Trump Plans to attempt to "Regulate" Social Media

[Eunoli]

Free speech is great and all but it shouldn't enable elected officials to violate their oath of office with impunity.

Free speech means being able to point out lies from elected officials.

 

[Eunoli]

That is a tricky one. Before you know they will mingle with opinions and then it is the start of state censorship.
(Social) Media should be held responsible for spreading deliberate false news even from third parties.
With healthy fines. Not by government but by the courts.

Unfortunately, in the US the federal courts are being stacked with ultra conservative judges (this is the Mitch McConnell scam of the century, imho), many with no qualifications or experience. A law like this would be used to suppress dissent from the bench.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

Much of why we have Trump is the media failing its basic duty to research his claims in 2015-2016. Real reporting involves providing not just quotes but context, including pointing out variability false claims.

 

[Sid]

Free speech is great and all but it shouldn't enable elected officials to violate their oath of office with impunity.

I agree, but if the government was the authority to handle this, than 45 would most likely act exactly as he acts now.
He would simply sack every official who would be even the slightest against him.
That's why it should be a case for the courts IMHO against the publishers/distributors of the lies.

 

[Sid]

Unfortunately, in the US the federal courts are being stacked with ultra conservative judges (this is the Mitch McConnell scam of the century, imho), many with no qualifications or experience. A law like this would be used to suppress dissent from the bench.

It is not only an US problem though.
Here in NL we had more than 20 G5 masts put to fire already, because idiots influencing with their bull...... theories on Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook, Twitter and the posters should be held responsible by laws against deliberately spreading false information.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Trump campaign attempts to remove satirical cartoon from online retailer

Cartoonist Nick Anderson calls president ‘adolescent’ after work parodying bleach-injection claim sparked a legal manoeuvre

www.theguardian.com

Redbubble pulled Anderson’s illustration from sale following a trademark infringement claim made by Trump’s campaign organisation, Donald J Trump for President Inc. Writing on the Daily Kos, Anderson said that he believed the claim was made due to his depiction of Maga hats, and described the situation as “absurd”.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Cartoons are good.

 

[Romana]

This is the leaked text if the EO. Pay particular attention to section 5: watchlists of users based on their online activity and their offline activity.

https://kateklonick.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/DRAFT-EO-Preventing-Online-Censorship.pdf

Just found this, it might be easier to read: Thread by @questauthority: THREAD: Let's walk through the leaked draft text of the social media EO. Some caveats: (1) AFAIK, it's not been confirmed as authentic. (2)…

 

[Eunoli]

Free speech is great and all but it shouldn't enable elected officials to violate their oath of office with impunity.

This isn't a free speech issue at all for the elected official, though. Its a free speech for the owners of the platform and the general public. Its basically saying that every social platform must become state media.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Soen Eber]

I'm pretty sure whaz'izname has already crossed the "Free speech ends when shouting FIRE! in a crowded movie theater" line several times already.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Thread

 

[danielravennest]

I'm pretty sure whaz'izname has already crossed the "Free speech ends when shouting FIRE! in a crowded movie theater" line several times already.

The canonical freedom of speech example is "shouting fire in a crowded theater", not movie theater. It comes from the days when stages were lit by a gas flame heating incandescent quicklime, hence "the limelight". Asbestos-lined safety curtains for stages had not yet become required, and therefore fires in theaters were unfortunately too common. Movie theaters were later, and their fire risk was related to flammable celluloid nitrate film stock, and people smoking, which were lesser hazards. By then, building codes required an adequate number of exits and signage to evacuate the space, and later fire sprinklers.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

I agree, but if the government was the authority to handle this, than 45 would most likely act exactly as he acts now.
He would simply sack every official who would be even the slightest against him.
That's why it should be a case for the courts IMHO against the publishers/distributors of the lies.

I'm not suggesting the government have any control over who/how news/social media choose to fact check them,. that should be independent. Just that if "state media" demands to be exempt from 3rd party content policies, those 3rd parties shouldn't just have the 1st amendment right to criticize content. They should have the ethical obligation to expose deceptions and falsehoods in all content that they can't refuse to disseminate.

Honestly anything posted by someone with more than half a million followers should get promptly and independently fact checked, imho.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I'm not suggesting the government have any control over who/how news/social media choose to fact check them,. that should be independent. Just that if "state media" demands to be exempt from 3rd party content policies, those 3rd parties shouldn't just have the 1st amendment right to criticize content. They should have the ethical obligation to expose deceptions and falsehoods in all content that they can't refuse to disseminate.

Honestly anything posted by someone with more than half a million followers should get promptly and independently fact checked, imho.

I think part of the problem is that the US and the European approaches to freedom of speech are very diffferent.

I agree with Sid completely that ultimately regulation must be in the hands of the courts, though I don't think that precludes imposing, among other things, a legal duty properly to resolve complaints about false or misleading content that is likely to have serious social consequences if believed by submitting them to an impartial and reliable independent fact-checking body, and to have an independent statutory body monitoring compliance.

Then it would be up to the courts, in the case of any disputes between the social media companies and the regulator, to decide on the facts of the case whether the social media companies were meeting their obligations.

But I can see that's impossible in the US for all sorts of reasons.

It's like gun control -- you do it differently, so any discussions have to reflect the fact we're starting from such radically different places and assumptions.

 

[Pamela]

Trump to Sign Executive Order Targeting Social Media Firms

Is this the same regulation that protects SL from being responsible for, say, ripped content being sold?

 

[Zaida Gearbox]

Zuckerberg was all over the news yesterday saying he doesn't think its his responsibility to police truth, as well.

Do what??? Facebook fact checks The Babylon Bee which is a parody paper that has "Fake News You Can Trust" on its masthead. Seriously, I was sharing something from the Bee - making fun of Trump - and it asked me if I was sure I wanted to post it.

 

[Grandma Bates]

Is this the same regulation that protects SL from being responsible for, say, ripped content being sold?

Section 230 give Linden Research more flexibility to police its users. Prior to the implementation of Section 230 sites that tried to moderate content were held to be liable for all content that was published. Way back in prehistoric times Compuserve did no moderation, and it was a cesspool. Prodigy tried to keep things cleaned, but they were not able to keep all the bad things out because of the scale of their operations. When they were sued for their content, Compuserve got off free but Prodigy was held accountable because they tried and failed to police their content. One of the goals of Section 230 was to give site operators the freedom to try to police their content without being punished for trying to keep their site from turning into 4chan.

Section 230 gives Linden Research the ability to at least try to kick out the people trying to fill sims with prims and particles and generally trying to make life miserable. Without Section 230 if they tried to do this and failed then they could face legal challenges that would end up costing large sums of money even if they won.

With respect to copyright, that is a different kettle of fish. The way Linden Res. handles copyright is dictated by the DMCA. There is very little wiggle room in how they act in that regard. Nobody, even the Lindens, are all that thrilled with the hoops they have to jump through in order to properly satisfy US Copyright requirements.

One of the terrible thing about this executive order is that they will not likely go after Twitter or Google first. They have the legal muscle to rip this to shreds in short order. It is more likely that the Justice Department would go after smaller sites and try to establish legal precedents against smaller operators who are more likely to just roll over to avoid huge legal settlements. Someone like Cristiano is taking a huge risk to operate this site without Section 230 protections. It also means, that a lot of smaller operators are going to be more hesitant to say no to particular advertisers which means that dark money operations and extremist groups will be better able to strong-arm small sites saying they have to accept their advertising as long as this executive order is in place. The alternative is huge legal bills.

In short this is more than just a petty outburst, this is a big deal that has potentially big impacts to a very large number of smaller sites. (Like this one.) Many politicians from both parties have been complaining about Section 230 for a while now. Section 230 gives site owners a good deal of flexibility in deciding content and refusing to host certain content. The actions taken by the President smell like a mix of opportunism as well as pettiness.

 

[Kara Spengler]

So if he manages to make it that tech companies are liable for things posted by their years, would that make Twitter liable for the chaos he spreads?
Twitter should kick him the hell off right now.

It does not do long term thinking. It and a lot of its peers are only there because they increase engagement. Yes, it is mostly negative, but it is engagement. Make those companies liable and suddenly value for those platforms gets recalculated.

 

[Kara Spengler]

The draft leaked (title my own):

Trump's Consitution-Killing Plan