Trump signs executive order aimed at social media companies after fuming over fact-check
Category: News & Politics
Via: thomas • 4 years ago • 21 commentsBy: Allan Smith and Rebecca Shabad (NBC News)
Bring it on, Pringle head.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
May 28, 2020, 1:43 PM UTC / Updated May 28, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC By Allan Smith and Rebecca Shabad
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that he said calls for the Federal Communications Commission to revisit Section 230 of the Communications and Decency Act of 1996, which provides websites immunity from liability for content users post on their platforms.
The executive order came in response to Twitter, for the first time, adding a fact-check label on a pair of Trump's tweets earlier this week. The fact-check included a link directing users to a page with news reports debunking the tweets, in which Trump claimed there was "NO WAY" an election with boosted mail-in voting would be legitimate.
A Twitter spokesperson told NBC News on Tuesday the tweets "contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots." The spokesperson added the company rolled out a policy in May to combat misinformation.
With Attorney General William Barr standing alongside him, Trump said he was taking action against what he deemed one of the greatest threats to free speech. "We're here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers it has faced in American history, frankly, and you know what's going on as well as anybody," Trump said. "It's not good." "They've had unchecked power to censure, restrict, edit, shape, hide, alter virtually any form of communication between private citizens or large public audiences," Trump added.The president, who has weaponized Twitter throughout his presidency, has long complained that the social media companies are biased against conservatives.
Some prominent Republicans, like Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., have suggested making changes to Section 230, and the idea has garnered attention in left-leaning circles as well.
Trump spent days fuming over the fact check, saying Thursday it's "so ridiculous" for Twitter to make the case that mail-in ballots aren't subject to fraud. "How stupid, there are examples, & cases, all over the place. Our election process will become badly tainted & a laughingstock all over the World. Tell that to your hater @yoyoel," Trump tweeted, tagging Twitter employee Yoel Roth, head of site integrity at the social media company who had come under conservative scrutiny for past anti-Trump and anti-Republican tweets.
Jack Dorsey, Twitter's CEO, on Wednesday night responded to backlash against Roth sparked by the fact-checking, saying that "there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that's me. Please leave our employees out of this."
Waving around a cover of the New York Post with Roth's face emblazoned on it, Trump on Thusrday suggested he may try to shut down Twitter if the company was "not honorable" and it was "able to be legally shut down."
"I think we shut it down as far as I'm concerned but I'd have to go through a legal process," Trump said, adding, "if it were able to be legally shut down I would do it."
Earlier Thursday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the president seeks to ensure "the rights of all Americans to speak, tweet, and post are protected."
In a Thursday statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., slammed the executive order and called Trump's effort "a desperate distraction from his failure to provide a national testing strategy to defeat COVID-19."
"The president's executive order does nothing to address big Internet companies' complete failure to fight the spread of disinformation," Pelosi said. "Instead, the president is encouraging Facebook and other social media giants to continue to exploit and profit off falsehoods with total impunity — while at the same time directing the federal government to dismantle efforts to help users distinguish fact from fiction."
Trump said in the Oval Office that his voter fraud claims were about the potential for widespread "fraud and abuse." If states made mail-in voting more widespread, Trump said U.S. elections "would be a total joke" and the U.S. "would be the laughingstock of the world."
Multiple studies over the years have found that voter fraud is not a widespread issue. Both Democratic and Republican officials overseeing mail-in voting processes also outlined proven steps — most importantly, signature verification — taken to ensure the integrity of that system.
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Be truthful and fair.
Twitter or the president? Not sure I trust any social media site to do that nowadays. The words "site integrity" at sites like Twitter and Facebook have become huge oxymorons!
"Be truthful and fair," was my intent to be delivered to the participants of the conversation on here on NT.
That said, I believe that both the president and media outlets should be aware and cognizant of the information that they distribute and make all efforts to disseminate only factual information from the users that claim the same.
It doesn't sound like it will do much but it sure would be nice to see less censorship.
Hopefully it will mitigate the pro liberal bias some. I Totally agree with you about the censorship
Firstly, .I don't think (Deleted) really understands what censorship is. He wasn't censored, he merely got a fact check put on his tweets.
Secondly, I think that he can only go so far with his retribution campaign before the public starts to, albeit far too late, wake up to the fact that he is a petty, vindictive lying tyrant.... but then again, many knew that before this whole presidency thing began.
He said today they are stifling conservative voices. This isn’t just about him. He’s looking out for other conservatives like Alex Jones that have been banned.
Well, then he has every right to go out and start his own birdie organization or join another where he can tweet or caw or moo or whatever you want to call misinformation he and Alex spread on a daily basis to their heart's content.
Last I heard, most of the judiciary and certainly most of the conservatives in the country are on board with the idea that a company or corporation has the constitutional right to absolutely control its own media content. Therefore, even if any content at all was removed, it would be justifiable.
but they don’t have a right to the section 230 exemptions from lawsuit liabilities. They can be treated like any other media in that regard.
Then they will necessarily shut down or be open to everything. One of the authors of Section 230, Senator Ron Wyden , said:
Trump wants to shut down twitter?
LOL.
It is his "mother's milk" and he can't live without it.
Never tweeted, never had followers, never needed them.
He does not want to shut down twitter. It is my thought that he would like it to be more like a grand conspiracy and lie platform all to assuage his ego. Of course, it would be converted to a Truth Site by his retweet
If these platforms want the protections of the courts, they need to follow the statute. They clearly haven't been doing that.
But they have. Here is a quote from Vox :
Fearing that the Communications Decency Act would stop the burgeoning internet in its tracks and mindful of the court’s decision, then-Rep. (now Sen.) Ron Wyden and Rep. Chris Cox authored an amendment that said that “interactive computer services” were not responsible for what their users posted, even if those services engaged in some moderation of that third-party content. The internet companies, in other words, were mere platforms, not publishers.
“What I was struck by then is that if somebody owned a website or a blog, they could be held personally liable for something posted on their site,” Wyden explained to Vox’s Emily Stewart last year . “And I said then — and it’s the heart of my concern now — if that’s the case, it will kill the little guy, the startup, the inventor, the person who is essential for a competitive marketplace. It will kill them in the crib.”
Section 230 also allows those services to “restrict access” to any content they deem objectionable. In other words, the platforms themselves get to choose what is and what is not acceptable content, and they can decide to host it or moderate it accordingly. That means the free speech argument frequently employed by people who are suspended or banned from these platforms — that the Constitution says they can write whatever they want — doesn’t apply, no matter how many times Laura Loomer tries to test it. As Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe points out , the First Amendment argument is also generally misused in this context:
Wyden likens the dual nature of Section 230 to a sword and a shield for platforms: They’re shielded from liability for user content, and they have a sword to moderate it as they see fit.
Taking down videos on YouTube (which is not what I would call interactive) because you disagree with a point of view is not "some moderation." It's viewpoint censorship. Doing so under the protection of the government has historically been a violation of the 1st Amendment.
Because this Section of the law has been looked at by the SCOTUS and deemed constitutional, I don't really think there is a 1st Amendment issue.
they can choose the protections provided to a open platform / forum or they can be treated as a publisher.
can't have it both ways.
He is so over the top and so totally wrong.
im fairly certain AG barr understands the law better than sara morrison over at vox.
just sayin
besides,,, that eo?
not much to it. basically it is just a shot across the bow.
it says the FTC is going to look into something. and another.
yepp that should shut twitter down... LOL you know im kidding here right? LOL
And I am fairly certain that the AG has a vested interest in promoting the president, and as such, can and does abuse the powers and authorities granted him by statute. Barr feels that the president is above the law and that is a dangerous attitude to have.
Would that be like using the IRS and DOJ to target political opponents?