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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


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @06:25PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @06:25PM (#1000676)

    methinks twitter and facebook etc. are like a club.
    you can join but you have to follow the rules. their rules.
    the club, say the storage space, processing power and network there, are owned by twitter or facebook etc.
    they grant you a possibility to dump your crap ..errr ... message on their hardware.
    if you want MEOR rights, then you should totally start buying their stocks and try to end up on the board or whatnot.
    else you are just a monetized sheeple that gets outraged if the shiny paint of "freedom of speech" starts to chip.
    -
    just wondering if freedom of speech includes taking a perfectly normal and human dump in a ... club pool?

  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 29 2020, @07:24PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 29 2020, @07:24PM (#1000698) Journal

    Or start your own platform, which might be easier.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @06:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @06:29PM (#1001102)

    The club analogy falls apart when considering that 1/3rd of our species is an active "member."