Despite longstanding illegalities of trying to bully social networks, Trump's executive order to kill Twitter's fact-checking will probably be waged through the FCC.
I suspect he'll grant new draconian powers with NO congressional approval whatsoever. "His" FCC will comply, WTF lawsuits will be filed, Twitter shuts up, and he amps up his mail-in ballot propaganda!
My read of the article is that the idea is to remove protections granted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act from social media companies if they engage in "editorializing" user content.
If that really is the case, to pretend that this is straightforward feels somewhat disingenuous. Surely there is a boundary somewhere at which a media platform is no longer simply a provider of an interactive computer service-- though I won't pretend to know where it is.
In my view, the problem with Twitter's action isn't that they engaged in a form of editorializing, it's that (as far as I can tell) they have no explicit policy on how and when they apply the fact-check label. Absent such a policy, it is impossible (ok, maybe just very difficult) to gauge what level of reporting bias is present. If such a policy existed, one could imagine processing a data set matching the policy to determine how closely their actions align with the policy. Absent such a policy, it become a he-said she said argument about bias-- the right will contend Twitter applies the label to them more than the left, and the left will counter that the right lies more and that's why.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 20.9 ms ] threadI suspect he'll grant new draconian powers with NO congressional approval whatsoever. "His" FCC will comply, WTF lawsuits will be filed, Twitter shuts up, and he amps up his mail-in ballot propaganda!
If that really is the case, to pretend that this is straightforward feels somewhat disingenuous. Surely there is a boundary somewhere at which a media platform is no longer simply a provider of an interactive computer service-- though I won't pretend to know where it is.
In my view, the problem with Twitter's action isn't that they engaged in a form of editorializing, it's that (as far as I can tell) they have no explicit policy on how and when they apply the fact-check label. Absent such a policy, it is impossible (ok, maybe just very difficult) to gauge what level of reporting bias is present. If such a policy existed, one could imagine processing a data set matching the policy to determine how closely their actions align with the policy. Absent such a policy, it become a he-said she said argument about bias-- the right will contend Twitter applies the label to them more than the left, and the left will counter that the right lies more and that's why.