Buckle up, folks. Here comes Trump’s executive order to curtail free speech on social media:
Of course, this focuses on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media giants. But what about smaller outfits like our own dear SDMB? Like it or not, we have a pretty liberal bias that some might say is anti-conservative. STM Reader probably doesn’t have the deep pockets to fight someone who wants to charge that they do not, in “good faith”, police the posts on this board. The truth of the matter will be irrelevant. In his personal business, Trump’s habit is to sue, regardless of the merits of his case, and simply bury his victim in legal fees. Now, he has access to the nearly limitless resources of the US government. No one can match the depth of those resources.
This is the kind of stuff that scares me the most about Trump and his supporters. My Trump supporter friends are all complaining about loosing our freedoms during the C19 shutdowns but then turn around and think Trump is a great guy for saying he is going to regulate social media because they believe groups like facebook and twitter are prejudiced against Trump and his followers.
Lol, I’m so ready for the flood of tears as social media companies mass ban all the alt-right trolls and sexist racist jerks before their posts and tweets can get the companies sued for publishing defamatory or threatening material.
This is clearly a first amendment violation and will be shut down immediately by the courts…even conservative ones are not keen on first amendment restrictions.
As for money, there will be plenty to fight the first cases that might stem from this. Even deep pocketed conservatives won’t want to pay for losing litigation.
In another thread, I stated that Trump was good at one thing: Getting his message out. Selling his brand.
I was wrong. He’s good at something else, too: muddying the waters. For the love of Ned, how do you think he’s managed to survive this long in the business world? How do you think he’s managed to fend off the attacks when he’s in office. Why, of all the people we could have run against him, do we have to settle for Biden?
It’s because Trump is good at misdirecting us, at keeping us riled up. He makes a Tweet, and everyone reacts. He says something stupid on TV, and 2,753 posts immediately show up in the Pit dissecting it and laughing at it and screaming about the upcoming dictatorship and cursing fate. And we react, and we take the bait, and we take our eye off the ball, and the next thing you know, three-and-a-half years have passed, and we only have Biden to show for it. Now maybe Biden will win, and maybe he won’t (Trump has been saying some truly AWFUL stuff this election year), but even if he wins, is this what we’re after? Even if Trump loses . . . so do we. He’s even good at that. All we can think about right now is beating him. We can’t even think a year down the line after that.
It doesn’t even rise to the level of kabuki theater. It’s more like getting drunk on Pabst Blue Ribbon and yelling at the pro-wrestling refs (who, in our defense, really need to work on their game. They seem to be making pretty bad calls, too.).
I’m hopeful that Trump is dumb enough to do this. First because I think that it will impact Twitter’s stock and I’ve got some money I’m looking to invest and secondly because I think Twitter and Facebook will kick Trump’s teeth in in court which will be fun to watch and hopefully make me a pile of money.
You know if a platform is in favor of free speech then the solution would have been to act accordingly. When platforms regulate speech and do so with obvious bias then don’t act shocked when the regulators come for them. There’s usually a bigger power in the jungle.
A platform (that is, a private business) can regulate speech all it wants. The government, on the other hand, can not. That’s why this whole thing is odd and won’t (shouldn’t) go anywhere. The government is trying to censor a business for censoring it’s users.
Simply red meat for the base that will go nowhere. Never forget that magats, including your neighbors & family members, eat this shit up. They would gladly cheer the boot of government crushing your neck as long as they got the kiss the feet of Dear Leader afterwards.
It’s not as simple as some of you are making it out to be.
I once ran an online information service, and we had an upload area. We were worried about what would happen if people uploaded kiddie porn, bomb plans, or other content that could get us into legal trouble. So we went to a lawyer, who told us we had two options: either leave it all alone and assert no editorial control over it at all (and not even have tools to inspect that content), in which case we would be protected as a common carrier instead of a publisher. You can’t sue the post office if it is used to send kiddie porn or threats.
On the other hand, if we even tried to assert control over what people uploaded, no matter how egregious, that would open us up to liability for any objectional content we didn’t root out.
Twitter and Facebook managed to carve out a special exemption, just for them and other online social media platforms. Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, they are allowed to use ‘common sense’ editorial judgement for the most egregious posts, so long as they do it objectively and without malice. Then they get to be both editors and also not liable for posted content.
Trump could go at them on these grounds, I think. I’m not sure if an executive order can overturn Section 230, but he could also claim that the carriers are biased and going beyond the limited editorial work they were allowed under Section 230, and are in violation of it by editing based on political viewpoint and not the egregiousness of the post itself. He could try to make the case that Section 230 was put into place to allow such services to take down truly dangerous or illegal material like child porn, bomb-making tips, threats against other persons, etc. He could argue that ‘fact checking’ a post about mail fraud doesn’t come anywhere close to what Section 230 is for.
I think the Section 230 angle is the only one Trump has, and even that would be a tough sell in court. Removing section 230 would also create chaos, and either force the big social media companies to heavily censor content or face constant liability lawsuits, or allow absolutely anything to be oublished including Russian and Chinese disinformation bots and other malicious content. In other words, this would backfire in Trump’s face. But he’ll probably still do it.
All subreddits censor based on the whims of the moderators who run them. Certainly there is no “right” to post whatever you want and you (general “you”) can be banned or have a post deleted for any reason whatsoever. Or none at all.
They are a huge site yet manage this with no problem. Users may complain but that is about it.
I wouldn’t make that wager at all. Trump is not threatening to sanction social media companies; he’s threatening to take away the exemption from lawsuits made by private citizens, businesses, and other parties.
Courts could side against him but this is not a black and white free speech issue.
There’s so much going on it’s hard to keep it all straight and I’m sure what Trump says doesn’t directly translate to what happens behind the scenes. However, what I keep reading is that he “threatened to “strongly regulate” or even shut down social media platforms”.
Like I said, he could say that, but in reality what you said is what the smart people that stand behind him are actually planning to to. But at face value, this certainly seems like a very black and white freedom of speech issue.
There’s no bias unless you’re saying that the truth (and falsity) is biased. Trump is presenting completely baseless conspiracy theories - that is not even remotely in dispute. He doesn’t even attempt to defend them with any information that is credible or factual.
Free speech doesn’t mean you can say things to deliberately cause distress or defame individuals without some facts to support the claims – it never, ever did.