Spot the threat to free speech

[Axtremus]

Trump signs executive order targeting Twitter after fact-checking row
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52843986

The executive order:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/

[Klaus]

I read the executive order.

While I do think that Trump's tweets are often unbearable and embarrassing, I do think that Twitter went too far. I'm actually glad that they flagged Trump's posts and provoked this escalation. Twitter has been doing this for years to other less visible Twitter users. Now it gets drawn into the spotlight. The companies shouldn't have both immunity from any responsibility for the content on their platform and freedom to censor as they like. They should have to decide for one of those things and then not have the other.

[jon-nyc]

I agree this was really stupid for twitter to do but the law was designed to do just that.

All this executive order will do is set in motion a bunch of litigation until congress rewrites the law, if they ever do.

[Klaus]

@jon-nyc said in Spot the threat to free speech:

but the law was designed to do just that.

To do what?

[Klaus]

@jon-nyc said in Spot the threat to free speech:

All this executive order will do is set in motion a bunch of litigation

But litigation can be expensive and behavior-changing, no?

(I have no idea what that EO actually entails in the real world)

[jon-nyc]

The idea of the legislation was specifically to allow online platforms to not have to choose between publisher (editorial control and responsibility) or platform (neither), but rather to generally not be liable for people’s posts even while they do enforce some rules about them.

Already in the days of Compuserve and Prodigy this was an issue - with no control they would quickly become cesspools but neither company could police and be responsible for everything posted by everyone. This law said they didn’t have to choose.

[jon-nyc]

Standby by for the principled conservatives to be against this as an aggressive overreach of the administrative state.... there still are a few out there....right?

[Klaus]

Well, I'd say: Force them to choose. I personally would prefer them to be platforms: That they can't deny their service unless they are forced by law. But the current situation is just a mess.

[jon-nyc]

Spend much time at Gab?

[Klaus]

No, I've never used Gab. I hear it's used a lot by extremists. If Gab has a quasi-monopoly on not censoring, then of course they are a honeypot for those kinds of people. But if every social platform would be like that, then those people would not be more visible than they are visible in non-online communication. I can handle that.

[George K]

@jon-nyc said in Spot the threat to free speech:

Standby by for the principled conservatives to be against this as an aggressive overreach of the administrative state.... there still are a few out there....right?

As you say, make them choose: Publisher or Platform. If they choose publisher, then their editorial choices, for them to be seen as fair, must be carried out throughout the medium. You'll note that death threats against Nick Sandmann are still up on Twitter. They can't begin to be considered fair until their standards are applied to everyone. I'm surprised that no high-profile person who was censored admonished on Twitter hasn't sued yet.

[Klaus]

Also, there would be an obvious way how social media companies could provide editorial control without censorship. They could just offer an option for every user whether they want to see all content, including potentially offensive or extremist content, or only a subset of the content selected by that company. More sophisticated variants of that scheme are easily conceivable, too.

YT goes in that direction a little. Sometimes they pop up something along the lines of "are you sure you want to see this".

It gets more complicated when it comes to ads and ad revenue, but I believe it's completely possible to design it in such a way that it assumes citizens are adults who can make their own decisions.

[George K]

@Klaus said in Spot the threat to free speech:
it assumes citizens are adults who can make their own decisions.

So, it's doomed to fail, then.

[George K]

@George-K said in Spot the threat to free speech:

@Klaus said in Spot the threat to free speech:
it assumes citizens are adults who can make their own decisions.

So, it's doomed to fail, then.

[Klaus]

The only way of getting people to behave like adults is to let them fail and let them suffer the consequences of their actions.

[Axtremus]

Is TNCR a “publisher” or a “platform”?

[Klaus]

Neither. It's like a biker bar.

But YT and Twitter are more like the market place these days. You can't get heard unless you use them.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Spot the threat to free speech:

Standby by for the principled conservatives to be against this as an aggressive overreach of the administrative state.... there still are a few out there....right?

No, all the principled people are on the left. Just like all the objective, non-tribal people are there.

[jon-nyc]

I’ll even take a pragmatic conservative who realizes that whatever administrative rule-making procedures he puts in place will inevitably be hijacked by the woke left.

[jon-nyc]

There’s a reason principled conservatives don’t like the administrative state, after all.