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posted by chromas on Friday May 29 2020, @02:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the two-minutes-hate dept.

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


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday May 29 2020, @04:46PM (7 children)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Friday May 29 2020, @04:46PM (#1000601) Journal

    Conservatives love government censorship now.

    Look how quickly all those lofty claims about freedom of speech fly right out the window.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Friday May 29 2020, @08:31PM (4 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Friday May 29 2020, @08:31PM (#1000739) Journal

    Who is censoring and who wants to be uncensored, again?
    Trump is still Berlusconi II, but man, do progressives suffer from cognitive dissonance.

    Tell me what I did not get right: Twitter FB and Reddit have the habit of being intolerant towards the fascist intolerants. (there is a problem in them being the supreme jury in deciding who is fascist and why but let us not digress). Trump does not like the debunker tag next to his post and orders a review of a strange directive that lifts responsibility from the consequence of censorship.

    So, I repeat, who is censoring and who wants to be uncensored, again?

    Uh and I retire what I just said about trump. I don't have to justify myself, to sound objective. It is YOU who have to prove you are objective, in light of your obvious inversion. Come on enlight us how freedom is slavery.

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    Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @02:59AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @02:59AM (#1000886)

      "Tell me what I did not get right"

      Everything

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @05:35AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @05:35AM (#1000942)

        Poor Bot! Poor khallow! But just fuck VLM! These are the Dunning-Koegers of our lives, the ones so stupid that they cannot be aware of how stupid they are. And so, as several have advocated, arguing with them is useless.

        But I, for one, hold out hope. I think, if we shame and humiliate them enough, they just might turn. Foucault had an issue with how when you are dealing with crazy people, you have to put it in the terms they thing in. So some crazy people believed they were dead, and so ceased eating. So all we have to do is show them pictures, say from Caspar the Freudliche Geist, where the dead do eat, and there madness might be circumvented. So we need the same for these recalcitrant "conservatives", presenting the real world in fantasy terms they will understand. Khallow! Squirrel!

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @02:37PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @02:37PM (#1001021)

          "So some crazy people believed they were dead, and so ceased eating. So all we have to do is show them pictures, say from Caspar the Freudliche Geist, where the dead do eat, and there madness might be circumvented. So we need the same for these recalcitrant "conservatives", presenting the real world in fantasy terms they will understand."

          Or, we could just let them die like the fools that they are. Don't forget that is an option too.

          • (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday May 31 2020, @10:21AM

            by Bot (3902) on Sunday May 31 2020, @10:21AM (#1001312) Journal

            > we could just let them die like the fools that they are

            LOL you failed the progressive test. Progs are the guardians of the truth, so it's not allowable to let other people choose other behaviours and OBSERVE which group ends up better.

            The truth: Vaccines save. (this is as retarted as saying "eating nourishes" while feeding you dirt, but let's not digress)
            Enter AC: "we could just let the unvaxxed die like the fools that they are" wat? NO FUCKING WAY.

            They must get vaxxed else vaccines do not work, because vaccines do work. Get it? No? I have bad news for you, after the dictatorship deals with the outspoken opposition, the reasonable one are usually the next target.

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            Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 2) by slinches on Friday May 29 2020, @10:18PM (1 child)

    by slinches (5049) on Friday May 29 2020, @10:18PM (#1000809)

    So ... removing common carrier protections from media companies that have editorial control of their content is censorship now?

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @12:24AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @12:24AM (#1000846)

      *sigh*

      Preventing twitter from making their own commentary is censorship.

      Also, they are not a common carrier, they are a publisher.

      Definitions below for you. Section 230 protects internet companies from being liable for their user's content while granting them the right to remove content as needed. This is to deal with the new reality of the internet where users of a service can publish content without editorial review. Standard print/video publishers have way more control over their content which is why they can be held liable for defamation.

      A common carrier in common law countries (corresponding to a public carrier in some civil law systems,[1] usually called simply a carrier)[2] is a person or company that transports goods or people for any person or company and is responsible for any possible loss of the goods during transport.[3] A common carrier offers its services to the general public under license or authority provided by a regulatory body, which has usually been granted "ministerial authority" by the legislation that created it. The regulatory body may create, interpret, and enforce its regulations upon the common carrier (subject to judicial review) with independence and finality as long as it acts within the bounds of the enabling legislation.

      A common carrier (also called a public carrier in British English)[3] is distinguished from a contract carrier, which is a carrier that transports goods for only a certain number of clients and that can refuse to transport goods for anyone else, and from a private carrier. A common carrier holds itself out to provide service to the general public without discrimination (to meet the needs of the regulator's quasi judicial role of impartiality toward the public's interest) for the "public convenience and necessity." A common carrier must further demonstrate to the regulator that it is "fit, willing, and able" to provide those services for which it is granted authority. Common carriers typically transport persons or goods according to defined and published routes, time schedules, and rate tables upon the approval of regulators. Public airlines, railroads, bus lines, taxicab companies, phone companies, internet service providers,[4] cruise ships, motor carriers (i.e., canal operating companies, trucking companies), and other freight companies generally operate as common carriers. Under US law, an ocean freight forwarder cannot act as a common carrier.[3]

      and then publisher

      Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free.[1] Traditionally, the term refers to the distribution of printed works, such as books, newspapers, and magazines. With the advent of digital information systems, the scope has expanded to include electronic publishing such as ebooks, academic journals, micropublishing, websites, blogs, video game publishing, and the like.

      Publishing may produce private, club, commons or public goods and may be conducted as a commercial, public, social or community activity.

      legal liability for publishers

      Publication is the distribution of copies or content to the public.[32][33] The Berne Convention requires that this can only be done with the consent of the copyright holder, which is initially always the author.[32] In the Universal Copyright Convention, "publication" is defined in article VI as "the reproduction in tangible form and the general distribution to the public of copies of a work from which it can be read or otherwise visually perceived."[33]

      In providing a work to the general public, the publisher takes responsibility for the publication in a way that a mere printer or a shopkeeper does not. For example, publishers may face charges of defamation, if they produce and distribute libelous material to the public, even if the libel was written by another person.