Extending free speech laws to cover companies which acts as public forums is not the same as the government telling companies what they are allowed to say and do. If you think that free speech laws are fine for governments then you should also think it is fine for certain companies which grew too powerful and influential.
How do you think those laws will be enforced, if not the government telling companies "you must allow this defamatory and/or untrue content on your servers"? Facebook and Twitter can't censor me, because I am not a customer of either company, and neither has a law enforcement wing. The government, on the other hand, has unlimited firepower and I have no choice whether to "do business" with it. So yes, I will absolutely apply different standards to each.
Why is it up to the company to decide what is defamatory or untrue? If you read the rebuttal twitter posted on his tweet you’ll see it boils down to “no evidence”. This doesn’t mean his claims are not true, it means there’s no evidence they are. These are very different concepts. So now twitter is running around saying it’s untrue when legally it hasn’t been proven untrue. They should instead take a hands off approach and let people think, read and decide for themselves.
I personally feel much freer to think for myself if government officials can't force private companies to carry their personal content. Of course it's highly unlikely that Twitter fact-checking the president will make any difference - everyone who's been paying attention made up their minds about the guy years ago - but if Trump is really so triggered by it, he is of course free to post his thoughts elsewhere. It's awfully telling that he immediately decided to involve federal regulators, although I suspect this will be just as effective as the fact-checking.
Trumps EO today did not and will not force companies to carry government content. Instead it removes protections for them if the limit access to things not specifically protected in the Communications Decency Act.
The rest of it you’re welcome to your opinions and interpretation of events. There is, however, quite a bit of people that agree with him.
This is just disingenuous. The message here is unambiguously "carry our content unedited or you become legally liable for everything posted on your site." Don't pretend that the decision of whose content is "protected" isn't going to be 100% subjective and partisan depending on who appointed the federal regulators. Or do you really think Trump's FCC or FTC (or whichever agency he imagines will enforce his new EO) is going to leap to the defense of, say, an Ilhan Omar tweet?
This is absolutely not disingenuous, this is reading the EO exactly as written without putting a bias on it. It very clearly states that removing things not specifically protected in the Act do not grant you the protections provided by the act. What’s disingenuous is trying to put a personal bias on this and trying to convince others this is true.
Context is bias now? Are we supposed to pretend this document appeared out of thin air, and can only be interpreted in an ultra-literal fashion, regardless of the goals it represents and the way it will be interpreted in the real world?
Well the original law is from 1996. And read the document before making any other comments because it’s clear you haven’t yet read it. It reasserts what is allowed under an existing law from 1996
This is what is allowed under Section 230: "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." The EO isn't reasserting anything, it's fundamentally changing the conditions.
The fact that Trump even admitted on camera that he'd shut Twitter down entirely if he could find a legal route for it kind of gives away the game.
This text is in the original law so how is this changing anything?
His choice of words is usually unfortunate, but the problem he’s pointing out does exist.
How does it look when the Twitter execs are known to lean left, post publicly their hatred for the president then take actions within their control to force their point on others?
Nothing is being forced on anyone. If Trump is unhappy with their fact-checking, he can take his business elsewhere. Or start his own microblog service, since he supposedly has so much money.
It just blows my mind that I used to have nearly identical arguments with left-wingers.
I don’t agree with this mentality of taking it elsewhere. Essentially what you’re saying here is we should segregate social media based on political viewpoints. This, I feel, is a very dangerous precedent to set. Regardless of what side you’re on do you want to live in an echo chamber?
As for forcing, agree to disagree then. Putting the link on a tweet and then linking to essentially an opinion piece is the definition of fake news. Ignoring the link meaning potentially missing an actual valid point. Ignorance is also dangerous. Why can’t they just take Facebooks stance and stay out of it entirely?
So then what would you call an opinion piece being touted as truth? And please no personal insult or insulations that “something is wrong” with me, you people still arguing a clearly valid point have destroyed my HN reputation with all the downvotes as it is.
What if, instead of trying to bully Twitter to not post fact checking links for Trump's tweet, we instead ask them to do so fairly for both sides of the political spectrum? I'm pretty sure there are lots of factually false left-wing statements that could make use of the fact checking feature.
That is the only issue here that I could see as being partisan, it's not about adding fact checking links, it's about doing so regardless of the political affiliation of the poster. I wish there was a lot more fact checking added to most statements on Twitter.
