SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the what-were-you-saying-about-Free-Speech? dept.
It would give these bureaucratic government agencies unprecedented control over how Internet platforms moderate speech by allowing them to revoke the essential protections Congress laid out in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). CDA 230 is the basic law that makes it possible for online platforms to let users post our own content, and to make basic decisions about what types of content they as private entities want to host. Every meme, every social media post, every blog and user-created video on the Internet has been made possible by this crucial free speech protection.
In practice, this executive order would mean that whichever political party is in power could dictate what speech is allowed on the Internet. If the government doesn't like the way a private company is moderating content, they can shut their entire website down.
From https://www.salon.com/2019/08/12/leaked-draft-of-trump-executive-order-deemed-unconstitutional_partner/ we get the following:
According to CNN, which obtained a copy of the draft, the new rule "calls for the FCC to develop new regulations clarifying how and when the law protects social media websites when they decide to remove or suppress content on their platforms. Although still in its early stages and subject to change, the Trump administration's draft order also calls for the Federal Trade Commission to take those new policies into account when it investigates or files lawsuits against misbehaving companies."
While Politico was the first to report how the draft was being circulated by the White House, CNN notes that if put into effect, "the order would reflect a significant escalation by President Trump in his frequent attacks against social media companies over an alleged but unproven systemic bias against conservatives by technology platforms. And it could lead to a significant reinterpretation of a law that, its authors have insisted, was meant to give tech companies broad freedom to handle content as they see fit."
"[...] It's hard to put into words how mind bogglingly absurd this executive order is," said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, in a tweet. "In the name of defending free speech it would allow mass government censorship of online content. In practice, it means whichever party is in power can decide what speech is allowed on the internet."
This authoritarian legislation is being pushed by claiming it will do the opposite of censorship by giving the federal government even more broad power. Reminds me of the following quote, "I like taking guns away early," Trump said. "Take the guns first, go through due process second."
See also:
- https://www.rawstory.com/2019/08/leaked-draft-of-trump-executive-order-to-censor-the-internet-denounced-as-dangerous-unconstitutional-edict/
- https://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2019/08/13/the-trump-administration-drafted-an-executive-order-to-censor-the-internet/
- http://dctribune.org/trumps-executive-order-to-censor-the-internet-leaked-could-allow-mass-government-censorship/
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20669477
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @07:39PM (2 children)
I don't disagree with your conclusion, but I think your logic is flawed.
"You" are not a company that, as a business model, takes the writings and other works of a large chunk of our entire's species existence (far beyond the scope of any single country) and then publishes it. There's absolutely no logical reason that what should hold true for an individual should hold true for a company with, what is now increasingly often, user counts that are running into the billions. When you're biased... who cares? But when a company with billions of users decides to start using that power for political purposes, including preventing certain people based on the company's political ideology, from having access to the other billions of people - that's a major problem.
The only reason the founding fathers made no mention of this is because the concept of a company being able to control the speech of billions is something that would have seemed literally impossible.
Indeed I suspect that we may (as a people) may end up looking back at this time of mega-corps free to go on censorship and economic rampages, at their whimsy, similar to how we now view the monarchal/feudal times with lords and ladies free to behave as they saw fit against their masses. There it was their god given right. Here they're appealing to a constitution that only does not prohibit such behavior because it was impossible to conceive of not that long ago, let alone the hundreds of years ago when the constitution was written.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @09:59PM (1 child)
I believe you are incorrect. As I recall, properly incorporated businesses(corporations) are considered people, at least for free speech and political contribution issues. I could swear there was a supreme court judgement related to that....
(Score: 2) by qzm on Thursday August 15 2019, @08:35PM
And yet somehow they get clause 230 protection and individuals do not...
That is (part of) the problem.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, etal have carved themselves out a nice little protected legal position that normal citizens do not have. If anything it should be the opposite - individuals should have more rights, due to the obvious power imbalance.
Not to mention, since when did law have anything to do with logic....