppress or obfuscate dissent.

I don't know if Dorsey is making the right call here, but he has clearly thought about it a lot, and discussed those thoughts publicly.

<comment><USER35> Dorsey is right to want to encourage broader discussion across the political spectrum on topics. But the current fact-checking approach is flawed as it requires human judgment, which is hobbled by people's biases and potential lack of topical expertise.

A better approach may be to offer a resource page that shows every news article on the topic, with guidelines on political leaning, how credible each article is etc so that readers can exercise their critical thinking to figure out what to believe. For example: [https://story.thefactual.com/news/story/239362-Social- Media](https://story.thefactual.com/news/story/239362-Social-Media) shows 285 related articles.

Disclosure: above page is from my startup, The Factual.

<comment><USER36> >But the current fact-checking approach is flawed as it requires human judgment, which is hobbled by people's biases and potential lack of topical expertise.

This is a true statement.

>A better approach may be to offer a resource page that shows every news article on the topic, with guidelines on political leaning

...seems to just introduce another level of bias. Every "media bias" website touts "objective analysis" while in the FAQ they admit to relying on a panel that they assure you is 100% objective. How do you guarantee that these ratings are not "flawed as it requires human judgment, which is hobbled by people's biases and potential lack of topical expertise"? See: allsides.com[1] and Media Bias Fact Check [2].

Looking at your employee page, you seem to have exactly zero employees with any significant background in journalism. What "topical expertise" does Factual provide that a layperson doesn't have? How do you minimize human judgement?

This reads to me as "You shouldn't use Facebook because you're the product, not the customer, which leads to bad incentive alignment. Use Twitter instead."

[1] [https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-rating- method...](https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-rating-methods) [2] [https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/methodology/](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/methodology/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "It also asks the Federal Trade Commission to report on acts of political bias collected by the White House"

Is this not similar to the approach and actions of other large State actors out there that hold a lot of authoritative power?

<comment><USER37> The word "asks" is important here, as the FTC is an independent federal agency and not under direct authority of the President.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Of course this is being handled ham-handedly, but it seems to me that section 230 is a ludicrous piece of legislative malfeasance that allows content publishers to duck the legal responsibilities of publishing while profiting from behavior that is obviously publishing.

I can't see how a Twitter/FB feed is substantively different from a curated "letters to the editor" section in a newspaper and I cannot for the life of me understand why it is treated different legally.

Would love to hear arguments that either 1) these social media sites are not actually publishing or 2) social media publishing is somehow different from publishing in other media.

<comment><USER39> Without S230, Twitter and Facebook would not curate or moderate any content - you'd be constantly bombarded by a torrent of spam, vitriol and disinformation.

With S230, companies can remove the worst, most obvious ofenses without fearing being held accountable by the things they didn't find.

<comment><USER38> That sounds to me like the outcome of both options are:

1) Toxic, awful to use sites with no personalization (custom recommendations, curation, etc)

2) Sites get more careful (and expensive to operate) because they don't want to get sued.

I really doubt #1 is even a tenable business. Who uses a site like that? On the other hand I really like the idea of more careful social media sites.

<comment><USER40> Under (2), I don't think it's a matter of expense. As a _publisher_ , you'd need editorial control over all users content (literally billions of people).

A publisher platform with a billion users is untennable. There isnt enough money or people in the world to police it.

Maybe the distinction between publishers and platforms is too archaic for digital platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Eugene Volokh with some legal analysis: [https://reason.com/2020/05/28/platform-immunity-and- platform...](https://reason.com/2020/05/28/platform-immunity-and-platform- blocking-and-screening-of-offensive-material/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Official page for the EO: [https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential- actions/executive-or...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential- actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/)

</comment><comment><USER43> I'd much rather platforms like Twitter just ban users who violate the TOS even if they're politicians. If you've ever followed Twitter accounts of local politicians you can see that it provides a framework for civil debate without restricting speech.

What our president doing is abusing opponents using his popular twitter account as a megaphone while violating the TOS.

<comment><USER44> I'm of the belief part of the reason Trump ran for President in the first place was because he knew various investigations were in action against him and that eventually he would be prosecuted. By running for President, he turned every illegal thing he has ever done into a political issue, instead of a legal one.

In the US, we have a long history of allowing politicians to get away with illegal activities in the name of not rocking the boat. Every once in a while someone comes along and tries to use that to their advantage, and ideally the system would punish them by media pointing out the issue and people not voting for them. But somehow, due to some nexus of insanity, someone like Trump was catapulted into office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I wonder how upset free speech advocates will be about an executive order that trumpets free speech but is intended to punish twitter for exercising free speech?

Twitter responded to a message from authority by adding their own, dissenting message, not censoring the first message.

I guess this kind of double-speak is what we can expect now.

<comment><USER46> You should read the signing statement for the CARES act.

The Executive (created to execute the laws enacted by Congress) states that they WILL NOT execute a portion of Congressional Law (the portion that stipulates oversight of the Executive) because they "don't understand" and because the Constitution has a clause stating that they (the Executive) must execute the laws faithfully.

I think it is the patent for "what to expect moving forward".

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Wait, if this was somehow enforceable wouldn't the order make Twitter liable for trump posting misinformation essentially making them legally required to censor or flag him?

<comment><USER48> I think it may actually be a way to empower companies to gain more access to information. If the companies are responsible, then they will want to sue the users for violations and personally identify them. A side effect is that they will have some government agency deciding what is acceptable or not. Much like China.

<comment><USER49> > If the companies are responsible, then they will want to sue the users for > violations and personally identify them

I think you're drastically overestimating the profitability of a single twitter user.

They have hundreds of millions of active users. It would probably be far easier and more cost effective to ban every user that causes them any amount of grief, than to investigate and potentially sue them.

<comment><USER48> They already ban users. This change would fine companies that ban racists and conspiracy theorist because some conservative claimed oppression of free speech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Without any attempt to weigh in on political sides, this debate made me think of an interesting "hack" to act as a publisher while enjoying the protections of a platform:

1\. Start a website where users are able to write arbitrary articles.

2\. Have a bot systematically spam your site with all possible articles (suitably limited so as to make this technically doable).

3\. Systematically weed out all the articles which are NOT equal to the articles you _actually_ wanted to publish.

Voila, now you've published all and only the articles you wanted, and yet you're just an innocent platform, not a publisher!

If your site is sufficiently widely used, you can even cut out step 2 and replace it with organic human beings.

<comment> kube-system The law isn't really hackable in the same way a machine is, because the law isn't interpreted by a machine, it is interpreted by a court, which would take all of the above into account when applying the law.

<comment><USER51> Bingo. At least if anyone could figure out that you were doing it (including, e.g. discovery finding emails where you discuss it) any could would _happily_ see right through it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> [https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/legislative- history](https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/legislative-history)

> The Cox-Wyden Amendment: Section 230

> Worried about the future of free speech online and responding directly to > Stratton Oakmont, Representatives Chris Cox (R-CA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) > introduced an amendment to the Communications Decency Act that would end up > becoming Section 230. The amendment specifically made sure that "providers > of an interactive computer service" would not be treated as publishers of > third-party content. Unlike publications like newspapers that are > accountable for the content they print, online services would be relieved of > this liability. Section 230 had two purposes: the first was to "encourage > the unfettered and unregulated development of free speech on the Internet," > as one judge put it; the other was to allow online services to implement > their own standards for policing content and provide for child safety. > Seeing the crucial importance of the amendment, the House passed it 420-4.

"encourage the unfettered and unregulated development of free speech on the Internet," as one judge put it" is being forgotten by a lot of comments here.

EDIT: I seem to get downvoted on anything remotely political on HN. So I am glad this EO was passed and hoping it gets enforced.

<comment><USER53> What's interesting is we're both reading "encourage the unfettered and unregulated development of free speech on the Internet," and my take on it is that yes, section 230 is there to explicitly protect Twitter under this circumstance, and you take it as giving Trump the ability to censor them.

Thankfully, one of the authors of the section in question has actually stated exactly what it means: [https://twitter.com/RonWyden/status/1266052221072019456](https://twitter.com/RonWyden/status/1266052221072019456)

"As the co-author of Section 230, let me make this clear: there is nothing in the law about political neutrality. It does not say companies like Twitter are forced to carry misinformation about voting, especially from the president."

<comment><USER52> Why did you ignore the part that the amendment was written by 2 people - <USER3> Cox (R-CA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR)

Somehow you only quoted what the Democrat says but not what the Republican says. Quite dishonest of you.

<comment><USER53> Because Chris Cox hasn't said anything about the issue.

They co-authored the bill. They almost certainly had similar aims when doing so.

If there is no indication the other party has any difference in opinion, has not spoken out to disagree with the party mentioned, and there is no real reason to believe there would be a difference in opinion, why should I not be allowed to quote the only explanation from an authoritative party on the matter?

The answer is that that's perfectly allowable and that I am not being dishonest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Until the tools, devices and technology needed to access the internet are free and universally available to all without restriction, these sites/services are no more of a public square than a country club is a public park.

And no. A public library terminal is not universal access...

<comment><USER32> Nothing is "free", there are always constraints and opportunity costs. For example if there's a rally in DC, how many people can go there? It costs a lot of money, they have to get time off work, organize transport and lodging, etc.

Sure, there are material differences between - let's say local politics, where the bar is showing up at the town hall - and getting on Twitter. But that difference is becoming more and more meaningless. Especially that the nexus of power seems to be shifting away from the physical and more toward the virtual/digital.

<comment><USER54> Public square. Not the Capital mall. This isnt about discourse with your leaders, nor protests. Its about the ability to speak ones mind without THE GOVERNMENT stifling you. That is the opposite of what Trump is trying to do here...

The origins of both Free Speech and the so-called Public Square are closely tied. In fact, in some nations there is literally a place to go, stand and speak, available to anyone. In the public square. For free, not a penny of cost, not a ounce of censorship.

If Trump felt so strong about this, he could make internet access a universal right and then forced the ISP's and to make it available everywhere for free. He could then subsidize the costs of the devices and assure that there was universal access. But that's not what he wants. He wants attention and to distract you from the horrors of his incompetent failings as a leader.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Given the concentration of user-generated content on these platforms' market regulation is needed. Twitter/Facebook have a monopoly by virtue of the "moat". Once someone generates their own content it's only accessible through one platform - that is a monopoly. This market needs innovation and competition. Don't break them up just force them to compete by removing the moat.

</comment><comment><USER56> The big problem that needs to be addressed is network effects. When the feature that matters most to users is the presence of other users, the result is a platform that can do all kinds of harm.

The power and money in Big Tech result from platforms where network effects leave users, businesses, competitors, even other countries unable to switch to or create viable alternatives. In theory they can, but in practice, they have to be where everyone else is.

If Twitter, for example, were an open protocol that you accessed through your ISP like email to join the world conversation, their own opinions wouldn't matter more than anyone else's. If instead there is a single company that decides who gets to say what on their platform, and network effects build a castle wall, regulations should force a change (such as opening the protocol) to make alternatives viable.

<comment> no-s >>If instead there is a single company that decides who gets to say what on their platform, and network effects build a castle wall, regulations should force a change (such as opening the protocol) to make alternatives viable.

yeah, twitter could implement plug-in choose-your-own fact checking, but that would create a scary market outside twitter's control. Since the number of twitter users is roughly finite this could mean a reduction in attention share to twitter proper...

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> How can they comply with "EARN IT" if they can't moderate and censor?

</comment><comment><USER58> What's surprising is how often I encounter fellow Americans mistakenly asserting the first amendment extends beyond government and into the private sector.

It's like they've never even been to a movie theater where they need to shut the hell up or leave.

And here we have a US president signing an executive order in response to being _moderated_ on a _web_ _site_ after years of arguably excessive tolerance of his b.s.

I'm not sure how much more embarrassed I can get for my country.

<comment><USER59> Social media are the broadcasters of this age. I see no reason why they should be exempt from the same rules and regulations as old school broadcasters.

<comment><USER60> I believe the correct model for large social media platforms (for example above 10m users) is that of a telecom provider.

Comcast can't block CNBC or Fox and at the same time nobody assumes that Comcast is responsible for view expressed on the networks it carries

<comment><USER59> Comcast pays to carry CNBC and Fox content. They can freely decline to pay the content providers what they wish and drop their content. It is not an uncommon occurrence.

Fox and NBC cannot provide air time for one political campaign and deny air time for an opposing political campaign. Twitter is more like Fox and NBC rather than Comcast.

<comment><USER61> Twitter is nothing like Fox and NBC, unless they've managed to pick up a broadcast license without anyone noticing.

Fox and NBC are only required to provide political campaigns equal access because of their licenses to exclusive use of portions of the public spectrum.

Cable channels like CNN and Fox News don't use this spectrum, and thus don't have the same requirement. Twitter is more like a cable channel than a broadcast station.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Does that mean we can sue Fox entertainment fake news network?

<comment><USER50> You can already sue them. For example, if Fox runs a segment claiming that you (gulli1010) are a murderer, you can sue them for slander (with or without this executive order).

If someone tweets that you are a murderer, you can't sue Twitter (or rather, if you do, Twitter will be protected by Section 230).

However, suppose Twitter announces the following policy: "Any tweet which calls someone a murderer, shall be deleted, unless the alleged murderer is gulli1010". Should you be allowed to sue Twitter then? That's a more nuanced question. And what if the above policy isn't an official policy but is a de facto policy?

<comment><USER48> People should look into the Seth Rich lawsuit and Ed Butowsky. Trump forgets his crowd is the one who constantly panders conspiracy theories like PizzaGate and QAnon. This will effectively take them down entirely.

<comment><USER63> No one side has a monopoly on conspiracy theories. The Russia collusion was something spun for years by the networks where people under oath said one thing privately and another publicly.

<comment><USER21> [citation needed]

<comment><USER48> They have none except Trump's Twitter feed.

<comment><USER63> From the mouth of Richard Grenell: [https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/126602867937061683...](https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/1266028679370616834)

<comment><USER48> A twitter post? All the intelligence agencies said their was Russia collusion. Remember the President said... Russia, if you're listening?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> It seems like the fundamental question is: are services like Twitter and Facebook basically utilities (like ISPs) or are they basically editorial (like newspapers).

That is, there are some private companies, like ISPs, that are seen as part of the basic plumbing of the internet, and which are generally not allowed to editorialize their content (for example, through net neutrality rules). However, there are others, like Yelp, which are seen as publishers of edited and curated content, even if some of the content was written by users and not the company itself.

The question is, have Twitter and Facebook (etc.) become dominant enough that they are essentially utilities, or are they editors of content like Yelp?

<comment><USER65> > dominant enough that they are essentially utilities

If that statement is true then it's a sad day in America. That means that competition is dead and monopoly wins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> This is a symptom of a larger problem. The Constitution and thusly the election system is woefully out of date and needs a formal rewriting based on a more general and modern consensus of ideas and principals. All of these issues could be irrelevant with an updated and more precise rule of law and government. I think we can all agree that any document which counts some people as 3/5s needs to be reassessed.

</comment><comment><USER67> Youtube places checks on videos for covid ... Antivax and more. How is what twitter did any different. Why is the conversation about what twitter did and not about Trump getting mad and using an EO to stop people from fact checking him. Why isnt that the conversation.. I shouldnt be able to turn a radio on and not hear how unprofessional and childish and abuse of power this truly is.

This isnt how the presidency is supposed to be used. He got mad and hes trying to silence his critics. Enough with the twitter is right or wrong.. Publisher vs platform. This is the conversation that needs to be had.

There is no reason an EO of this nature should be slid across the desk. A blind judge could see hes reacting to being checked.

<comment><USER68> > This isnt how the presidency is supposed to be used. He got mad and hes > trying to silence his critics.

There is a "reply" button underneath all of his tweets, you know?

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> It's basically too late.

First, the administration must formulate the rule itself. In formulating the rule, it must also provide supporting documentation justifying the rulemaking, which must include a record of the data looked at in deciding upon the need for the rule, research and conclusions drawn from that data. If the research is external to the agency, they must also justify the selection of research used in drafting the rulemaking.

Once the proposed rule is published in the federal register, there is a comment period of at least 60 days or up to 180 days (depending on the complexity of the rule).

The administration must then spend time reviewing the comments. It doesn't need to respond to comments individually but it does need to address all of the issues raised by those comments, especially if the issues raise constitutional concerns.

Assuming that they get that out of the way without modifying the proposed rule (which could trigger another comment period, depending on the extent of the changes), the final version of the rule must then be published in the federal register.

A final rule does not take effect until at least 30 days after it is published in the federal register. There are very few rules which can be ex post facto (generally only rules that grant additional rights or freedoms, or which are tax-related).

So, even assuming the the crackerjacks in the Trump Administration could get a proposed rule out tomorrow, and review comments after the comment period in one day, they're still looking at 92 days before the rule could take effect, or approximately the end of August.

Note:this doesn't include challenges to the rule proceeding through the federal court system. While SCOTUS could theoretically hear emergency appeals to a temporary injunction or district court ruling on the merits, they've refused to grant appeals in much less contentious cases where they ultimate sided with the administration. If they were to do so, the ruling would come in the middle of the electoral cycle, and it would likely result in the Democrats taking the House, Senate, and Presidency. And then they could simply override the rule using the APA in January.

<comment><USER61> Note: providing as followup comment since other is very long.

Trump's order is not rulemaking. It's just an order to the federal agencies to start _drafting_ a rule that would strip social media companies of CDA protection. Executive agencies have been designated the power to make legislative rules by laws of Congress (which sets forth the required procedure described above) but this grant does not extend to the Executive Office itself (i.e., the president).

As the Axios article notes, a very conservative appeals court just ruled that under the CDA, social media companies aren't public forums for first amendment purposes, so the agencies would also have to come up with a conforming legal justification explaining why social media platforms are public spaces or otherwise subject to the infringement of their private first amendment rights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> One more thing to consider if twitter/facebook are publisher or not is see how they earn money? They earn money in very similar way like a publisher does, by advertisement. Like any publisher they will want to make sure that content on their platform is "advertiser friendly".

</comment><comment><USER70> Seems counter productive to the President's intent. If platforms can be held liable for user posts, that will give them a strong incentive to remove anything at all that might even come close to giving them legal liability. So sure, maybe changing the law (or asking the FCC to reinterpret its strictures) would "get back" at the companies President Trump thinks are doing something wrong to him, but the net results would be severe limitations on what he could say on all platforms.

<comment><USER71> Then he'll claim that he's being censored even more, which is probably exactly what he wants to do to rile up his supporters.

<comment><USER72> except his supporters won't know about it since he is censored.

<comment><USER73> The president can't be easily muted in the same way that a non-famous person could. Good or bad, the press will parrot what he says, in any forum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I will reemphasize an opinion I expressed on an earlier thread: this is an overtly totalitarian move designed to intimidate and suppress private entities' protected expression, disguised as a reaction to perceived bias (which would still be an invalid pretense for any such order). It's a disgusting attack on an American industry by our own executive.

<comment><USER30> Twitter is _the_ place where political discourse happens. It's an unfortunate state of affairs for some that it happens to be a private company with a bias. And for better of for worse it does have a bias.

<comment><USER71> If enough people feel that it has a bias, and are discontent with it, they are free to start their own platform. They are also free to not moderate their platform, or even moderate it with whatever bias they so choose.

This has happened a few times (Voat, Gab) and the utopia of a hands-off content platform has never played out to anything other than a cesspool. Popular platforms remain popular and useful because they have the power to make editorial decisions.

I also assert that the world is not locked in to Twitter today, just like we were not locked in to Digg a decade ago. Users will flock elsewhere if they sense a need.

<comment><USER74> > If enough people feel that it has a bias, and are discontent with it, they > are free to start their own platform.

This is, of course, disingenuous. It's like saying, just a monolithic railroad company was about to bulldoze your house in the mid 1800s, "If you're discontent, you can always start your own railroad company." We're dealing with a complex system of interconnected motivations. "Start your own Twitter" is an anti-solution.

<comment><USER75> Wrong, because no one is bulldozing your house.

You're on a street with a 100 houses and one of them is having a cool party. But the cool kids don't like you and don't want you in their house. The other 99 houses (Gab, Mastodon, theDonald.win , bulletin boards, etc.) welcome you in, but you don't think their owners are cool and don't want to hang with them.

Should the government force the owner of the cool party house to let you hang with the cool kids?

Many would say that violates freedom of association.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Really curious to hear the rational from supposedly small government republicans

<comment><USER77> Some of them disagree with this thankfully.

But to be fair, I've seen a lot of supposed progressives on Twitter suddenly finding themselves very concerned with the rights of private businesses.

<comment><USER78> Uh... are "progressives" opposed to private businesses having rights?

<comment><USER79> Depends what they're doing with those rights. See Citizens United vs FEC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> 100k Americans are dead from COVID. There are riots happening in Minnesota. And here we are debating the latest oxygen sucking attention grab by our reality TV president. Let's ignore him

</comment><comment><USER81> As a random thought, I'll bet Twitter leadership is absolutely frantic right now figuring out next steps.

I've been on that side before and it's not pretty! Lots of long nights for those folks.

</comment><comment><USER82> When the social media executives got before Congress and lied their asses off they must have suspected that something like this might happen in the future.

</comment><comment><USER83> That's nice. Too bad there are laws and a constitution.

</comment><comment><USER84> Again, parallel universes.

For half of the people out there, believe it or not, this is Trump sticking up for people's free speech on Twitter.

For the other half, this is Trump attempting to eliminate free speech on Twitter and other places.

In my opinion, eliminating the protections could have a negative effect on free speech. But it also seems like a very bad outcome in general for the companies that they would want to avoid. So it seems like this is being used as a threat to try to get them to take free speech more seriously, so they can avoid that policing.

Another thing is the website or whatever collecting instances of censorship. That seems to indicate that they are genuinely trying to help reduce censorship. Does it not?

</comment><comment><USER85> All because Twitter dared to fact check him.

<comment><USER86> devil's advocate: why doesn't Twitter fact check everyone? Twitter is picking sides on a comment made by a user so they should be held liable for that content

<comment><USER87> Twitter isn't a public right. He chooses to use their platform so they choose to annotate his lies. I don't see how this executive order would even change exactly what started the whole thing.

<comment><USER88> People have a right to communicate, if a few platforms have the power to block all communication maybe they should be.

<comment><USER89> How does adding a link prevent anyone, let alone the most powerful person in history, from communicating?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> I think this executive order is an abuse of power.

However, I do think Twitter could have handled it differently. For example, every time you're looking at posts from _any_ blue-checked elected official, perhaps links could show up on the right hand side column for several fact- check websites. It would be nice to have arrangements with major newspapers, both left and right leaning, so un-paywalled news analysis can be one click away, too. This would help some people who truly want to be better informed.

</comment><comment><USER91> Why is this the First Amendment issue? Trump was not blocked from tweeting. Twitter just added one small sign next to his tweets.

Even Trump owns his tweets and Twitter owns the rest of the webpage.

<comment> _-david-_ It doesn't have anything to do with blocking Trump or fact checking him. It has to do with bias against conservatives. Trump had talked about this well before he was fact checked.

From a few days ago (prior to Trump being fact checked): [https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/23/21268433/president- trump-...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/23/21268433/president-trump- conservative-bias-social-media-twitter-facebook-google)

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> How can these changes improve social media? Is there a silver lining here?

</comment><comment><USER93> If it were the other way round, the media would be howling for regulation.

</comment><comment><USER94> For a second I thought this was a headline from Iran or Russia.

</comment><comment><USER95> Ignoring the mechanical-legal aspects of what Section 230 already does, the discourse on this has been a shining example of logically inconsistent philosophy.

The _Citizens United v. FEC_ decision indicates that corporations have free speech rights similar to those of individuals. Logically, if you agree with that part of the decision, then you should also agree that the government can't punish Twitter for doing this, and vice versa.

Yet very few people seem to hold either of those combinations of views. There are a few principled civil libertarians who are fine with both super-PACs and what Twitter did here. There are a few principled fair campaign advocates who think it's theoretically permissible, if inadvisable, for the government to stop what Twitter did here.

Most people seem to take one of the inconsistent positions.

<comment><USER51> This tension comes from the fact that there don't exist any "traditional public forum" online. __All __venues online are private spaces, yet some act as extremely convincing replicas of public spaces.

While I don't agree with this weird S230 opposition, the general sentiment that people expect to have a similar protection for free speech that they enjoy in our public squares, street corners, libraries and parks in the online alternatives to these things... isn't really a crazy one.

It's also a tenshion that exists in offline form. Increasingly there are gigantic public "downtown" areas which are privately owned (on land taken from the public through eminent domain then sold to developers), where people's free speech is heavily curtailed.

The general idea that just because the physical manifestation (or legal structure) behind our traditional public spaces is changing our effective right to free speech shouldn't change seems like a reasonable idea to me.

Also the general idea that twitter itself should automatically be free from regulation in how it restricts others due to its own free speech seems extremely specious to me. Twitter is a business, it operates to make money. While businesses have free speech right, commercial operations have a strictly lower level of rights in many areas. Twitter has only refrained from banning the president, who regularly and flagrantly violates their rules, because he makes them money. If twitter consisted primarily of its owners speech no one would visit it. It is effectively a place of public accommodation and its value stems entirely from the public's use of it. We traditionally impose significant regulation on how private businesses that serve the public operate, including extensive rules ensuring equality of access and against discrimination.

This executive order seems pretty foolish overall. But a law that set a threshold where a service like twitter become a "public forum"\-- places where the public use is the whole point-- and they had to meet a much higher standard when they wanted to silence people or ideas (beyond "our AI picked you at random, tough luck") and had provide effective modes of redress might be important to preserving people's effective freedom of speech in the long run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Post and discussion of the actual executive order: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23343313](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23343313)

</comment><comment><USER97> Another example of blatant political use of the justice system. If a company becomes a problem to the Trump regime, they will use the full array of existing laws to prosecute them, at the same time when they are dismantling legislation that targets their allies.

</comment><comment><USER98> What I find weird here is that the president is transparently stating that he is doing this to help is own political interests. I would have hoped that any presidential action exercising executive power (of any kind) with the stated intent to influence his own electoral chances in an imminent election would be considered an illegal act, based on intent alone.

It is not dissimilar to the original immigration bans where they were struck down initially because Trump openly expressed the intent that they were designed to achieve an outcome based on race, even though in technical implementation an argument could be made that they were not.

</comment><comment><USER91> Why is this the First Amendment issue? Trump was not blocked from tweeting. Twitter just added one small sign next to his tweets.

Even Trump owns his tweets' content and Twitter owns the rest of the webpage.

</comment><comment><USER99> If I worked at Twitter, I'd write this below his tweet on the subject:

Fact check: As a member of the executive, not legislative branch, Trump does not have the authority to modify existing legislation.

</comment><comment><USER100> Twitter, Facebook etc created this problem (exemplified by Trump) and continue to benefit from it. Social media has significantly amplified expressions outrage and taken an active role in spreading those messages, which in turn has given rise to all manner of demagogues and populists. If the day ever comes that these companies are forced to atone for the corrosive effect they have had on discourse and politics all over the world, it can't happen to a more deserving group.

</comment><comment><USER101> Make social media a public utility

</comment><comment><USER102> Asking obvious question: Who's building/has built the block chain based, untamperable twitter alternative?

</comment><comment><USER103> After just under four years of scorched earth resistance we now get this new EO. I am only surprised he waited this long.

<comment><USER104> And to think, just this morning you were claiming the text of this order was probably a forgery because it was so shoddy and inconsistent.

<comment><USER103> I used to work at a sub-cabinet bureau that had much, much higher standards than we're seeing out of the executive mansion now. I'm disappointed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER105> Is it not the case that the fact checking is not going to change any of Trump's followers? If all the bullshit that he has been spewing over all these years has not deterred his followers, showing facts will not. It is been clear that Trump's only agenda is to make people turn against each other and profit from it and he will keep using any chance he gets to do that.

<comment><USER32> There are many people who are new on the Internet, or simply doesn't know much about politics, etc.

I think adding context, trying to be more rational (even and especially with using tools/technology) is something everyone, who isn't so lucky as to have been born into a life of careless dumbness, values.

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> You know, it would be pretty funny if Twitter banned Trump's account because of some TOS terms have or something. If he actually causes them enough problems over this such that they are already paying for it, it might be worth it as a power play on their part.

Trump definitely depends on Twitter far more than Twitter depends on Trump. He could move to Facebook/Instagram, but I just don't see that being a move he would want to do, partly because the type of communication doesn't seem to be the same, and partly because it would be a _huge_ admission of defeat, where he couldn't bully a person or company into doing what he wanted.

Twitter would likely see a big dip in usage, at least for a short period, as some Trump loyalists boycotted it, but I imagine a lot of them would be back. There's also the rights of a private companies to control their own service which is a traditional Republican belief, but I doubt that would matter much, as the current political climate doesn't seem conducive to politicians adhering to past beliefs, not matter whcih side of the divide they are on.

<comment><USER65> why would Twitter ban their most popular user? not in a million years... they need him just as much as he needs them.

<comment><USER106> > they need him just as much as he needs them.

Not if he's threatening their business, and I think you overestimate how much Trump brings to Twitter. I'm sure he drives a level and engagement and discourse, but that's still going to be there to a large degree even if his account isn't. It's not like people aren't posting news clips about him from other websites all the time.

Trump is one of many thousands of popular people driving engagement on Twitter, even if he's high up on the list (but he doesn't have the most followers, he's not even in the top 5 apparently.[1]) On the other hand, Twitter is the one preferred platform for Trump to speak to his followers. Press briefings and official statements are a distant second. The fact that he announced his official plans to counterattack Twitter on Twitter first says it all.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most- followed_Twitter_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most- followed_Twitter_accounts)

<comment><USER65> > Twitter is the one preferred platform for Trump to speak to his followers

Funny you mention that, Trump doesn't realize the real power he has to help solve his own problem AND benefit the rest of us, is by lending his voice to a different platform. If, like me, you believe the solution to the stranglehold that the current social cartel has had for the past decade is to build new, competing platforms, and encourage their growth, then it's easy to see how getting Trump to use a different site would be beneficial, regardless of what he's spewing.

<comment><USER106> > If, like me, you believe the solution to the stranglehold that the current > social cartel has had for the past decade is to build new, competing > platforms, and encourage their growth

I think that's half of it. The other is a lot of time. It seems pretty clear to me that different age groups use social media in different ways, and I'm not sure it's a behavior that stays with the cohort as it ages, or is associated with that age itself.

My teenage children use whatever social network they feel like and don't really care for Facebook or Twitter. Does that change as they get older, or does it mean that in 10-20 years those companies will be less relevant (unless they buy the up-and-comers, like Facebook did with Instagram)?

I think Trump definitely has the ability to put that to the test though, and that you're right in that he's got a lot of pull to cause at least a short term shift based on the narrative he expresses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> Biting the hand that feeds him. I think this is a strategic miscalculation.

</comment><comment><USER108> In a world without Section 230 Twitter would be more likely to censor Trump to avoid liability for what he says. But I think the real goal to intimidate platforms into allowing right-wing disinformation propaganda, it's disgusting behavior from a president.

</comment><comment><USER109> Where there is liquidity, you mustn't mess where it wants to go.

</comment><comment><USER110> It's sad but the internet has a lot to answer for, the ability for us to access unfiltered and blatantly false information and for it to appear no different to peer reviewed and true information is leading humanity to disaster. Ideally we'd be able to have a chain of trust of information, the same way we have a chain of trust for certificates, with peer reviews from experts giving credence to articles and statements.

Some stuff is plausible but wrong, like taking certain antiviral drugs to combat Covid. Others completely defy everything we know about physics, like 5G spreading Covid. And some stuff is true, like staying at home breaking the chain of transmission. But people believe all of the above and none of the above appear different or are treated differently on social media sites.

Some of the opinions and statements that influential people say are dangerous and either harm directly or cause others to harm and a lot of them build on existing divisions further breaking apart our communities.

A few days ago we had an earthquake in my home city, our liberal prime minister was having a live interview when it happened. On news sites when they played the interview the comments were full of people saying it was Trump blowing up tunnels which were being used to traffic children as sex slaves by the liberal government.

That's obviously insane, not least because I live on a group of islands 3,000 kilometres away from the next country and that's one hell of a tunnel, but also because that's not a thing that governments do in transparent and well run democracies.

Unfortunately there's a subset of the population who are unstable and prone to believe anything, and the fact that it's discredited probably drives them to believe it more. But there's a much larger subset who are susceptible to arguments but not critical of them and may be more inclined to see reason if given information backing that up.

So, the question is how do you debunk blatant falsehoods while still balancing peoples freedom to believe what they want.

</comment><comment><USER80> Can someone just give me a magic potion where I don't have to hear about Trump and his daily antics anymore ? This guy sucks the oxygen out of everything without adding any value to humanity

</comment><comment><USER111> Let us all hope Trump does not get into WoW. But seriously, politicians and journalists have openly called for twitter to ban Trump and I am sure there is more going on behind the scenes

</comment><comment><USER112> A rule like that would effectively ensured Trump won't have an internet platform. No company wants to be liable for the content he posts.

</comment><comment><USER113> > "Currently, social media giants like Twitter received unprecedented > viability shield based on the theory that they are a neutral platform, which > they are not," Trump said in the Oval Office. "We are fed up with it. It is > unfair, and it's been very unfair."

What examples of this unfairness are being referred to? I never understand why journalist don't press harder and follow up with obvious questions. Same with "many people are saying" style statements.

<comment><USER71> He has no examples, it's just word salad.

The premise is also false - the shield from [liability] applies regardless of the political affiliation, motivation, or actions of the platform. He's trying to convince people that Twitter had some kind of duty to remain neutral, but they really don't. Twitter would have just as strong of a case under current law if they came out and said "yep, no conservative viewpoints allowed here."

<comment><USER114> > "yep, no conservative viewpoints allowed here."

At least it'd be clear if they said so, nothing worse than the current situation where they think it but won't say it because it'd be bad for business.

<comment><USER71> I mean, I even disagree that there's major 'anti-conservative' bias at all.

Some prominent _conservatives_ have been banned from the platform, like Alex Jones, but it wasn't due to their views on Keynesian economics, it was for spreading outright lies about Sandy Hook.

Diving deeper into almost any of the examples that people dig up as 'anti- conservative bias' reveals trolling, hateful attacks, or other bad behavior, completely independent of the author's political views, and earnestly deserving of removal.

<comment><USER114> > I mean, I even disagree that there's major 'anti-conservative' bias at all.

Are you a conservative yourself?

I'm gonna take a guess that you are not so how would you know?

It's a real question, no trick.

<comment><USER115> My counter argument to yours is that Twitter has a major anti-progressive bias. This can be shown by the number of people that have been banned due to responding against racism.

Since you're not a progressive, you can't counter my claim as there's no way you would know about any anti-progressive bias.

<comment><USER114> Indeed I wouldn't dare, I don't follow any progressives (I think), don't read their tweets, don't get the recommendations they do etc.

Now I can tell you as a conservative, because I experience it every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER116> This action concerns, among other things, U.S. Code § 230.

> Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996 (a common name > for Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996) is a landmark piece of > Internet legislation in the United States, codified at 47 U.S.C. § 230. > Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users > of an "interactive computer service" who publish information provided by > third-party users ...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act)

Through his action, the president appears to be directing the executive branch to use a more narrow interpretation of Section 230 than has been used previously:

> ... Section 230 was not intended to allow a handful of companies to grow > into titans controlling vital avenues for our national discourse under the > guise of promoting open forums for debate, and then to provide those > behemoths blanket immunity when they use their power to censor content and > silence viewpoints that they dislike. When an interactive computer service > provider removes or restricts access to content and its actions do not meet > the criteria of subparagraph (c)(2)(A), it is engaged in editorial conduct. > It is the policy of the United States that such a provider should properly > lose the limited liability shield of subparagraph (c)(2)(A) and be exposed > to liability like any traditional editor and publisher that is not an online > provider.

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive- or...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order- preventing-online-censorship/)

(c)(2)(A) reads:

> (c) Protection for "Good Samaritan" blocking and screening of offensive > material

> (2) Civil liabilityNo provider or user of an interactive computer service > shall be held liable on account of—

> (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or > availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, > lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise > objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; > or

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230)

To summarize, the president is directing his administration to disregard "Good Samaritan" protections for services that don't strictly meet the exception given in (c)(2)(A).

The phrases "good faith" and "otherwise objectionable" seem broad enough to allow just about any form of censorship a company might want to engage in, while continuing to enjoy Good Samaritan protection.

If so, what exactly does the administration gain here?

</comment><comment><USER117> The nice thing about Trump having the emotional self control of a toddler is that we don't have to wonder if this was really part of some larger plan. We know without a doubt that this was because Twitter subtly showed him an ounce of disrespect. Tech companies should therefore realize the futility of trying to negotiate with this administration.

</comment><comment><USER118> Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't it Twitters first amendment right to respond to Trump's tweets? Does not seem like this is censorship to me.

</comment><comment><USER119> "There's nothing I'd rather do than get rid of my whole Twitter account." \- Trump

He doesn't care about the truth, and is trying to take advantage of our desire for neutrality and free speech to push lies. It's possible for us to be nuanced, and not let him ruin Twitter/Facebook/etc with bad-faith arguments.

</comment><comment><USER90> Maybe Hacker News should post factchecking links under every Rustlang post.

<comment><USER120> "fortran 77" \- username checks out.

On a more serious note, I have been dipping my toes into Rust and it seems fun. I suppose, I'll have a more considered opinion of it once I actually build something substantial with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER121> It's not often I side with Donald Trump on anything. But I think it's high time, the likes of Twitter, Facebook et al got a good kicking.

To be fair, the problem is not with the sites themselves. They are private companies and [within the law] can do whatever the hell they like with regard to who can use their platforms and what they can say while doing so.

The problem is that these type of sites [and especially Twitter] have been elevated by the rest of the world and transformed from being outlets for vacuous chatter into being the official conduit for 'news', for any lazy journalist who can't be bothered to research a story properly.

Even on such esteemed organisations as the BBC and Reuters, it's becoming increasingly common to see news articles in which the 'sources' are little more than lists of what various parties said on Twitter. And on a smaller and even local level, more and more companies are only contactable through their Twitter accounts or Facebook pages. I even got message from the UK Government's unemployment service a few days ago, informing me that they would be announcing nee vacancies on their Twitter account, from now on.

Now, as I said, that's not Twitter or Facebook's fault. It's the rest of the worlds fault for increasingly elevating them to this pseudo-official status. But it does create the situation whereby anyone who's not on Twitter or Facebook is increasingly disenfranchised from having their viewpoint heard or from participating in the great and small issues of the day.

And what if Twitter or Facebook decide to ban a user or suspend an account? That user has no recourse but to plead with the company in question to reinstate them, which is entirely arbitrary decision. There is no legal recourse, as there would be if some authority tried to remove a person's vote or to ban them from speaking, writing or otherwise putting forward their opinions in the 'real world'.

As chance would have it, I've run into this myself. About a year ago, I logged into my Twitter account to find that it had been suspended as had my business Twitter account --with no reason given and nothing that I had done [that I can see] to have justified this. I never verbally attacked anyone or posted anything dodgy. I can only think my accounts were mistakenly caught up in one of Twitter's periodic automated sweeps, after which they proudly announce they've removed X-million bot accounts.

The only recourse is to fill in a form asking them to review the account suspension. Which, needless to say results in nothing but an autoreply, assigning you a case number. And then... nothing.

Likewise, as chance would have it, just today I logged into a Facebook page I'd set up for my business to find a message saying that had been suspended for "suspicious activity". Again, nothing I can see that i've done that could possibly justify that. In fact, I don't do FB at all. So I don't even interact with that account apart from to occasionally post links to the latest 'thing' I've made and am selling on Amazon. I've not even added any friends to my FB account, so I couldn't have 'offended' any one! In order to lift that suspension I was asked to verify my mobile phone number [OK... with great reluctance] and then upload a photograph of myself, so they can 'verify' me [WTF? Am i applying for a passport to the fucking internet now?

Now, I know those last few paragraphs sound like I'm just whining and crying because I can't use Twitter or Facebook any more. I'm honestly not. I couldn't give a flying f __k about either of them. I only created accounts on both because [as I intimated above], with the state of the internet today, we 've arrived at a point, where, for a lot of people, Twitter and Facebook ARE the internet. It's where they talk to their friends, where they arrange their social lives, where they do their shopping, where they read their news, where they run their businesses and where they exist online. So, sometimes, you've just got to swallow the rising vomit and at least establish a token presence there, just so people know you exist.

Anyway, given that's the state we're in, should all that vast mass of human commerce and interaction be dependent on the whims of a couple of monstrously rich individuals and a couple of monstrously rich corporations? It's a toughie.

On the one hand, I'm generally opposed to government interference in how people run their lives or their businesses. On the other hand, I believe in freedom of expression and freedom of access to the media and the government, which isn't dispensed or withheld at the whim of a few individuals.

</comment><comment><USER122> How long until a few big tech companies move their headquarters to Dublin and wish mr Trump good luck in ever collecting any more taxes from them?

Or maybe Brussels like the Eclipse foundati did?

</comment><comment><USER123> Good. Here's hoping Trump and the social media companies destroy each other. May a better world rise from the metaphoric ashes.

</comment><comment><USER124> From day one it seemed to me like Trump's main goal was desecrating the federal state institutions. Seriously, the guy seems as if he cares only about stepping on the constitution and laws. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't POTUS executive orders only serve to direct the federal government, his employees? Twitter is definitely not a federal agency. Why are a lot of people treating this situation like Trump is able to circumvent the legislative branch?

<comment><USER125> Part of the premise is directing the agencies not to spend money on those platforms that violate the EO.

<comment><USER124> But does the US government even now buy any of Twitter's advertisement?

<comment><USER125> I don't know. Would be a pretty shallow threat if not maybe?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER126> To repeat my comment from a different thread:

If we accept corporations as people, I wish some of the ones with actual power had the backbone to do a bit of civil disobedience, instead of rolling over at the first sign of trouble. Twitter should double down and add a fact-check sticker to every single Trump lie, past and current — to hell with lawsuits and the FCC. Otherwise, we'll "maybe parts of this sound reasonable" our way straight into a goose-stepping, thought-shaping, Republican-ruled dictatorship. Surely, even the people who scoffed at this idea a few years ago can see this future taking shape.

I am aghast that there's _any_ support for this in the once-countercultural Silicon Valley. It's abhorrent and shameful, and it makes me fear that maybe the gravity well is already too large to escape. Meanwhile, people like Zuckerberg and Musk are tripping over themselves to appease the ruling party.

(Just a reminder that earlier today, Trump retweeted a video declaring that "the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat." I suppose this is one of those good old fashioned Republican values that our liberal bias works so hard to suppress.)

</comment><comment><USER127> Unfortunately I've found axios to be too biased (largely by omission) to be reliable.

</comment><comment><USER128> Staying focused on the actual details of the tweet that spurred this order, Twitter's response highlights the problems inherent with content moderation.

There are hundreds of documented cases of people being convicted of mail in ballot voter fraud. In Paterson NJ there was an all mail election recently that is causing significant problems. I shudder at the thought of that playing out on a national scale.

Yet in spite of those facts, Twitter feels that Trump's warnings are somehow wrong. In light of the facts I think his fear is justified.

Twitter is a private company but we restrict the activities of private companies all the time. I see no reason why we shouldn't have a serious conversation about placing special restrictions on internet platforms' ability to censor users.

</comment><comment><USER48> Hurry up and finish a fast decentralized anonymous web before the US turns into China.

<comment><USER129> It wouldn't be China. In China there is truth, truth and only truth. The truth approved by government. US turns not into China, but into Russia, where there is no truth, only lies. Literally. Because the only way to categorize all sayings into truth and lies is to pick some political side and stick to it. One cannot believe to any authority: politicians, scientists, journalists, government officials... they are all lying. Some probably are not, but you have no ways to find out who is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER130> I don't think there is legal basis for Trump's order, but Twitter is wading into murky territory with their actions.

Twitter's "fact check" singles out a specific Trump tweet. It's clearly a human intervention by Twitter staff, not user generated content. The subject of Trump's tweet was a political dispute, and while Trump certainly had false statements in his tweet, that's basically par for the course on Twitter.

This raises a bunch of questions. Why is Twitter singling out Trump for his false statements? If AOC or Bernie Sanders make false or misleading statements about economics (which they frequently do), will those also receive fact checks and warning labels?

We have seen this also with the coronavirus breakout. Medium and other publishers removed posts based that were sanguine data analysis (nothing inflammatory) because they were against the prevailing media sentiment. For example this Medium post [1] was removed based on its content. It did not contain anything inflammatory, violent, or otherwise unsavory. Medium just didn't like what it said.

At what point does Twitter or Medium cease to be a neutral discussion platform, and become more like a publisher that pushes a specific narrative (like Fox News, the New York Times, CNN, etc.). They are certainly within their rights do curate/moderate their platform, but if this continues, we need to start thinking of these companies less like user driven platforms, and more like opinionated publishers.

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20200321144004/https:/medium.com...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200321144004/https:/medium.com/six- four-six-nine/evidence-over-hysteria-covid-19-1b767def5894)

<comment><USER131> > Why is Twitter singling out Trump for his false statements?

They aren't. They've labeled other tweets before.

> If AOC or Bernie Sanders make false or misleading statements about economics > (which they frequently do), will those also receive fact checks and warning > labels?

Presumably, yes.

<comment><USER132> Economics is quite different than election interference, so I'm not sure that Twitter would make any "fact check" statements when it comes to economics.

The idea of "facts" in economics can't extend very far beyond metics and other numbers, as most of the rest is up to vigorous theoretical, political debate. If this original poster is so keen on fact checking the "economics" of a certain political sides, it seems likely that they are not concerned with actual facts but rather deeply held theoretical and political beliefs that they have elevated to "fact" status.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER133> A good documentary that outlines how social media becomes more of a publisher is The Creepy Line. [https://www.thecreepyline.com/](https://www.thecreepyline.com/) The movement to rein in the abuse of Section 230 has been going on for a while, but is finally starting to pick up steam. Odds are, given that this is an election year, they had this ready to go in the background if Twitter tried pulling something like they did yesterday, which is why it only took a day be signed.

</comment><comment><USER134> _> Section 230 was not intended to allow a handful of companies to grow into titans controlling vital avenues for our national discourse under the guise of promoting open forums for debate, and then to provide those behemoths blanket immunity when they use their power to censor content and silence viewpoints that they dislike_

About time. Social media should have been commoditized and decentralized by now, joining the group of email, DNS etc. Social media companies enjoyed milking free user content for 15 years, it's about time people take hold of their own intellectual property in the fediverse.

</comment><comment><USER135> Another source with some remarks from a Democrat FCC commissioner: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/28/trump-s...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/28/trump- social-media-executive-order/)

<comment><USER136> Democrat is not an adjective.

<comment><USER137> It's a common usage, but mainly among non-Democrats. And it's not a compliment.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_\(epithet\))

<comment><USER135> You're barking up the wrong tree. I wrote "democratic," thought it looked wrong as it seemed more the adjective of "Democracy" rather than "member of the Democratic Party," didn't want to look it up on my phone because I cannot multitask for the life of me on my iPhone, and there you go.

Anyway, you do realize that the very fact that I was linking to "here's what someone in a position to challenge or at least refuse to enforce this inanity" implies that I'm scarcely trying to side with the party backing the trigger- happy president, right?

<comment><USER138> You felt the need to refer to someone as a proponent of democracy?

<comment><USER135> Other way around, obviously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER139> I would love to see a law that for corporations, once the corporation exceeds some commercial threshold (e.g. 1M customers or 10M/year revenue or whatever) then you are no longer allowed to discriminate against your users for any reason other than violation of non-discriminatory terms of service.

I don't think that companies that achieve near-monopoly status should have the right to arbitrarily cancel, shadow ban, hide from search, delete content, flag content, "fact check", label, or otherwise interfere with users' use of the service.

This is not a "free speech" issue, it's a "when you have monopoly power and positioning in the market, there are no alternatives" issue. Visa refusing to process CC payments because they don't like your politics, is not a power that I want them to have.

If you're a tiny boutique company, discriminate to your heart's content. When you get big, I don't want you to have that power anymore. If you don't like it, then eschew the current fashion of companies to value growth over all else.

<comment><USER140> I'm not sure I agree with this, though I think it's an interesting idea.

The threshold you've suggested seems way too low. 1M customers or $10M/year revenue isn't "near-monopoly", it's barely a player in the game.

<comment><USER139> Completely fair, and maybe the idea isn't the right way to do it, but I am frustrated with the cancel power that many companies wield in our society and hadn't seen this proposed anywhere. And corporations are controlled by people, usually a small number of people with unbelievable ability to wield power:

[https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5839cf32e4b000af95ee5b68](https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5839cf32e4b000af95ee5b68)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER141> This is long overdue. Social media companies grew their networks without censorship, but when they got sufficient monopoly and network power started censoring generally only in one direction.

<comment><USER142> Here's how it breaks down for this particular case. People are afraid to vote because they don't want to get COVID-19 while standing in line waiting at the polls. So states are letting people vote by mail. The problem with that is that Republicans tend to lose elections when everyone who is allowed to vote votes. So Trump, in an attempt to win the election, is sowing seeds of discontent with regards to mail-in ballots, claiming that fraud will be widespread. The goal is to get people to pressure states to not allow voting by mail, thus suppressing votes from people scared about COVID-19 (which tend to be poorer people that can't afford a $200,000 hospital stay), and thus leading to a Trump reelection. Twitter has stepped in to say "hey, voting by mail is not a new thing and there wasn't really a lot of fraud".

That is not censoring a conservative viewpoint. It's just giving people some facts. Here's Trump's opinion, here's some data, make your own decision.

I am sure that if Joe Biden started tweeting random conspiracy theories, Twitter would fact check those. But he doesn't, so we don't get to see that in action. Just because a conservative person in power tends to lie and start conspiracy theories on social media, doesn't mean the platform is biased against conservatives. It just means that they're not going to publish falsehoods without a little asterisk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER143> Some days I just have trouble getting out of bed, he is over 70 years old I'm just fascinated with his agile work and energy to fight anything that comes against him. His choices are debatable abut That is definitely some form of leadership.

<comment><USER72> leadership is definitely not the word I would associate with this individual.</comment></comment>