May 28, 2020 By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
“Undoubtedly the first step down an increasingly dark path of Trump using the power of his office to intimidate media companies, journalists, activists, and anyone else who criticizes him into silence.”
Advocacy groups and legal experts say an executive order President Donald Trump is expected to sign Thursday—a document the White House claims is an effort to curtail the power of social media—is nothing more than an unconstitutional attempt by the president to “bully” into submission platforms that fact-check or criticize him.
“Trump’s threat to use the executive branch’s power to punish internet companies for Twitter’s mild fact check of his statements is exactly the kind of abuse of power that the Constitution and our First Amendment were written to prevent.”
—Gaurav Laroia, Free Press
The New York Times reported late Wednesday that a draft of the executive order “would make it easier for federal regulators to argue that companies like Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Twitter are suppressing free speech when they move to suspend users or delete posts, among other examples.” The changes, if upheld in court, could expose social media companies to more lawsuits.
“Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, online companies have broad immunity from liability for content created by their users,” the Times reported. “But the draft of the executive order, which refers to what it calls ‘selective censoring,’ would allow the Commerce Department to try to refocus how broadly Section 230 is applied, and to let the Federal Trade Commission bulk up a tool for reporting online bias.”
David Kaye, United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, called Trump’s order “a ploy for him to dominate and eviscerate public oversight of his lies.”
Craig Aaron, president and co-CEO of advocacy group Free Press, echoed Kaye:
This order is about covering up lies and playing the refs so Trump can peddle dangerous disinformation. It’s not a legitimate debate over internet policy.
— Craig Aaron (@notaaroncraig) May 28, 2020
The executive order comes days after Twitter on Tuesday took the unprecedented step of adding a fact-check label to two tweets in which Trump erroneously attacked mail-in voting. “We believe those Tweets could confuse voters about what they need to do to receive a ballot and participate in the election process,” Twitter said in an explanation of its decision.
In response, Trump baselessly claimed Wednesday that social media platforms “totally silence conservatives’ voices” and threatened to “strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.”
“This will be a Big Day for Social Media and FAIRNESS!” Trump tweeted Thursday, apparently referring to his executive order
“There are important reasons to restructure the law to make the web more open and free, but this executive order is a distraction.”
—Sarah Miller, American Economic Liberties Project
Gaurav Laroia, senior policy counsel at advocacy group Free Press, condemned the order as “a naked attempt by the president to bully into silence Twitter, other social-media sites and anyone who attempts to correct or criticize Trump.”
“Trump’s threat to use the executive branch’s power to punish internet companies for Twitter’s mild fact check of his statements is exactly the kind of abuse of power that the Constitution and our First Amendment were written to prevent,” Laroia said in a statement. “It’s undoubtedly the first step down an increasingly dark path of Trump using the power of his office to intimidate media companies, journalists, activists and anyone else who criticizes him into silence.”
Laroia said that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was “written to protect free speech on the open internet.”
“Changing Section 230 is Congress’ prerogative, not the president’s by fiat,” said Laroia. “His poorly written executive order is an embarrassment and would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous.”
Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, tweeted that “whatever else this executive order may be, it is not a good faith effort to protect free speech online.”
Whatever else this Executive Order may be, it is not a good faith effort to protect free speech online. https://t.co/fZYKAVE0fL pic.twitter.com/DsEyCxbI5r
— Jameel Jaffer (@JameelJaffer) May 28, 2020
Sarah Miller, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, said in a statement that while there are important discussions to be had about the outsize power of social media companies and the implications for free expression, Trump’s executive order “is a silly distraction from a serious debate.”
“There are important reasons to restructure the law to make the web more open and free,” said Miller, “but this executive order is a distraction and we should all have learned to ignore distractions like this from Trump by now.
Trump’s new anti-Twitter order could blow up in conservatives’ faces: Top right-wing media personality
May 28, 2020 By Brad Reed
President Donald Trump’s new executive order that’s aimed at opening social media companies up to more lawsuits could seriously backfire on conservative critics of the platforms, writes one top right-wing media personality.
In analyzing the reported contents of Trump’s new order, conservative Ben Shapiro warns that stripping websites’ immunity for the content posted on their pages by third parties could seriously damage conservative media in the future.
“Here’s the inevitable effect of destroying [Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act]: all comments sections will be taken down,” writes Shapiro. “No website has the resources to actively edit all comments in order to shield themselves from liability, and no website is willing to leave comments entirely standards-free.”
Shapiro also questioned why conservatives believe that giving the government broader regulatory powers over websites wouldn’t come back to haunt them.
“The invitation to redefine ‘unfair business practices’ to include comment-policing-based lawsuits will likely not end well for conservatives,” he argues. “I see the appeal, but I’m wondering just why conservatives are suddenly so unconcerned about political bias among regulators.”
The invitation to redefine "unfair business practices" to include comment-policing-based lawsuits will likely not end well for conservatives. I see the appeal, but I'm wondering just why conservatives are suddenly so unconcerned about political bias among regulators.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 28, 2020
Bill Barr and the White House plan to collect information on social media users when Trump signs Executive Order: reports
May 28, 2020 By David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
A draft of President Donald Trump’s social media executive order shows it would create disturbing structures that could allow the President of the United States to personally target social media companies he feels are taking action against his supporters, enable his supporters to report that action directly to the White House, and empower the Attorney General of the United States to collect publicly available “watch-lists” of social media users that monitor not only their online activities but their offline activities as well.
The draft is not final, but both the speed with which it will be signed and reports show it likely has not gone through interagency review, as CNN’s Brian Fung, who calls it “hastily conceived,” notes.
NEW: The White House did not consult the FCC on a forthcoming executive order pertaining to social media companies, according to a person briefed on the matter.
This suggests the draft order has not gone through the normal interagency review process.
— Brian Fung (@b_fung) May 27, 2020
Reuters has confirmed a draft of the executive order, which President Trump has promised he will sign today. They report it “requires the Attorney General to establish a working group including state attorneys general that will examine the enforcement of state laws that prohibit online platforms from engaging in unfair and deceptive acts.”
The order directs the White House Office of Digital Strategy to turn back on the White House Tech Bias Reporting Tool, which the Trump administration created in 2019. It is currently dormant. The tool would be used to collect complaints of what social media users feel is online censorship by tech companies. Those complaints would be submitted by the White House to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission.
The White House Office of Digital Strategy was not designed for that purpose. It was created for the sole purpose of crafting and promoting the President’s agenda online, not for acting as a conduit to enable spying. The Office of Digital Strategy is headed by a former Heritage Foundation employee.
Reuters also reports Barr is to create “working group” that “will also monitor or create watch-lists of users based on their interactions with content or other users.” That reporting appears to be inaccurate, based on NCRM’s reading, and reporting by other outlets.
NBC News technology correspondent Jacob Ward reports the draft “directs the White House Office of Digital Strategy to collect publicly available information regarding ‘watch-lists’ of users based on their interaction with content or users’ and ‘monitoring users based on their activity off the platform.'”
An ABC News report appears to confirm that reading.
But Barr would be directed to create the group, which would include hand-picked state attorneys general.
The mere existence of any such lists, whether or not they are created by Barr or identified by the DOJ, can easily be politicized.
Stanford Cyber Policy Center’s Platform Regulation Director says this is a copy of the draft. She has annotated it as well:
To aid in this endeavor, here is my color coded and annotated copy of the Executive Order in CDA 230 and platforms. https://t.co/H3zN22X4me https://t.co/1CosSHTpqd
— Daphne
Trump to target social media with executive order
AFP/File / Olivier DOULIERY
US President Donald Trump said Republicans feel the social media networks are trying to silence conservative voices
US President Donald Trump was set Thursday to target social media giants like Twitter, which he accuses of bias against him, with an executive order opening them to new regulation.
"This will be a Big Day for Social Media and FAIRNESS!" Trump said on Twitter.
The wording of the executive order remained under wraps. A White House spokeswoman on Wednesday said only that it would be "pertaining to social media."
But Trump is on the warpath against Twitter after the platform for the first time labelled two of his tweets, on the increasingly contentious topic of mail-in voting, with fact-check notices.
Although he is the dominant US political presence on Twitter and Facebook, a fight with social media also plays into Trump's narrative ahead of his difficult November reelection battle that liberal forces are trying to censor Republicans.
Leaked versions of the executive order in US media suggest that Trump will seek to remove liability protections that the social media giants enjoy over content they publish, thereby opening them to legal action and more government oversight.
One consequence of this could be to punish the companies over their decisions on what to allow and what to restrict on their platforms.
A draft of the order reported by CNN accuses platforms of not showing the "good faith" required under their current self-regulating status.
It attacks online platforms for damaging free expression by being able to "hand-pick the speech that Americans may access."
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden accused Trump of "bullying" social media companies into airing his "misinformation campaigns" and playing "host to his lies."
In any case, resetting the boundaries of how the mammoth companies operate would likely hit immediate legal and political roadblocks.
The constitution "clearly prohibits the president from taking any action to stop Twitter from pointing out his blatant lies about voting by mail," Kate Ruane, at the American Civil Liberties Union, said.
- Fact check fury -
A wider debate has long been underway on the power that social media companies wield and what responsibility they bear for posts that are misleading or hurtful.
Internet services like Twitter and Facebook have been struggling to root out misinformation, while at the same time keeping their platforms open to users.
The massive amount of unverified content in circulation has prompted a rise in fact-checking operations, including a vast Facebook effort in which AFP plays a role.
After long resisting calls to censure Trump over his frequently unfactual posts, Twitter on Tuesday flagged the president for the first time for making false claims.
Trump had tweeted -- without any evidence -- that more mail-in voting would lead to what he called a "Rigged Election" this November.
Twitter's slap on the wrist was enough to drive Trump into a tirade -- on Twitter -- in which he claimed that the political right in the United States was being shut out.
Thursday's order, according to unnamed White House officials quoted by The New York Times, will make it easier for federal regulators to argue that the companies are "suppressing free speech when they move to suspend users or delete posts."
Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg waded into the row, telling Fox News that his social network -- still the biggest in the world -- steers clear of fact-checking political speech.
"I just believe strongly that Facebook should not be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online," Zuckerberg said in a snippet of the interview posted online Wednesday by Fox.
Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey fired back on Wednesday night, saying that his platform's effort to point out misinformation did not make it an "arbiter of truth."
"Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves," he tweeted.
He doubled down on the new policy, writing: "Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that's me.... We'll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally."
US President Donald Trump was set Thursday to target social media giants like Twitter, which he accuses of bias against him, with an executive order opening them to new regulation.
"This will be a Big Day for Social Media and FAIRNESS!" Trump said on Twitter.
The wording of the executive order remained under wraps. A White House spokeswoman on Wednesday said only that it would be "pertaining to social media."
But Trump is on the warpath against Twitter after the platform for the first time labelled two of his tweets, on the increasingly contentious topic of mail-in voting, with fact-check notices.
Although he is the dominant US political presence on Twitter and Facebook, a fight with social media also plays into Trump's narrative ahead of his difficult November reelection battle that liberal forces are trying to censor Republicans.
Leaked versions of the executive order in US media suggest that Trump will seek to remove liability protections that the social media giants enjoy over content they publish, thereby opening them to legal action and more government oversight.
One consequence of this could be to punish the companies over their decisions on what to allow and what to restrict on their platforms.
A draft of the order reported by CNN accuses platforms of not showing the "good faith" required under their current self-regulating status.
It attacks online platforms for damaging free expression by being able to "hand-pick the speech that Americans may access."
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden accused Trump of "bullying" social media companies into airing his "misinformation campaigns" and playing "host to his lies."
In any case, resetting the boundaries of how the mammoth companies operate would likely hit immediate legal and political roadblocks.
The constitution "clearly prohibits the president from taking any action to stop Twitter from pointing out his blatant lies about voting by mail," Kate Ruane, at the American Civil Liberties Union, said.
- Fact check fury -
A wider debate has long been underway on the power that social media companies wield and what responsibility they bear for posts that are misleading or hurtful.
Internet services like Twitter and Facebook have been struggling to root out misinformation, while at the same time keeping their platforms open to users.
The massive amount of unverified content in circulation has prompted a rise in fact-checking operations, including a vast Facebook effort in which AFP plays a role.
After long resisting calls to censure Trump over his frequently unfactual posts, Twitter on Tuesday flagged the president for the first time for making false claims.
Trump had tweeted -- without any evidence -- that more mail-in voting would lead to what he called a "Rigged Election" this November.
Twitter's slap on the wrist was enough to drive Trump into a tirade -- on Twitter -- in which he claimed that the political right in the United States was being shut out.
Thursday's order, according to unnamed White House officials quoted by The New York Times, will make it easier for federal regulators to argue that the companies are "suppressing free speech when they move to suspend users or delete posts."
Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg waded into the row, telling Fox News that his social network -- still the biggest in the world -- steers clear of fact-checking political speech.
"I just believe strongly that Facebook should not be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online," Zuckerberg said in a snippet of the interview posted online Wednesday by Fox.
Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey fired back on Wednesday night, saying that his platform's effort to point out misinformation did not make it an "arbiter of truth."
"Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves," he tweeted.
He doubled down on the new policy, writing: "Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that's me.... We'll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally."
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