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Leaked draft details Trump's likely attack on technology giants:
The Trump Administration is putting the final touches on a sweeping executive order designed to punish online platforms for perceived anti-conservative bias. Legal scholar Kate Klonick obtained a draft of the document and posted it online late Wednesday night.
[...] The document claims that online platforms have been "flagging content as inappropriate even though it does not violate any stated terms of service, making unannounced and unexplained changes to policies that have the effect of disfavoring certain viewpoints, and deleting content and entire accounts with no warning, no rationale, and no recourse."
The order then lays out several specific policy initiatives that will purportedly promote "free and open debate on the Internet."
First up is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
[...] Trump's draft executive order would ask the Federal Communications Commission to clarify Section 230—specifically a provision shielding companies from liability when they remove objectionable content.
[...] Next, the executive order directs federal agencies to review their ad spending to ensure that no ad dollars go to online platforms that "violate free speech principles."
Another provision asks the Federal Trade Commission to examine whether online platforms are restricting speech "in ways that do not align with those entities' public representations about those practices"—in other words, whether the companies' actual content moderation practices are consistent with their terms of service. The executive order suggests that an inconsistency between policy and practice could constitute an "unfair and deceptive practice" under consumer protection laws.
Trump would also ask the FTC to consider whether large online platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become so big that they've effectively become "the modern public square"—and hence governed by the First Amendment.
[...] Finally, the order directs US Attorney General William Barr to organize a working group of state attorneys general to consider whether online platforms' policies violated state consumer protection laws.
[Ed Note - The following links have been added]
Follow Up Article: Trump is desperate to punish Big Tech but has no good way to do it
The Executive Order: Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday May 29 2020, @04:13PM (12 children)
So what Trump wants by removing CDA 230 protections is . . .
If Twitter moderates or fact checks Trump playing with his Tweeter, then Twitter should be legally liable for all lies that Twitter allows Trump, or anyone, to tell.
If Twitter must (in Trump's fantasy) be legally liable for Trump's lies, this gives Twitter a very large incentive to ban Trump and his followers from the platform. And all other platforms having the same incentive.
Imagine Fox News being legally liable for any lies they might spread online.
What about other nutjobs, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and others?
What about SN? I've read right here in these sacred pages about how it is okay to point a gun at a drone and shoot . . . because! It could be recording something.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @05:07PM (5 children)
To be fair, it might be illegal, but if someone runs a drone in your yard, it is perfectly OK to shoot the thing down as long as you are prepared for the consequences.
Personal sore spot. Some a-hole was running his drone in my and my neighbors back yards every morning between 4am and 5am for several weeks. Besides the privacy invasion, those things are LOUD!
I tried to blast it out of the air with a garden hose.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 29 2020, @07:27PM
If you're going to shoot first, ask questions later, then a garden hose, or high pressure washer, would be preferable. Maybe a sooper soaker. Sling shot.
Its just amazing how the FIRST reaction is "get the guns!"
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday May 29 2020, @10:01PM (1 child)
Uh, no. Nowhere I know of is that legally true, and I know of many, many places where it is not. You never own the air above you, and unless you have mineral rights you don't own what's underneath you.
Had you been successful you almost certainly would have owed the owner the cost of the drone. Because even if the law protected you (and many places offer no privacy protections against drones), that's not the way you are enabled to invoke its protection.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @05:43AM
Bola, or boomerang. Just stuff flying through the air, and an unfortunate mid-air collision. Too bad those tiny rotors are so delicate and vulnerable to spagetti fired from a potato cannon!
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday May 29 2020, @10:05PM (1 child)
And I read where you said "it might be illegal..." So you are probably trying to claim a moral justification of privacy for that, or perhaps having your peace disturbed. OK, you're morally justified in not allowing it on your property! Congratulations! (We'll just ignore the rights of the drone owner to be able to enjoy their hobby, or the right of a free press to essentially photograph anything that is in open view).
That does not mean that anything you do is therefore moral. Otherwise... George Floyd. Now be my guest and troll, flamebait, or mod me as such. But that is an equivalent moral argument. And yes, I see the irony in suggesting to you that the most your moral justification allows is to call the police or file a lawsuit. But... let the cops shoot it down and justify themselves, then.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @10:13PM
Ceding all rights and power of people to the police is not a proper solution, no master how "civilized" it is. Photographing me from the air is as much your right to free speech as my right to use a telescope to take pictures of you through your bathroom window.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @08:11PM (3 children)
One where will be sufficient incentive for users to go (to read/agree/argue with Trump), where censorship will be unable to happen (to avoid legal liability for content), and which will be damn hard to "deplatform" (because government servers and government network). Everyone (who isn't a monopoly abuser) wins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @10:32PM (2 children)
Or he can go on the platforms which purport to protect all forms of speech no matter what. Along with the pedophiles and Nazis. And try to build his brand there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @12:28AM (1 child)
Does Trump even have an account on Gab?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday May 30 2020, @12:47AM
I would love to see him move there. He'd have those drooling, trembling, wild-eyed meth heads ripping each other to shreds in less than 3 days. This is what I believe the children refer to as "epic lulz."
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday May 30 2020, @02:19AM (1 child)
I'd say this is accurate. People are so quick to kneejerk to a "I'm want the opposite of what Trump wants" that they end up acting as stupidly. If Twitter became liable for its user's posts, Twitter would really clean house, including Trump. There's the little issue of course that they would have to ban 99% of their users, but the world would be better off with the outrage cancel culture factory Twitter has become.
As things stand, I am 100% convinced that the next civil war, will start on Facebook and Twitter.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday June 01 2020, @03:42PM
I do that!
But I always think about what rules I would want if the shoe were on the other foot.
What's compatible with the goose is also compatible with the gander without any special adapters or dongle cables.
Insightful +1
(Or some on FB and Twitter: Inciteful!)
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.