
Donald Trump is starting a messy fight with the entire internet - prepperpotts
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/28/21273019/donald-trump-executive-order-twitter-liability-facebook-230-ftc-fcc
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dang
Many threads on this. Some with comments:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=trump%20executive%20order%20comments%3E0&sort=byDate&type=story)

At this point we should probably wait until something actually happens, and
then hopefully the discussion will have details to be grounded in.

~~~
prepperpotts
sorry, i totally missed those. thank you!

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prepperpotts
truly wild that the fight over whether social media platforms should be held
liable for speech happens the one time they actually _do_ make a feeble
attempt at moderation.

~~~
downerending
My sense is that moderation has been around since virtually the beginning but
has been getting more heavy-handed as time goes on. Moderating _political_
views on international-scale open fora, though, seems far newer, and far more
troubling.

Most of us are appalled at the censorship in China, and yet we seem to be
galloping in that direction. I'd like to feel that people will get sick of it
and drop off of these platforms themselves, but I'm not sure that that will
happen.

~~~
mrgreenfur
How is twitter labeling his lies as 'misleading' with evidence "galloping"
towards china?

I think they have an obligation to annotate extremely popular and dangerous
comments, but they do not have an obligation to fact check everyone.

~~~
downerending
> I think they have an obligation to annotate extremely popular and dangerous
> comments

For one, _galloping_ in the sense that probably many Chinese citizens would
agree with this sentiment.

Try to imagine what Lenny Bruce or George Carlin would think of all this.

~~~
Gibbon1
I think Lenny Bruce and Carlin would say they were never dog whistling
violence.

~~~
downerending
If you impute nefarious motives to all around you, communication collapses,
and civilization will soon follow.

~~~
Gibbon1
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
politic...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
politics/trump-twitter-today-cowboy-democrat-dead-couy-griffin-
tweets-a9537016.html)

So exactly what an I supposed to impute from that?

~~~
downerending
That he's kind of a jackass sometimes.

~~~
Gibbon1
Like this?

[https://www.nytimes.com/1933/01/31/archives/hitler-puts-
asid...](https://www.nytimes.com/1933/01/31/archives/hitler-puts-aside-aim-to-
be-dictator-german-cabinet-also-reveals.html)

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finnthehuman
Big "tech's" positions about what they will and won't enable people to do have
become so inconsistent with public focused principal that I struggle to be
sympathetic.

If Section 230 is so important, then who the fuck got us in position that it's
the current chesspiece between government and industry?

Consolidation of power invites attention from other power. Once that happens
to you, don't expect to win on principal. You've already decided that you're
not fighting on principal.

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NicoJuicy
If a platform would be responsible for it's users and comments.

Wouldn't Twitter remove Trump asap then? The guy is a trainwreck online.

~~~
Mirioron
I think the idea is that Twitter should either moderate the content and be
(partly) responsible for it, or it should not moderate the content and not be
(partly) responsible for it.

~~~
kilo_bravo_3
This is impossible. People who want this want the actual, literal, impossible.

And I don't understand it. Well, I do, mostly it's bigots wanting free reign
to be bigots in someone else's house with a little bit of the ideologically
inflexible thrown into the mix.

So I should say I don't understand the people who want this.

Not only that but if conservatives do what they are threatening to do, that
will lead to an almost instant, complete, and full censoring of much of their
content.

Which online service provider would want to be civilly liable for someone
posting a video that says "the only good democrat is a dead democrat" if a nut
job throws back a shot of hand sanitizer and goes on a shooting spree because
"the president said so"?

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/28/trump-
ret...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/28/trump-retweets-
video-saying-only-good-democrat-is-dead-democrat/)

~~~
Mirioron
Why would that cause instant censoring? It could go the other way too. Content
doesn't get censored. No more games by websites like Twitter where they
"accidentally" censor one political side over and over. (Or vice versa
elsewhere.) The idea is that if these websites get special protections that
regular people don't, and are big enough to essentially be the town square,
then the values the society itself accepts are what should guide it. In this
case that would be free speech.

Just to be clear, I'm not necessarily arguing for this. I'm just trying to
explain how else this might work.

~~~
kilo_bravo_3
Let’s say hacker news could be sued for me posting a comment threatening to
kill you and refusing to remove it.

Because in many states (maybe all?) they can be.

Remember, websites are only given immunity if they fail to remove “sueable”
content.

Will they (hacker news):

a. Prescreen all comments, like a publisher prescreens manuscripts, or

b. Just do away with user-submitted content, or

c. Let everyone say whatever they want in an orgy of freedom with no
moderation whatsoever?

Privately owned media sites will never, ever be a public square just because
people use them the same way my yard isn’t a public square because you can
walk across it on the way to ring my doorbell so you can ask to put a campaign
sign in my grass.

Is the President of the United States of America sharing a video calling for
the death of his political opponents a “sue worthy” event? What if he gave a
speech saying that? Or published a presidential decree calling for it?

Some people see bigots saying “whatever dude it was just a satire joke” for
what it is: bullshit.

~~~
Mirioron
They would pick c. All the legislators have to do is set a minimum size and
certain exceptions on what can be removed, eg above 100 million users and
remove off-topic and spam. HN and 99% of websites would be unaffected, but
Twitter, Facebook et al would have to be more hands off in moderation.

If you own a giant piece of land and the government wants to build a highway
over a part of it, it's still possible for them to legally do it, even if you
refused.

~~~
kilo_bravo_3
Then you’re saying that some speech is more free than others.

And they won’t pick c, at least not after the first round of lawsuits.

As far as highways go, I don’t follow the analogy. The government has to pay
me for any land they take. Do you think that they’ll buy twitter just so
conservative bigots can have somewhere to go and be bigoted?

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phaedryx
The interesting thing in this case is that Trump's tweet is a violation of the
"Election Integrity" policy: [https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-
policies/twitter-rules](https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-
policies/twitter-rules) (see the "Authenticity" section) whereas his other
tweets, while inflammatory, are not.

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biolurker1
The problem is that he can start a messy real world war too

