Trump Signs Executive Order Targeting Social Media

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: The Wall Street Journal.

Trump Signs Executive Order Targeting Social Media

Measure would seek to limit the broad legal protection that federal law currently provides online platforms

By John D. McKinnon and Rebecca Ballhaus
Updated May 28, 2020 4:42 pm ET

WASHINGTON--President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday seeking to limit the broad legal protection that federal law currently provides to social-media and other online platforms, a move that is expected to draw immediate court challenges.

The order seeks to make it easier for federal regulators to hold companies such as Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. liable if they are deemed to be unfairly curbing users' speech by, for example, suspending their accounts or deleting their posts.

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Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-sign-executive-order-targeting-social-media-11590681930

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[e-mail]
https://twitter.com/johndmckinnon

[e-mail]
https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus

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"Today, I am signing an Executive Order to protect and uphold the free speech and rights of the American people."

Link to tweet

Speech regulations are a dangerous tool to hand a government and have historically been used to retaliate against views government wants to suppress and to boost views it supports. This EO appears to be exactly that type of retaliation.

Link to tweet

[onecent]

1. Dry up and blow away!!!!!

[chowder66]

10. Best sentiment of the day.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

13. Oh, no, it isn't, but I'm on a work computer. I can't say what I really think. NT

[chowder66]

16. I hear ya. : )

I'm a visual person so it was an appealing thought.

[Roy Rolling]

42. There is No Free Speech

Twitter owns the company, they can ban whoever they want—even arbitrarily—as long as they don’t violate laws of discrimination.

They could put an asterisk by every Trump tweet If they want warning that “he’s already told 18,000 lies, this could be one of them”.

[underpants]

2. What a waste of time.

Throwing a fit over this but until recently not really giving much of an F about 100,000 people dead.

[sop]

9. Instead he could have signed an Executive Order mandating face masks in public.

[sakabatou]

3. Translation: I FUCKING HATE PEOPLE WHO USE THE FIRST AMENDMENT TO CRITICIZE ME!

[DENVERPOPS]

17. And more importantly

hypocrits that want to try to legally stop MY rights to criticize them under the same first amendment.........

IF THERE IS ONE WORD THAT IS THE EPITOME OF THE REPUBLICON'S MANTRA, IT IS: HYPOCRISY...........

SECOND WOULD BE THE PSYCHIATRIC TERM: PROJECTION...........

THIRD WOULD BE: SADISTIC PSYCHOPATH TYRANT WANNA-BE despicable pieces of sub-human excrement.......

Any ones I missed? Anyone have any others?????????

And Putin is laughing his ass off every day at how easy it was for him to accomplish destroying the U.S., our elections, and Democracy, without firing one missile or rocket.......

[Saviolo]

4. Ugh.

Link to tweet

John Iadarola
@johniadarola

Adding a tag with information to a tweet is neither censorship nor a 1st amendment violation.

The government shutting down a social media company because it doesn't like it is both censorship and a 1st amendment violation.

[EarthFirst]

5. Targets evil social media; -uses social media to relay the message... nt

[maxsolomon]

6. Telling people you're lying is also Free Speech.

The 1st time he gets put in Twitter Jail (the day after the election), he'll blow a gasket.

[sop]

7. The Social Media EO will be Trump's distraction for this weekend.

Next week he'll legalize Snipe hunting in our National Parks to the horror of animal lovers.

[Miguelito Loveless]

8. Well, since Twitter neither

suspended his account or deleted the post, what's he crying about?

[cayugafalls]

11. He just made it illegal to delete Russian Bot disinformation...

That is what this is all about.

Now Russia can throw all the money into the social media platforms of choice and go all in without worry of being deleted or censored for trying to sway the election.

Just my opinion.

[stopwastingmymoney]

19. This...

ETA, It’s not going to work of course

[Fiendish Thingy]

40. No he didn't

He possibly made it Easier for social media companies to be sued.

[cayugafalls]

44. Thank you for correcting me. I was wrong. This may backfire on him.

Thanks.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

12. Regarding linking to The Wall Street Journal.:

I went with The Wall Street Journal. as the source by default: no one else had the story. Other outlets said that Trump was planning an executive order or that he had announced an executive order. Only The Wall Street Journal. had the story that Trump had signed an executive order.

I also give a lot of weight to this:

The newspaper has won 37 Pulitzer Prizes (as of 2019).

We're not talking Raw Story here.

Here are the authors' Twitter accounts:

https://twitter.com/johndmckinnon

https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus

Two days after Twitter factchecked him for the first time, Trump says he’d shut the platform down if his lawyers could find a way. “I think we shut it down as far as I’m concerned but I’d have to go through a legal process...if it were able to be legally shut down I would do it.”

Link to tweet

[sinkingfeeling]

21. Something being illegal never's stopped him before.

[paleotn]

26. It can't and it won't...

Donnie's spouting bullshit again. Imagine!

[bucolic_frolic]

14. This EO is the latest incarnation of attempted cheating

Rigging public discourse will prove a tricky maneuver, but it will drive MAGAzi fervor and become one of Trump's bases for claiming the election was rigged, unfair, crooked, and invalid.

[Lock him up.]

38. Doesn't matter. States manage the Federal election.

Last edited Thu May 28, 2020, 08:00 PM - Edit history (1)

And there's nothing the corona-orange can do about it except whine (as usual), throw tantrums (as usual), bully (as usual), threaten (as usual), sign BS orders (the House passes laws, not the executive).

States count the votes, the EC elects the CIC, and when he loses, he better resign and tell his lapdog pence to preemptively pardon him of all his Federal Law felonies. On January 20 at noon, he will be a civilian and if he still infects the WH by refusing to leave, the Secret Service can escort him and his corrupt family outside the front lawn's gate (where SDNY cops will await him for they may want to take a DNA sample for his rape case, and serve him a warrant in the Cohen tape(s) case).

Can't wait to see him locked up in a padded cell without his GD phone!

[IronLionZion]

15. The TP shortage is over. Douchebag is using the constitution for TP

“This is simply setting the wheels of law enforcement and regulation in motion against a private company for questioning the president,”

[Initech]

18. And I'll still alert conservatives for dickish behavior when I see it!

I've probably alerted thousands of accounts by now over the last 3 years and I won't stop either.

[Budi]

20. A dangerous tool...

Speech regulations are a dangerous tool to hand a government and have historically been used to retaliate against views government wants to suppress and to boost views it supports.
This EO appears to be exactly that type of retaliation.

[Budi]

22. Zuckerberg advised Trump.

Figures.
Zuckerburg would like it if FB whould be the only propaganda vehicle left standing. 🤬

A means of propaganda like in every other country of dictators.

[Red Mountain]

23. Get ready Supreme Court.......

Cause I think you told us corporations are people, too.

[Amy-Strange]

45. Not to chide, but just to inform...

-

‘Corporations Are People’ Is Built on an Incredible 19th-Century Lie

How a farcical series of events in the 1880s produced an enduring and controversial legal precedent

Adam Winkler
March 5, 2018

Somewhat counterintuitively, American corporations today enjoy many of the same rights as American citizens. Both, for instance, are entitled to the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. How exactly did corporations come to be understood as “people” bestowed with the most fundamental constitutional rights? The answer can be found in a bizarre—even farcical—series of lawsuits more than 130 years ago involving a lawyer who lied to the Supreme Court, an ethically challenged justice, and one of the most powerful corporations of the day...


FROM: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corporations-people-adam-winkler/554852/
======================

[NoRoadUntravelled]

24. Don't be too hard on him.

Melanie bought him a new set of magic markers for Memorial Day to stop him from crying about his bone spurs.
He needed an executive order to try the new markers. He's been practicing all week.

[paleotn]

25. Prelim injuction in....3...2...1....

That shit just won't fly.

[rurallib]

27. I do not believe the previous 44 presidents would have so publicly embarrassed themselves and

made themselves such a laughingstock.

Dipshit Donald.

[Ford_Prefect]

28. If Twitter had enforced their TSO and banned him outright then what???

Would he write an order requiring them to provide a service he had abused and been disqualified from?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

29. Here's a link to the text of the Executive Order

that the most abused, underappreciated, hardest working president of all time, like nothing you've ever seen before, signed.

Trust me, Lincoln got off easy. Very, very easy.

Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship

[smb]

30. Dotard Screws Up Again

If this tantrum were to somehow survive the inevitable court challenge (say, the judge had a stroke, suffered severe head trauma in the resulting fall, took a double dose of opioid painkillers, but somehow made it to the bench...), the upshot would be that Twitter would have to ban him and delete his account in order to avoid liability for all the times he crossed the line between insult and actionable defamation.

[smb]

32. Imagine America With A Few Hundred COVID-19 Cases And Maybe A Dozen Dead...

...if il Doofus had reacted with this speed to that....

[manicdem]

33. Would it affect DU

I'm still a bit confused on what the EO does and would it affect this site?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

34. Barr gets in his two cents:

"These companies grew because they held themselves out as public forums—as free public forums where a variety of voices & diverse voices could come on and be heard," AG Barr said.

"They've now switched & they are using that market power to force particular view points."

Link to tweet

[mahatmakanejeeves]

35. Trump's Order on Social Media Could Harm One Person in Particular: Trump

Walter Shaub Retweeted

Lol - whatever hack lawyer approved Trump's order failed to realize it forces more not less scrutiny of content by turning social media into publishers. No publisher would stand behind Trump's lies & ravings unless they wanted to commit financial suicide

Link to tweet

NEWS ANALYSIS

Trump’s Order on Social Media Could Harm One Person in Particular: Trump

Without certain liability protections, companies like Twitter would have to be more aggressive about policing messages that press the boundaries — like the president’s.

By Peter Baker and Daisuke Wakabayashi
May 28, 2020
Updated 5:54 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — President Trump, who built his political career on the power of a flame-throwing Twitter account, has now gone to war with Twitter, angered that it would presume to fact-check his messages. But the punishment he is threatening could force social media companies to crack down even more on customers just like Mr. Trump.

The executive order that Mr. Trump signed on Thursday strips liability protection in certain cases for companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook for the content on their sites, meaning they could face legal jeopardy if they allowed false and defamatory posts. Without a liability shield, they presumably would have to be more aggressive about policing messages that press the boundaries — like the president’s.

That, of course, is not the outcome Mr. Trump wants. What he wants is to have the freedom to post anything he likes without the companies applying any judgment to his messages, as Twitter did this week when it began appending “get the facts” warnings to some of his false posts on voter fraud. Furious at what he called “censorship” — even though his messages were not in fact deleted — Mr. Trump is wielding the proposed executive order like a club to compel the company to back down.

It may not work even as intended. Plenty of lawyers quickly said on Thursday that he was claiming power to do something he does not have the power to do by essentially revising the interpretation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the main law passed by Congress in 1996 to lay out the rules of the road for online media. Legal experts predicted such a move would be challenged and possibly struck down by the courts.

{snip}

https://twitter.com/peterbakernyt

https://twitter.com/daiwaka

You're going to hear a lot about Section 230 today. Here is an explainer about what it is, why it matters and why it may, again, be under threat. (Orginally published in August)

Link to tweet

[Ford_Prefect]

36. Weren't there reports that this would lead to Trump accessing personal user info?

That there are invasive provisions that allow the reading of your social media use?

[yaesu]

37. this is what fascist pigs concern themselves with while hundreds of thousands die. nt

[mahatmakanejeeves]

39. Appeals court ruling suggests little legal traction for Trump's anti-Twitter campaign

Appeals court ruling suggests little legal traction for Trump's anti-Twitter campaign

Link to tweet

[keithbvadu2]

41. Right wingers whined that Obama was supposedly legislating by EOs.

Right wingers whined that Obama was supposedly legislating by EOs.

They don't seem to mind this by Donald?

[Yavin4]

43. You know what's truly galling about this. If Presidents Clinton and Obama signed an EO forcing AM...

radio to give air time to both sides of a political debate, there would have been howls upon howls of outrage, but guess what, Clinton and Obama would have had some justification since the radio broadcast spectrum is limited and staion owners are licensed by the federal government.

Unlike the internet which operates with no such limitation. Don't like Twitter and Facebook? Start your own damn platform. Don't like every talk station being home to right wing nut jobs? Too bad. It's a free market.

Make that make sense.

[Brainfodder]

46. He thinks he can save his accounts & their spewed BS via EO?

This smells like forcing Twitter and Suckbook to NOT filter?

What's going on that would prompt such a thing?

E-L-E-C-T-I-O-N

Walking dick move strikes again!

[Shoonra]

47. If Twitter users vote . . . .

There are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of Americans who use Twitter, and if all (or most) of them respond to Trump's attempt to manipulate Twitter by pushing back at the polls in November, that could tip the election against Trump.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

48. "This is just noise" designed to divert attention from his incompetent handling of the epidemic.

BoringButVeryNastyHat Retweeted

The expert quoted in this article has it right: “This is just noise.” Yet more BS designed to divert attention, in this case from his incompetent handling of the epidemic. Has no chance in court, nothing but noise.

Link to tweet

[mahatmakanejeeves]

49. Matt Gaetz is on it.

BoringButVeryNastyHat Retweeted

Matt Gaetz tries to draw a comparison to Russian Election interference, which he calls a hoax, and Twitter fact checking the President. He calls it “domestic election interference” and says he’ll be filing a complaint with the FEC tomorrow

Link to tweet

[Skittles]

50. because he cannot have his critics imprisoned or worse

what a fascist snowflake he is

fuck him and ANYONE who supports him