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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @04:21PM
Yet those orgs are not under the DMCA act now are they. These companies want their cake and eat it too. Basically they want impunity to say whatever they like and endorse whomever they like. Then enforce that upon their users.
But lets not pretend here that these companies are the bastions of 'good vs evil'. Nancy Pelosi put it perfectly the other day. "they just want tax breaks" She would know she is probably their first stop to get them. They are druming up division upon us because it sells. Facebook just got outed this week with their own internal emails saying just that. They seek engagement from you to show you adverts. Yellow journalism does exactly that. If it didnt the enquirer and buzzfeed would not be a thing.
They want to be a news org that does 'fact checking'. Then that is a whole different ball game. One that has a decent amount of case law in how they can and can not act. They are hiding behind the DMCA to take potshots at people then saying 'oh no we didnt reallllly do that we are the good guys'. They lie to our faces every day. Don't think so? Number 3 will amaze you.