President Trump’s Executive Order regarding Social Media
Notice how forums with relatively little to no moderation lean right, while those that are heavily moderated lean left? In the free market of ideas, conservative thought prevails. Lots of control have to be implemented before leftist thoughts prevail. (The Donald Win)
President Trump continues to fight back against social media bias against conservative viewpoints. Twitter’s “fact” checking the president’s tweet was not the only time social media attempted to “invalidate” Trump’s statement. They’ve been active, prior to this, with muzzling conservative voices on their platforms.
The left is going to try to paint this as if President Trump attacked free speech. What? They’re actually guilty of what they’re accusing the President of doing? That’s “not” censorship, that’s curtailing “disturbing” posts and preventing “hate” comments.
From The Wall Street Journal:
“In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to handpick the speech that Americans may access and convey online,” the order says. “When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power.”
The order also lays groundwork for treating the platforms as places where individuals’ First Amendment rights should be protected, terming them “a 21st-century equivalent of the public square.”
The order is far-reaching in scope, setting up multiple ways for the government to attack what the administration views as the problem of online censorship.
The most important way is by seeking to scale back the sweeping legal protections that Washington established for online platforms in the 1990s, in the internet’s early days. Those protections were created by Congress in Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. That law gives online companies broad immunity from liability for their users’ actions, as well as wide latitude to police content on their sites.
The Wall Street Journal provides a lot more information in this link.
Twitter today has now directly censored the President of the United States.
He tweeted, “These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”
Twitter hides that, saying that it violates their policy because it “glorifies violence.”
UFB
No surprise or secret that there is already bias and censorship on these platforms. And the truth IS out there, albeit, it can be buried very deeply on the inherwebz. With not a whole lot else I can do, I spend time surfing everyday. Some stuff, like babylon bee, onion, ect is obvious satire, other places, you can’t always tell between truth and fiction. That’s why I believe very little I read and will keep chipping away to find out more. My firewalls prevent me from going to some places (and that’s a good thing, have never been hacked) and I don’t do pay to read articles.
I’m not on FB or Twit. I do lurk on FB thru another account. In that lurking I have seen a lot of those little question games that pop up from different “friends.” Y’all know the ones, asking similar questions that the answers are used as password security type questions. I would take the liberty to post a comment that those questions were designed to allow the right person to access your accounts, or to set up accounts in your name. Those surveys quit showing up in the feed, but I could visit the friends pages and still see them everywhere.
Big Brother is alive and well and living thru the inherwebz and your smartphone. If you don’t think the ultimate goal is to monitor everything you say or do, then maybe I can interest you in that bridge to my beachfront property.
If I had some capital and the technical expertise, I’d start new platforms that’d compete with Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. The hallmark of our free society is competition…it creates better service & products because consumers can to another entity if you don’t give them what they want.
I’m not in the TFC or Dept. of Commerce, but since much of (un)social media is owned by so few, the anti-trust laws made to break up entities like Standard Oil and AT&T.
Are they “fact checking” any other user? How about the entire Left for all their “facts” about Russia? Hmmm…anyone…Zuck the Cuck? Dorsey you commie? Anyone?
Censorship by these “social media” platforms is no surprise. It’s worse in Germany, under Merkel’s government. Someone who was invited to join the Heartland Institute included the HI’s logo on her YouTube appearances and was arrested for it and fined and jailed by the German government. The accusation was “illegal advertising”, when in fact, she was not advertising anything. So now she’s suing Merkel’s government for violating her right to freedom of speech.
Interesting times we live in now.
He should have done this maybe two years ago
How come you didn’t see this before PC’s came into use? Oh, since PC’s came into peoples homes, you now have twitter and face book. I’m not a twitter or face book user. Maybe if these social media’s were gotten rid, there would be a lot less problems. My Sister doesn’t even own a PC and she gets along fine. Before I got a PC in 2009, everything I did was over the telephone and items that I couldn’t get at a store I did the mail order snail mail which I still use. I just know I’ll get some flak over this but we are here to debate each others comments. I know some of you know where I am coming from since I mentioned that I still use a Smith Corona typewriter and a manual check writer machine plus a Twisby fountain pen loaded with Noodlers black ink. Later alligator.
Don’t try to dishonestly claim this is a first amendment issue. Trump’s executive order proves he is not trying to protect the first amendment. His order does the exact opposite of promoting free speech. It is astonishing the knots the right will twist themselves into to defend Trump. Instead of just acknowledging what a weak, narcissistic, little con artist malignant twat he is. Suddenly private corporations need to be broken apart and better regulated. A position the far left has held for decades. A position the right has vehemently opposed for decades. Now, suddenly the right thinks it needs to happen because Trump had a angsty meltdown over a label Twitter placed on a tweet. a tweet that had verifiably false claims. Trump routinely violates Twitter terms of service and Twitter has had no choice but to do nothing because the public interest value of not banning the president far exceeds the purposes of their rules. Now Trump wants them to be able to be sued for the stuff people say, including the dumb shit he says, So all that will lead to is widespread banning and patrolling of social media. What other choice would they have? They can’t predict what so someone will post so their only defense in court would be that they took reasonable action as quickly as they reasonably could. What of this site? Do you think it is a good idea for TAH/VG to be held accountable for anything it’s users tweet? Legally liable? Financially liable? That is what Trump’s little tantrum and executive order is saying should happen. Suddenly, out of obedience to Trump, you want platforms to be liable for anything anyone says on any platform. Including this one. Fuck that. That is incomprehensibly stupid. That is Trump level stupid. Stop being so god dam mindlessly obedient. If corporations and even small websites are held accountable for anything their users say it will lead to the shutdown of comment sections on nearly every platform across the web. Platforms whose entire model is inter user communication will have no choice but to heavily police… Read more »
Listen up, Lars.
Twitter can choose two paths: be a publisher like the Huffington Post, or a platform like an ISP. A publisher has a point of view and editorial control. Platforms do not favor a point of view – the platform only provides limited control to block things like illegal content, true threats, etc.
You seem to be under the impression that Twitter must become a publisher, rather than backing off on its speech restrictions. Free expression is not solely a right protected by law, it is also a principle. You can have areas with controlled expression, and areas with free expression without invoking the government.
Consider if the major institutions in a Texas city decided to refuse service to liberals, or forced them to wear a MAGA hat to receive service. That might fly for the local GOP office, but for the phone company and local bank? After all, those are private companies, not government.
If a business operates solely focused on earning money, it will stop discriminating, because your money is as good as mine.
ORANGE MAN BAD, ORANGE MAN BAD, ORANGE MAN BAD, ORANGE MAN BAD, ORANGE MAN BAD, ORANGE MAN BAD, ORANGE MAN BAD, ORANGE MAN BAD, ORANGE MAN BAD, ORANGE MAN BAD, ORANGE MAN BAD, ORANGE MAN BAD, ORANGE MAN BAD, ORANGE MAN BAD, ORANGE MAN BAD, ORANGE MAN BAD, ORANGE MAN BAD,…
You’re like a broken record, Comrade Seagull.
TAH does not enjoy the “don’t sue” shield granted to Twitter.
Perhaps you may recall a certain vexatious litigant who crash-landed his efforts?
You knew that. You said it anyway.
Oh, and it is by definition not a first amendment issue.
The First Amendment only and exclusively protects the citizens from GOVERNMENT censorship of speech. It restrains the government. Not private citizens.
A bartender can still throw you out of a bar for being an asshole.
A boss can still tell you to stop bringing up politics at meetings.
A private citizen can still tell another private citizen to shut the fuck up.
If you want the first amendment to protect what you say on Twitter then what was say on Twitter would damn near BY DEFINITION need to be moderated by the government. For example; the government passing a law that restricts certain kinds of speech or content from Twitter. That would be a first amendment issue.
Twitter, through their terms of service, deciding what kind of content can or cannot be posted on Twitter is not a first amendment issue.
The market purists on here should be arguing that the market should deal with this, if people don’t like how Twitter is moderating their platform the. competitor will take their users.
Funny how that is not what the market purists on here are arguing,
I guess the wisdom of the market is not as worthy of worship as the blustering 👶 in the White House,
I should build an actual temple to Trump just to piss you off. You obviously come here for some reason, despite never persuading anyone and never having people agree with you.
Why the hell are you here, again?
If the government facilitates a monopoly, then the actions of the monopoly are government imposed.
The point is removing a legal protection applicable to neutral providers that do not manipulate or bar points of view.
The price of that shield is not putting a finger on the scale.
If they want to meddle, then they lose that shield of neutrality. Rightly so.
That isn’t so hard to understand. But you knew it before I said it.
Is Twitter trying to commit suicide?
Censoring the President is asking for Congress to pass laws removing their legal shield or even breaking them up.
Why not just ignore his tweets?
I don’t get it
They -have- to suppress and oppress, or folks will make the “wrong” choices. They are all about controlling the narrative. They should have lost that “neutral forum” protection many years ago, and been part of the common framework same as everyone else with a viewpoint and editorial control over content.
Trump has been feeding them baited lines, and they just bit, hard. He now gets to play them like a fish. Touching that orange Tar Baby was -stupid-. Slapping at it more is only making things worse.
Troll level: Orange Man Epic
Br’er Orange wins.
Does anybody remember when MaBell got smashed into smaller phone companies?