{"id":18912,"date":"2020-05-29T05:04:58","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T05:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rbsitsoftwaresolution.com\/blog\/going-to-war-with-twitter-trump-threatens-critical-social-media-legal-protections.html"},"modified":"2020-05-29T05:04:58","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T05:04:58","slug":"going-to-war-with-twitter-trump-threatens-critical-social-media-legal-protections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/going-to-war-with-twitter-trump-threatens-critical-social-media-legal-protections.html","title":{"rendered":"Going to war with Twitter, Trump threatens critical social media legal protections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Accusing Twitter <\/a> of censorship for adding a contextual label to false claims<\/a> he made about the 2020 election process, President Trump has again declared war on social media companies.<\/p>\n

After the White House told reporters that the president would soon announce an executive order \u201cpertaining to social media,\u201d the draft<\/a> of that order is out in circulation.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> President Trump signed the executive order<\/a> on Thursday afternoon. Its text is now available here<\/a> and embedded in full below.<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve reviewed the draft, and while its contents are somewhat shocking by the standards of a normal administration, this isn\u2019t the first time we\u2019ve seen the Trump administration lash out at social media companies over accusations of political bias. In fact, we may be seeing the same executive order now that circulated in draft form last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Jack Dorsey explains why Twitter fact-checked Trump\u2019s false voting claims<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The president\u2019s draft order tries to exert control over social media companies in a few ways. The most ominous of those is by attacking a law known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That law, often regarded as the legal infrastructure for the social internet, shields online platforms from legal liability for the content their users create. Without the law, Twitter or Facebook or YouTube (or Yelp or Reddit or any website with a comments section, including this one) could be sued for the stuff their users post.<\/p>\n

Whether you think they should be held more accountable for their content or not, in a world without Section 230, social media companies would never have been able to scale into the services we use today.<\/p>\n

The draft order attacks this legal provision by claiming that that part of the law means that \u201can online platform that engaged in any editing or restriction of content posted by others thereby became itself a \u2018publisher,\u2019 \u201d implying that a company would then be legally liable for things its users say.<\/p>\n

This interpretation appears to be a willful inversion of what the law really intends. Sen. Ron Wyden <\/a> (D-OR), who co-authored Section 230, often says that the law provides companies with both a sword and a shield<\/a>. The \u201cshield\u201d protects companies from legal liability and the \u201csword\u201d allows them to make moderation decisions without facing liability for that either.<\/p>\n

While Trump is trying to intimidate social media companies into doing even less moderation \u2014 such as Twitter labeling the falsehood he tweeted<\/a> \u2014 the consensus beyond this politically expedient viewpoint is that social media should actually be removing and contextualizing more of the potentially harmful content on their platforms.<\/p>\n

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Twitter adds a warning label fact-checking Trump\u2019s false voting claims<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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In a statement Thursday, Wyden called the order \u201cplainly illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the co-author of Section 230, let me make this clear \u2014 there is nothing in the law about political neutrality,\u201d Wyden said. \u201cIt does not say companies like Twitter are forced to carry misinformation about voting, especially from the president. Efforts to erode Section 230 will only make online content more likely to be false and dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond attacking Twitter\u2019s moderation decisions through Section 230, the draft executive order says the White House will reestablish a \u201ctech bias\u201d reporting tool, presumably so it can unsystematically collect anecdotal evidence that he and his supporters are being unfairly targeted on social platforms. According to the order, the White House would then submit those reports to the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The order would further rope in the FTC to make a public report of complaints and \u201cconsider taking action\u201d against social media companies that \u201crestrict speech.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear what kind of action, if any, the FTC would have legal ground to take.<\/p>\n

The order also asks the Commerce Secretary to file a petition that would require the Federal Communications Commission to \u201cclarify\u201d parts of Section 230 \u2014 a role the commission isn\u2019t likely eager to embrace.<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial media can be frustrating. But an executive order that would turn the FCC into the president\u2019s speech police is not the answer,\u201d Democratic FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel tweeted<\/a> on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n

The order also calls for the U.S. Attorney General William Barr to form a working group of state attorneys general \u201cregarding the enforcement of state statutes\u201d to collect information about social media practices, another presumably legally unsound exercise in partisanship. Barr, a close Trump ally, has expressed his own appetite<\/a> for dismantling tech\u2019s legal protections in recent months.<\/p>\n

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US threatens to pull big tech\u2019s immunities if child abuse isn\u2019t curbed<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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While Trump\u2019s executive order may prove toothless, there is some appetite for dismantling Section 230 among tech\u2019s critics in Congress \u2014 a branch of the government with much more power to hold companies accountable.<\/p>\n

The most prominent of those threats is currently the EARN-IT Act<\/a>, a bipartisan Senate bill introduced in March that would amend Section 230 \u201cto allow companies to \u201d \u2018earn\u2019 their liability protection\u201d under the guise of pressuring them to crack down on enforcement against child sexual exploitation. The executive order doesn\u2019t directly connect to that proposal, but sounding the war drums against the tech industry\u2019s key legal provision will likely signal Trump\u2019s Republican allies to double down on those efforts.<\/p>\n

In response to the circulating draft executive order, Twitter declined to comment when reached by TechCrunch, and Facebook and Google did not respond to our emails. The Internet Association, the lobbying group that represents the interests of internet companies, was out with a statement opposing the president\u2019s efforts on Thursday morning:<\/p>\n

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Section 230, by design and reinforced by several decades of case law, empowers platforms and services to remove harmful, dangerous, and illegal content based on their terms of service, regardless of who posted the content or their motivations for doing so.<\/p>\n

Based on media reports, this proposed executive order seems designed to punish a handful of companies for perceived slights and is inconsistent with the purpose and text of Section 230. It stands to undermine a variety of government efforts to protect public safety and spread critical information online through social media and threatens the vibrancy of a core segment of our economy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The group also pointed to the fact that political figures rely on social media to successfully broadcast their thoughts to millions of followers every day \u2014 80 million, in Trump\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

The ACLU also weighed in on the executive order Thursday morning. \u201cMuch as he might wish otherwise, Donald Trump is not the president of Twitter,\u201d said ACLU Senior Legislative Counsel Kate Ruane. \u201cThis order, if issued, would be a blatant and unconstitutional threat to punish social media companies that displease the president.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIronically, Donald Trump is a big beneficiary of Section 230. If platforms were not immune under the law, then they would not risk the legal liability that could come with hosting Donald Trump\u2019s lies, defamation and threats.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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The consequences of indecency<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/2adERowhFio\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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