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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: 1) by hemocyanin on Friday May 29 2020, @05:46PM (7 children)
We have a Bill of Rights and as a society, we know EXACTLY how to make the BoR mean absolutely nothing. Look at the tatters of the 4A where by defining any information in private 3d party hands as lacking in any expectation of privacy, the government gets where it wants despite the 4A. It's a public/private partnership (though not in the warm fuzzy way politicians like to use that term). This ridiculous public/private dichotomy makes the 4A an illusory right.
For communications monopolies, we arrive in a world where the 1A is also illusory when we apply that public/private distinction. Worse, if those entities become captured by a political entity -- let's say, just theoretically of course (lol) by the neoliberal wing of the Democrat party -- we get to the same place we got to with the 4A -- government using the gauze veil of private business to violate the BoR.
It is in no way revolutionary to think of telephone service as a utility, to break up monopolies, to enforce fair distribution of service, to regulate. What is Twitter/Facebook -- it is communication but over the internet, and if we are to be consistent, the "over the internet" part is the meaningless bit, and the communication part is primary. If we look at things that way, the whole public/private thing at some scale of private, is just head game and what needs to happen is some good old Teddy Roosevelt monopoly busting, because as we can see, monopolies never behave in a neutral manner.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday May 29 2020, @06:42PM (5 children)
So let's say you own a small-town general store, and 25 people show up with signs, walk into the store, and start shouting to anybody who is willing to listen that you regularly engage in sexual activity with goats. Should you or your employees have the legal right to order them out of your store? Under current law, the answer is "yes": They can stand on the sidewalk saying all those same things without getting arrested, but not inside your store.
I know you want to argue that Facebook and Twitter are identical legally speaking from AT&T back when it was a communications monopoly, but they aren't, because there's minimal cost to taking your speech and your reading audience somewhere else and plenty of other forums to go to.
I remember when this came up with regards to Alex Jones being booted from one of the social media platforms (I forget which one). And a lot of people were saying "But that's violating his 1st Amendment Rights." But it wasn't, because he didn't have a right to use that platforms' resources to promote his material, Infowars still exists, Alex Jones and his organization are still saying their piece, and anybody who wants to hear what he has to say can do so. If your complaint is "But he's having a harder time finding an audience for his stuff than he used to", that's not protected at all, under the First Amendment.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @08:18PM (1 child)
Do you see the difference between a small town general store and an online site that freely opens its doors to everybody and now is a medium for communication that roughly 1/3rd of our species is actively using?
Again, a case everybody needs to be familiar with is Marsh vs Alabama [wikipedia.org] because there's roughly a 100% chance it's going to be playing a role in what will likely be a supreme court case within the next few years. Cliff notes: company built a private 'town' of sorts where they owned everything and allowed people access to their private property. One day a Jehova's Witness was distributing fliers on the street. Company didn't want this, told them to leave. They refused. Cops were called, and the person was arrested and charged with trespass. This case made its way to the Supreme Court where it was struck down. They ruled that the more an entity opens themselves to the public, the more the rights of that entity become constrained by the rights, including the first amendment, of those they invite in.
There's an ambiguity in what separates a company from being a private entity with public users and a company that has become a defacto public entity. And that ambiguity will be up to the courts to decide, but I think it's beyond clear that when you have a sizable chunk of our entire species using some platform as a medium, in many cases a primary medium, of communication between one another - that said company has taken on a very different role in society than a normal commercial business. In many countries millions [qz.com] of Facebook users do not think they use the internet. It's taken on such a role as a medium that many people do not even understand that Facebook is just an internet site. And that's largely because Facebook is no longer just an internet site in practical terms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @10:16PM
You keep saying that but that isn't what they said in Marsh at all. I'm seriously wondering if you read your Wikipedia link. It isn't how much are open to the public that counts. It is what they do that counts. When you act like the government and execute a power traditionally given to the government, you are subject to the same restrictions as the government. I.e., you provide sidewalks, then you are subject to the same restrictions the government would be if they were the ones providing sidewalks instead.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Friday May 29 2020, @10:00PM (2 children)
A more appropriate analogy would be "You own an entire county, with several towns and is home to thousands. Twenty five citizens show up with signs, walk into one of the town general stores, and start shouting to anybody who is willing to listen that you regularly engage in sexual activity with goats. Should you or your employees have the legal right to order them out of your county?"
The issue is that all of the public spaces on the internet are owned or controlled by private companies. You can't necessarily even host your own site because that relies on domain registrars and search engines for others to access it. So there is no equivalent of the sidewalk for the protesters to go to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @06:30AM (1 child)
Since they are owned/controlled by private companies, they are *not* public spaces, any more than a mall, a restaurant or private club are.
That's irrelevant. The First Amendment guarantees that the *government* can't (within limits -- the 1A is *not* unlimited) restrict your speech or punish you for speaking.
The First Amendment does *not* place those restrictions on private entities.
You are guaranteed protection *from the government*, no one else is bound by that stricture.
tl;dr: You can speak your piece, but no private entity is required to use *their* resources to help you distribute that speech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @09:03AM
They are having massive problems understanding reality, dunno if that will be an effective tactic.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday May 29 2020, @07:15PM
Oh yeah, such a monopoly. I don't even have an account. Do you?
And of course, there are zero other websites where we can post our comments to!