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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, @09:27PM (1 child)
What clarification are you talking about? And what request?
Twitter is trying to allow public figures to speak, even if they normally would remove that content, in violation of their TOS.
Twitter now labels lies and misinformation, as they properly should.
Trump would like to remove Twitter's (indeed all platforms, such as Soylent News) CDA 230 protections so that if Twitter fails to remove some offending content, that Twitter then bears the legal liability for lies and misinformation that Twitter fails to act upon.
If you strike down CDA 230, then you do it for all platforms. If platforms are not allowed to police their content, then SN will soon be overrun with even more trolls and Bots than it currently is. Indeed all platforms will. Just because of one tiny vindictive sensitive snowflake who has no interest in anyone but himself.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 29 2020, @09:32PM
I forgot to add: . . . so that Twitter bears the legal liability (instead of Trump) for the lies and misinformation spread by Trump using Twitter. THAT is one reason Trump would like to remove CDA 230. Screw everyone! Just so Trump can "get back at" Twitter for pointing out facts! Oh my!
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?