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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: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 29 2020, @04:41PM (1 child)
Doesn't the US President have the biggest megaphone in the world?
If he holds a press conference, don't reporters compete to be there and record it?
If the president were to give a radio address, there would be listeners. He could call it a fireside chat or something.
Ah, but I see the problem here. These mediums of communications require some minimum ability to articulate an idea. Some basic fluency with language, using words with more than two syllables. And press conferences have these uncomfortable things called "questions". And if you questioner doesn't worship and adore you, then it becomes a "nasty" question. Or the sort Trump would ask a woman when he thinks nobody is looking.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @08:42PM
The reason press conference were a thing was a necessity to enable elected representatives to interact with the public. Those times are obsolete. Now thanks to the internet they can engage directly with the public with vastly wider accessibility. This change has also happened at the same time that most people have lost any trust [gallup.com] in the media. Now the presidents random word splooges on Twitter get magnitudes more views than the front page of any media site, let alone newspapers.
I suspect in 20 years we'll view politicians interacting with the public via the press as something, at best, quaint. Only reason it'll take that long is inertia. Most media is owned by big companies who benefit from it: Comcast owns NBC, Disney owns ABC, Time Warner owns CNN, etc. So they're probably going to be pretty happy to keep those businesses running long after they're past their expiration date.