Trump Threatens to Shut Down Twitter
Yesterday I reported Trump Threatens to Shut Down Twitter.
The threat came after Twitter inserted a “Get the Facts” link on mail-in voting at the end of a pair of Trump Tweets.
For details, please see Twitter Corrects a Trump Tweet With an Addendum
Executive Order Removing Twitter’s Liability Shield
Today, Trump admitted he has no means to shut down Twitter, but he did issue an executive order regarding social media outlets.
Specifically, Trump removed liability protections for social-media companies.
“Currently social media companies like Twitter receive an unprecedented liability shield based on the theory they are a neutral platform, which they are not, [They are] an editor with a viewpoint.”
“My executive order calls for new regulations under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to make it that social media companies that engage in censoring or any political conduct will not be able to keep their liability shield. That’s a big deal”
The 1996 Communications Decency Act gives online companies broad immunity from liability for their users’ actions, as well as wide latitude to police content on their sites.
It is highly doubtful that Trump can legally amend that legislation with an executive order.
Social Media Fight
The Wall Street Journal has some interesting comments.
The president has threatened for years to counteract what he and many conservatives see as a systemic bias against their political positions on social media. His campaign on Thursday sent supporters an email seeking to raise money off the president’s feud with Twitter.
The order will likely be challenged in court, experts said, on grounds that it oversteps the government’s authority in restricting the platforms’ legal protections, which federal courts have interpreted broadly. It also could be challenged on grounds that it violates their First Amendment protections.
Daphne Keller, a former associate general counsel at Google who is now director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center, said the White House order is largely rhetoric without legal foundation.
Both Sides
Keller noted the bind huge social media site are in.
“They get it from both sides: Powerful voices demand that they take down more speech, and other powerful voices demand that they take down less. There is no way for them to win, since no one will ever agree on what the exact right speech policies would be,” said Keller.
Do Everyone a Favor
Much Ado About Nothing
This morning at 7:16 AM before we saw Trump’s action or the WSJ discussion, a legal scholar friend of mine, sent me his point of view, as follows.
Today’s executive order will look at Section 230 but it will be meaningless.
Statements about public figures are not actionable except for things such as purposeful libel.
This is much ado about nothing, like most of what Trump does.
Fox News Media Irony
As Trump complains about the media bias of Twitter, can someone please explain how Fox News is not an “editor with a viewpoint” on a biased platform to boot?
Twitter Irony
Trump’s action will be challenged in court and he will lose.
However, losing is just what Trump wants so he can scream and howl more about Twitter, on Twitter, while praising that bastion of alleged “fair and balanced” neutrality known as Fox News.
Please Name a Major Unbiased News Source
In case you have not figured it out, no news sources are truly neutral, and everyone has a viewpoint or agenda.
The Choice
We have a choice. We can put up with Social Media Sites like Twitter and Facebook as well as news sites like Fox News and the Washington Post, etc., or we can tune them out.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people seek out places likely to say what they want to hear or places or celebrities with which they can constantly argue.
Trump has 80.4 million followers on Twitter. How many people follow Trump because they despise him?
Addendum
Reader Bill offers these pertinent thoughts:
The conflation with Fox News makes no sense. Fox News is a publisher and makes no attempt to claim Section 230 protection. By contrast, Twitter is not a “news source”, they literally create nothing themselves, they are a conduit for those who do.
Section 230 is genuinely smart legislation (normally an oxymoron). It doesn’t just protect huge players like Facebook or Twitter, but anyone who permits user contributions, including Maven and, yes, Mish himself. As others point out, those who want to blithely do away with it because “Twitter is picking on my tribe” should be careful what they wish for.
I was simply attempting to point out there are no unbiased sources, even including this one. We all have biases. And I do delete offensive comments as well, but I do not tag them with a correction flag as Twitter just did.
The essence of Bill’s comment is accurate: “Those who want to blithely do away with it [Section 230] because ‘Twitter is picking on my tribe’ should be careful what they wish for.”
Addendum 2
My legal expert just pinged me with this comment: “If Twitter is liable for Trump lies, they won’t publish them, killing his twittering. Trump must know this isn’t going anywhere.“
Legislation along the lines of what Trump appears to want would open up a can of worms as to who gets to decide what is or isn’t a lie.
This is exactly what reader Bill warned about above.
Mish
It is clear that Mish never took any legal classes. At the point where these platforms begin to edit their content, they can no longer claim immunity that comes with their claim that the content they publish belongs to others.
Twitter is meddling in our election. Twitter might as well be Russian.
So much “It’s not faaaaaairrrr” bleating from the “rugged conservatives”.
Life’s not fair, snowflake.
It is Democrats that are always complaining about the lack of fairness.
Funny how they actually hate fairness.
funny how much Democrats actually hate democracy.
This is what desperation smells like.
Twitter was okay with Trump when he was a private citizen. The difference now is he is in the White House as president. He wants to be treated like a private citizen but the truth is public officials have more sway and cannot be private citizens when they want. Twitter is likely headed down a path for different standards based on who you are. And they should get rid of all bots as they are not people.
“..public officials have more sway and cannot be private citizens..”
They very much can. In halfway free countries.
Specifically because, in all possible such countries, “public officials”, nor anyone else, don’t “have more sway”. “Public officials” were, back in the civilized era, referred to as public servants . For good reasons. ( tidbit: Not the least of one which was: As is proper for servants, they lacked a standing army. While their masters were free to have as much of one as they pleased and could muster. Just like Robinson and Friday.)
“More sway” is exactly the problem. As long as some have that, in diametric opposition to All Men being Created Equal, no amount of futzing around with optics in order to make it seem OK for them to have so to the pliant and well indoctrinated, will ever result in anything but a totalitarian terror state.
Public officials have power. They never served anyone but themselves. Executive orders are real things.
The Two Things To Understand About Trump’s Executive Order On Social Media: (1) It’s A Distraction (2) It’s Legally Meaningless
Thanks
Almost precisely what I said
It’s not often Chuck Schumer offers a small-government, free market, conservative solution to the problem, but when he does, we should pat him on the back.
When I see Trump attack “liability shields” I remember, Democrats have been threatening gun manufactures they are going to come after them with liability laws for years. We will repay for Trump authoritarianism for a long time to come.
The social media platforms should be considered common carriers like the phone companies, and should not be editing for content, unless somehow illegal in other ways. You could post a picture of Trump doing a sheep and it would not be taken down, but say something snarky about a Democrat and you are all of a sudden violating “community guidelines. ” That makes the platforms publishers and responsible for their content. This is not to say that the conservative sites are any better. But, none of them are the size of Facebook or Twitter, nor have they been read the riot act by the Deep State, as was Zuckerberg. The media in general are no longer interested in providing factual content, very much. The political agenda comes first and the “news” if you want to call it that is no more that justification for the agenda. If you watch Fox and CNN in equal amounts, you will come to hate them both. Two sides of the same pancake. It all is indicative of the basic problem in this country which is corruption and abandonment of ethics on all sides.
It did change the conversation for about 2 minutes…and that’s all Trump wanted. Just beats talking Corvid-19, or Trump’s GOP convention demand that the place be “packed-in” so that he can look good on TV.
The amazing thing now is that Senate seats that were never thought as being competitive are now seen as competitive, because of Trump, means that we could have a “Nixon Moment” when the GOP decided that the Commander in Chief will really affect their chance of winning THEIR election in November.
Still great way of changing the conversation — I though that Facebook’s statement was more telling — we will take no reasonable steps to ensure that Facebook comments are truthful!
The whole idea that corporations have 1st Amendment rights is BS. Corporations cannot go to jail. It is a total fiction that they have bodies (corpora, corporeal): they are incorporeal, they are an idea. It is high time that they are not treated as a “person” but should have some other legal basis, with more accountability, instead of an “always get off scot free”.
New technology platforms have evolved. Pretending they are private entities is, well, “pretending”. They have largely become the public square. There should be measures to shield them as well as some duty to police illegal content, but also to protect constitutional rights.
High time for less pretending and some creative new legal basis to accomodate new realities.
Hence the famous bumper sticker; I will believe Corporations have rights when Texas executes one.
Demolishing the basis for our economy — the corporate structure — will simply exacerbate the societal divisions that lead the have-nots to support losers like Trump.
I’d like to see Twitter issue a statement like the following:
“Mr. Trump seems to be dissatisfied with our free service, and we in turn are not thrilled with his ridiculous efforts to distract the American people by picking a fight with us. After some consideration, we have concluded that it would be best for all concerned – Mr. Trump, the Twitter community, pretty much the whole freaking world – if he would stop focusing his man-baby energies on us and pay more attention to solving the many real problems facing the good ol’ US of A. Therefore, we have suspended his account, effective immediately. Most of his followers were bots anyway. Sincerely, Twitter”
I imagine some will argue that this would somehow hurt Twitter, but I doubt it. It would be recognized by a solid majority as a major own, it would drive Trump completely nuts and he would not be able to stop himself from doing and saying even more things that would repel swing voters. Best of all, it would be funny.
Banning Trump from Twitter would be a body blow to Trump, much like how banning alt-right gadfly Milo Yioannopolous from it a few years ago reduced him from a dude who profited off of endless racist trolling to a has-been.
If Trump kills Twitter, then how would he reach out to the people? 🙂
If Twitter becomes liable about twits contents, would they risk publishing Trump’s twits?
Indeed phone infrastructure and e-meeting solutions like Zoom and Skype don’t alter or interfere with the contents they carry. Shielding them from liability due to user use or misuse is probably a good idea.
Arguably, YouTube should enjoy the same protection so long it doesn’t interfere with the contents. Once it polices contents, e.g. remove or demote it, the case can be made they are not merely an impartial platform anymore. Isn’t it?
Then again, I dread how YouTube would look like with zero policing. The unregulated web feels sometimes like a dark ally in a lawless town.
So YouTube should carry videos by the Nazi Party and al Qaeda? Publish real snuff videos?
My understanding is that Zoom do monitor for content they deem objectionable – mostly people zoomsexing currently
Section 230 allows platforms the following: “any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected”
YouTube has gone far, far beyond policing anything that is “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, [or] harassing”.
During January, February, and early March YouTube was using audio scanning software to automatically demonetize any video that contained the forbidden word “coronavirus”.
Stop and think about this for a minute.
During the worst global pandemic since at least the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, the world’s largest video content provider banned the very mention of the name of the disease, under penalty of losing any revenue from that video.
It was so ridiculous that computer hobbyist channels that wanted to discuss the cause of shortages of computer hardware components, because factories in China were shut down, were forced to use the phrase “human malware” instead of the verboten word “coronavirus”.
This seems at first glance to be quite amusing as an example of silly corporate policy, but on a deeper level it’s not funny at all.
The only group that might have found the mention of the word “coronavirus” to be “otherwise objectionable” was the Chinese Communist Party, which was embarrassed by the chaos it unleashed and has made great efforts to suppress the spread of information about the virus.
Alphabet owns both Google and YouTube. They want to “do business” with China. They are now adopting the same methods of censorship used in China, and are enforcing them as much as they can on the rest of the planet Earth.
Chinese pressure on Alphabet made them enforce a “soft” ban on the mention of the very name of a disease that originated in China and became a global pandemic.
This censorship certainly prevented people from learning about the disease, and this increased the spread of the disease, leading to the death of an unknown but nontrivial number of people.
THIS CENSORSHIP KILLED PEOPLE.
All caps are usually bad net etiquette, but in this case they are justified.
He’s throwing a tantrum in order to send the entire country into emotional upheaval. The Trumpian Distraction. That is all he’s ever done, all he’ll ever do to or for us.
This time his dipshit antics will backfire, even if Twitter were biased against him that is their right. He can’t tell people what to think or say just because he doesn’t like it.
Trump has accomplished more in advancing the conservative agenda than even Ronald Reagan, despite that the whole political establishment has been aligned against him. It really riles some.
“Trump has accomplished more in advancing the conservative agenda than even Ronald Reagan”
As did Obama.
Just as both of them accomplished more in advancing the liberal agenda than even Ronald Reagan.
Since neither agenda differs one iota, and both involve nothing more than robbing competent, productive people; for the benefit of the same cadre of useless, clueless, dumber than doorknobs regime sycophantic, parasitic dregs; all you need to do to verify both Presidents’ success at accomplishing the agenda, is look at the amount of total debt is outstanding when they leave office. Success indeed! In the New, Financialized, American way!
“The remedy for free speech is more free speech.” — Justice Louis Brandeis
LGTM
But, what about YourTube (and others) curbing if not censoring contents?
They do too, just try posting a video about how the Covid was a Chinese lab product. Though I am not sure if that applies to all. I know several pages I subscribe to redact the word and do not mention it, they were warned by Youtube they would be “demonetized” if it so much as shows up in their vids.
“Demonetization” isn’t censorship.
You don’t have a right to get paid by advertisers for your opinions.
You can call it whatever you want and split all the hairs you think you need to to win an argument, but when the host site says you will not mention Covid or the pandemic it IS censorship.
Well, free speech only constrains government action. So, private platforms are free to do as they please.
To a degree, but they are also responsible for not violating civil rights just as much as government is barred from it, in fact no individual or entity has the right to violate your civil rights. Sometimes these civil rights come into conflict with each other, and one or the other has to prevail, but sometimes we just have to muddle through as best we can. When such is the case both sides in a conflicted situation need to have valid reasons for violating the rights of others, and a corporate right to make money as they see fit simply is not as important as a human right to speak freely. Censorship is incompatible with a free people and it just does not matter if the one censoring is a government or corporation or other individuals.
Nothing you wrote changes the fact that private property is off limits to 1st Amendment considerations.
We will see. Tort law is one hairy mother of a legal minefield. Theory about powers of government are all well and good, but it has not stopped government from winning some really important cases. It will be up to business and a lesser degree individuals to pick and choose battles, after all what good does it do to win if you are bankrupted in the process?
Popular tweets need no protection.
In fairness to your argument, there is a USSC ruling on the status of a private shopping mall considered a “public gathering place” regarding 1st Amendment rights. While this concept may be obsolete going forward, I suppose an enterprising lawyer could equate social media sites with shopping malls.
They are going to run into trouble in terms of commerce. They are favouring and disfavouring on ideological grounds and deplatforming people, thus depriving them of income. Not sure if Twitter is quite in that camp, but for sure FB, Youtube and Google are. Some entirely biased person in a cubicle is enabled to cut off an income stream for essentially arbitrary reasons. It won’t fly for much longer, nor should it.
There is an equity issue here and the social media giants will lose on this basis. So that’s where the law comes in and why Mish is wrong on this. (Like he is on nearly everything to do with Trump!) Arguments about the opinion content etc. can go round and round forever. But when it comes to unequal treatment – which is clearly going on in spades – they are on shaky ground.
What should happen here is clear standards for bad language, whatever, but then after that no discrimination/editing/fact-checking etc. Either that, or they lose their platform liability shield as Trump and AG Barr explained today, but can continue as publishers liable to being sued. One way or another, things are gonna change – and they should.
Tucker – arguably the best opinion anchor on TV these days – has a good section on this:
“They are favouring and disfavouring on ideological grounds and deplatforming people”
As Fox News does everyday.
Try posting support for socialist ideas on Fox Nation, and tell me how long you last before your account is deactivated and you’re banned.
I had no idea that Fox Nation is a platform. I thought it was a cable news package or something (don’t watch TV). Even if it is, it’s certainly not a major one like FB, Youtube, Twitter etc. which are virtual utilities at this point.
I know for a fact that no partisan biased government officials can be trusted to apply standards EQUALLY to both sides of the political divide so sadly there should be no standards to apply. And before Trump and his whiney braindead supporters come out of the woodwork demanding to eat my brain I would like to remind all that it was the same press and media platforms that the right and the Russians used to propagate rumors about Hillary running an underage sex slave ring out of a pizza parlor in Virginia, and one of his braindead friends was actually arrested there with a high powered assault rifle to put a stop to it.
Trump posting on Twitter is the best thing ever for a relatively educated country such as the USA. Many normal people across the political spectrum got to see first hand , unfiltered, what a psycho he really is, and that’s a good thing in the long run. It may not seem like it, since it’s still his first term and it’s difficult to remove a sitting president, but I truly believe it’s a good thing in the long run. And I also agree with Mish that it’s entirely possible that Trump will lose in a landslide in 2020, because he has alienated independents, and Democrats picked Joe Biden, a moderate figure.
Most people recognize that Biden has an advanced case of dementia.
I’ll take dementia at this point after 4 years of psychopathic narcissism.
Trump shutting down Twitter is like shooting himself in the foot.
How is he going to bash Twitter without Twitter?
The man’s going bonkers.
Of course Trump is politicizing this, but he’s correct in principle. I don’t know the legal nuances, but the difference between platform and publisher is clear and there should not be grey area.
A good analogy to 30 years ago is that a publisher would be a private newspaper/magazine and a platform would the concrete steps of the county courthouse where people can gather to debate. The concrete steps do not pick a side.
Social media started as a platform, but it’s more like a private restaurant where people debate, versus the county steps. As a private company, they have the legal right to regulate their business via community guidelines, just like the restaurant owner would have a right to expel a patron that curses up a storm. That’s the way it should be.
The basic problem is that we don’t have an agreed upon (by the masses) online equivalent to the courthouse steps, where freedom of speech is protected.
We desperately need an online platform that allows free discourse to take place. The LAST thing we need in this country is two versions of Twitter…….one that censors the right and another that censors the left.
This is the correct take from any proponent of liberty in the information age.
I absolutely agree with your whole post. I think it’s important to point out that the county steps are a government platform, not a private platform like the restaurant. The government must allow any speech to occur on the government platform. And as you said well, the restaurant may restrict the speech on their steps.
I agree with your thrust entirely, but these platforms are structured as private, for-profit corporate entities. I think what rules here is Agreement between supplier and user (i.e. Contract/Commerce Law), something which the User signs when setting up their account with Username, no? So the user agrees to be bound by the terms set up by the Supplier.
Probably it comes down to Equitable treatment, i.e. they are clearly treating some people differently from others. You can wish Trump drowned, burned, boiled or beheaded without any censure, but if you say that Brennan should be tried for treason and get the death penalty, that gets banned for ‘wishing people harm.’ Double standards.
This also can apply to campaign finance and/or manipulating elections somehow. I believe a case can be made that they are making undeclared contributions to one side over another or something like that.
In any case, something has to change. Either they get broken up, or changed, or something. Their job is surveillance and analysis (don’t know about Twitter but FB and Google had huge govt IC input – probably MSFT too). They should stick to that and leave mind control to the media. But they have blurred the line between platform, media, public and private. A right, royal mess.
It seems to me (most) everyone is getting tired of trump and trump is getting desperate.
Lets not forget twitter has benefited from Trumps tweets also.
The only news source i feel is closed to balanced is npr of all things. Cant recall the casters name rt now. But he has the same format for dem and rep. Ask questions call out if answer has been proven false. Critics say gets rebuttal calls out if proven false. Thanks for interview. Of course the rt calls them liberal and wont go on for interview because unlike on fox they will get called out.
Um according to Trump if it is not pro right and anti left then it is an arm of the fake news.
NPR is the most biased so-called “news” platform out there. Years ago I listened to them for their indepth reporting and simply filtered out the bias. Now, the bias is so bad it is too painful to listen to.
It is not clear to me why Twitter (the platform) has to make corrections or tags to posts. We have other users to do so, and news outlets.
Probably because you or I can go respond to Trump’s lies and delusions and that has the weight of a paper clip, where Twitter saying the same thing has the weight of an asteroid moving at 17 kilometers per second.
Which makes no sense because the person at Twitter tagging the post is just another human being with all the same issues as you or I. There is ZERO guarantee that their assessment of the situation is any more accurate than anyone else’s.
Our willingness to trust anyone in science, media, celebrity, or politics just because they are in science, media, celebrity, or politics is dangerous.
In fact, it’s probably the single most dangerous trait we have in today’s world.
Maybe, but that is like saying that a governor or president is just another person. In fact what they say carries a lot of weight compared to your posts or mine. Having that gravity calls for responsible use and avoiding abuse (or at least the appearance of it) for several good reasons, but, as Faux News proves every hour they have the right to abuse that power, we are not required to think a certain way or speak/publish a certain way. If there was ever a human being that abuses the truth both objective and subjective to twist any and all to his own benefit it is Donald Trump. Unfortunately he now has more power than any other human being and is actually threatening to use US military power to invade and occupy an American city like Minneapolis because it has a left liberal democrat as mayor. It is SCANDALOUS that there is not widespread outrage at this threat. He needs to be reminded that it was the PEOPLE of that city who elected the mayor and it is not in Trump’s authority to remove opposition politicians on weak pretexts.
What people say carries weight for one reason only: Other people.
You – and everyone else – are free to choose how much weight to place in something that anyone says.
What you’re effectively saying is either a) you’re not smart enough, or are too lazy, to fact check what politicians, celebrities and media mouthpieces say, or b) everyone else is not smart enough, or too lazy to do so and therefore you want someone else out there (a “fact checker”) to do it for them.
“B” is usually the statement that applies in this debate: “I am plenty smart enough and will do my own due diligence, it’s the unwashed masses who will not.”
The reality is that every single person out there has a choice. This is why having the ability to freely and openly discuss anything and everything is so important.
Personally, I choose – as I have said before – to believe that every time a celebrity, or media mouthpiece speaks, there is at least a 75% chance that they’re lying. For politicians however, the percentage is so close to 100 as to make the chance they are telling the truth meaningless.
You don’t have a right to demand that others provide you with a platform, full stop.
It doesn’t matter whether their platform is popular or not; it’s theirs, not yours. Their platform, their property, their rules.
This EO accomplishes ONE thing and one thing only:
Getting everyone to talk about it and argue about it and hopefully that will generate some pissing and moaning and even lawsuits and court cases. All in an effort to get social media declared publishers rather than digital platforms.
I said it before on another thread: Trump and his team have a valid point whether you like him/them or not.
It’s funny that many of the hardcore users of social media were either extremely young or not even born when the DMCA passed and was signed into law. They have no clue what it says or what it does.
The only reason social media sites are not already regulated as “publishers” is because they came into existence as open forum bulletin boards where anyone could post whatever they liked. This gives them an exception to the regulations that publishers – who pick and choose what to publish – deal with.
The second you start telling people what they can or cannot say, or deleting/shadow-banning users you don’t agree with, or especially adding/removing content from their posts, you are no longer an open forum bulletin board, you’re a publisher. You are picking and choosing what to publish and editorializing.
And if you’re a publisher, you are subject to the provisions of the DMCA.
To be clear, I don’t like this and I fought tooth and nail against the DMCA when it was being debated. We were laughed at with our “slippery slope” or “camel with the nose in the tent” arguments….
And yet here we are.
DMCA or not, any platform is lent credibility by the voluntary contribution of any person.
If a platform is known to tamper with a person’s contribution, that person will not openly voluntarily contribute to that platform.
Trump could post his statement on his own site for example, but imagine what another site would look like if it copied his statement and then put a yellow box with an alert at the end with a link saying “read this news source for the truth “. That site would get trashed as a pathetically subversive propaganda outlet incapable of its own reasoning, if not a subsidiary of the site it was linking to, which would also get trashed into the bargain for such clumsy attempts at generating readership, in fact most likely it would ask the other site to desist or disassociate itself from it.
Anyway, not even a camel would put its nose under the DMCA/WIPO tent, it was pretty much the other way round, or more like their trampling the open markets that had sprung up in other countries, taking over the business that entrepreneurs had established by close local involvement . I mean original producers had not only the same cost opportunity for sales than any competitor, they also had the authority of being original suppliers, of possessing higher quality product earlier, to be able to claim any market for themselves, without restricting others . What they have done is not to protect intellectual property or rights, the whole show is about removing competition and claiming maximum profits – and it shows as well by the level of trash they get away with.
We used to do this outside the US , “piracy” but not illegal in whatever country, was not hidden, did not pretend to be official. This was before internet, you could just go to a shop and present a list of songs you wanted on one cassette for example and locals would do that. The copies were not great, but it cost nothing to the original authors because they just weren’t there anywhere. When they brought in the laws and sold the rights this all closed down and you ended up with drab modern Virgin stores etc., now even those are worthless and it’s gone to the web, when if not free, then you can still compile a mix of recordings just as before, except digital for some reason is still not quite the same.
I agree with you. Those were also some of the arguments we made way back when.
It was clear to us what the intent of the law was – and the possible long-term ramifications.
The “free market of ideas” – left to its own devices – is an amazing and wonderful thing. To paraphrase a quote often attributed to Buddah – “A single candle can light thousands of others without diminishing its own life”. But for some reason, people can’t, or won’t, see that. It’s a scary concept to imagine walking around completely open-minded in your beliefs and willing to accept the arguments of others – even if you disagree. And sometimes, those arguments might even change your mind…
It’s even scarier if you’re a content creator (think movie producer) who is used to having a cornered market from which to extract payment for your efforts. To suddenly see the landscape shifting to one that means you might have to come up with a different business model was enough to send them running to government for a solution.
And they got what they asked for.
After that law was passed, my political activism waned. The combination of that reality and the fact that my daughter had just been born meant that I found I had better things with which to spend my time than tilting at windmills…
“Trump and his team have a valid point whether you like him/them or not”
Not really. They’re demanding one standard for themselves and their favorite right-wing social media sites, and another for others and left-wing social media sites.
I realize I am probably feeding a troll here, but I can’t resist for some reason…
If you actually read everything I said, and still come to that conclusion… then I’m sorry you weren’t taught better in school.
Let me make it shorter and easier to understand:
Twitter made themselves the “test case” if you will by doing what they did. Trump’s response was nothing more than an attempt to trigger arguments and hopefully court cases. If the arguments and court cases determine that Twitter is now a publisher, there will be legal precedent set – with standards codified in that precedent – which will then apply to ALL social media sites.
Yes, “ALL” means “ALL”.
“Twitter made themselves the “test case” if you will by doing what they did.”
For which the Republican Party has already given them the perfect argument. The GOP has long argued that private businesses can refuse to serve black people, Jews, immigrants, gay people, etc. based upon their “deeply held beliefs.”
Most recently it was applied in the “wedding cake” cases.
Twitter can simply dismiss Cheeto Mussolini by nothing that his views go against their “deeply held beliefs.” Case closed.
The conflation with Fox News makes no sense. Fox News is a publisher and makes no attempt to claim Section 230 protection. By contrast, Twitter is not a “news source”, they literally create nothing themselves, they are a conduit for those who do.
Section 230 is genuinely smart legislation (normally an oxymoron). It doesn’t just protect huge players like Facebook or Twitter, but anyone who permits user contributions, including Maven and, yes, Mish himself. As Jack points out above, those who who want to blithely do away with it because “Twitter is picking on my tribe” should be careful what they wish for.
Like this page where I insist Trump is a Russian spy and mentally incapacitated, on top of being retarded clinically. That is my opinion and fuck the orange fat ass if he disagrees with me, I have a right to freedom of speech and he can sue every democrat on the planet. He can also go fuck himself and the prostitute he married.
The moment “Twitter” (the corporate “persona”… that doesn’t exist) does more than write on its platform like anyone else, then it is not just a distributor or contributor. By adding information within a contributors post it has become a publisher – it has taken command of the presentation.
As publishers are not covered by section 230 , which it seems was designed to allow distributors to act on content that was illicit without being liable for being taken then as being publishers due to their involvement in content, and because “Twitter” was not acting on illicit content it was acting as publisher, then in this case section 230 should not apply.
That begs the question though of if “Twitter” has done anything a publisher is not allowed to do ?
Or is it a question of a form of deceipt, where presumed/offered neutral position is being used as a status symbol from which to enact political influence ?
“Twitter is not a “news source”, they literally create nothing themselves, they are a conduit for those who do”
They sell user’s tweets and data – that’s how they make money. You could argue they organize and publish data to advertisers. There’s no free lunch remember.
“Fox News is a publisher and makes no attempt to claim Section 230 protection”
Of course Fox claims Section 230 protections. Everyday, in fact.
Otherwise, Fox would be personally liable for every defamatory comment made on its web site by every individual who posts something like “Obama is a pedophile Communist gay Muslim non-citizen.”
Could the repeal of Net Neutrality ( in 2017 ) support Twitter’s action?
No.
Why is Mish comparing FOX and twitter. The law can will be used when and where it can be used. I think You need to get more input from someone who knows LAW.
Fox has extensive social media operations. This rule (if it wasn’t a complete posturing sham) would apply to them too and lead to the shutdown of all Fox social media operations.
Yes, FOX has social media operations and everyone who watches it knows its from FOX and its biases. But twitty projects it self as an un-biased source. That I think is un-lawful.
“Everyone knows” that Twitter and Facebook are liberal too. So that’s not exactly a strong argument.
Especially when Fox’s tagline is “fair and balanced.”
The Fourth Amendment says the standard applied to one must be applied to all.
I am sure the amendment will not be applied to human and dog the same way? FOX news is not the platform. They just provide whatever biased news. Twitter is a platform which is supposed to be neutral. Comparing apples and oranges.
The entire intent of the “executive order” was to throw red meat to his base. There’s nothing the MAGA crowd eats up more than posturing themselves as victims and claiming to be oppressed.
I bet they kick him off closer to the election. He was stupid to build his strategy around twitter.
Actually it was and is brilliant. Nefarious news agencies don’t get to patchwork and filter his comments. Everything is there for all to see. Most transparent presidency in history.
Transparently corrupt and moronic. Absolutely.
Yes his crudeness, ignorance, and toxic narcissism laid bare for all to see, the disgusting part is that 55 million racists and sheep will still vote for him. Thank god that will not be enough to win.
Brilliant. Here’s a ques you have the ability to mull over: why has no one, Dem/Reb/Left/Righ/Front&Center ever, ever criticized Trump for his greatest Danger? His inordinate love for debt? Trump is the open, transparent lover of debt, which since 1981 has led finally to the blown-up financial crisis and income distribution gap.
Most transparent in history? Is that why his Administration is refusing to provide an economic outlook for H2 of 2020? No, it isn’t, it’s not transparent in the least. Just like his taxes. He is selectively transparent and entirely secretive about numerous things about which most presidents have been far more transparent.