It can’t be all perfectly achieved, but to do nothing, as they were before, could be now determined to be a worse case than providing these annotations to flagrant misuse by the highest impact profile that they can’t do away with entirely.
So what?
There’s no law prohibiting these types of businesses from supporting a political candidate. They could plaster a huge “Vote For X” banner at the top of every person’s profile. Don’t like it? Don’t use it.
It’s not like Twitter is tax-exempt which would prohibit it from endorsing candidates like Churches.
It's within their rights to do take these actions, fact checks and hiding/deleting tweets, to protect their ecosystem. If it is questionably legal because it may influence the election, then I haven't seen the law it is breaking. I see a better argument for showing Twitter promoting Trump's feed to drive clicks as an in kind donation which could quickly break legal campaign donation limits.
Twitter has taken a stand here and I do think they should apply their policies evenly. Will they effectively apply this to everything or even have the capacity built out now to do so? I doubt it. They are a business who needs user engagement to drive profit from ads. If they constrain their most clicked tweets it could lower their revenue even if initially those tweets get attention for being removed.
...but I think a greater concern we can all agree on, is that for the type of communications that Twitter does - Twitter is effectively a monopoly. The people being censored here can't even themselves go to any alternative platform, because there's really no other platform at that scale for that content format.
...that's a bigger problem, because it gives Twitter the power to shape global communications unilaterally. Something no corporation should have the power to do.
I think, broadly, that censorship should be regulated by democratically elected bodies - not corporations.
>"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." This federal law preempts any state laws to the contrary: "[n]o cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section."
What about setting up a blog on whitehouse.com? Most normal people can't get the same audience, but Trump's not normal.
>If they only selective moderate accounts, then that protection may not survive in court.
Even assuming there was a service moderating by purely political guidelines, I don't see how 230 would stop applying. Otherwise, a lot of websites will be screwed. For instance, any website run by a political party that allows comments.
>that's a bigger problem, because it gives Twitter the power to shape global communications unilaterally. Something no corporation should have the power to do.
The solution to a monopoly abusing its power isn't to write piecemeal law curtailing things as they come up. The solution is to get rid of the monopoly (breaking it up, making it so competitors join the market, etc).
But this order isn't about monopolies. It's a party plank and rallying cry.
It's not only acceptable but actually ethically correct to hold those with more power to higher standards of responsibility.
It's therefore not only acceptable but actually ethically correct to enforce these rules more proactively against the President of the United States than some Russian bot account.
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of — 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
...and that specific requirement has been specifically referenced in Trump's recent executive order.
Twitter is not tax-exempt but is certainly lawsuit-exempt to a large degree. The entire reason twitter has not be sued into oblivion for the actions of it's users is because of the protections Section 230[1] grants them.
But here is the pinch. Section 230 protection applies only as long as you act as platforms for 3rd party speech. But when they start plastering "Vote for X" banners on their websites of their own violations, they go from being platforms for 3rd party speech to 1st party publishers. That effectively removes the Section 230 protections twitter enjoys.
I much as I hate to say it, Trump might be right this once. Twitter has stopped being a neutral platform enforcing consistent policies for quite some time now.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
Twitter only has about 150 million daily active users. That's 1/3 of the population of the USA. There is no way in hell Twitter could ever be considered a monopoly when less than 2% of the world's population even uses their platform actively.
These companies have become, for many, infrastructural. For these companies (who also sell advertising) to take these kinds of actions would essentially be them bypassing campaign finance rules to give MASSIVE contributions of free advertising to candidates. I think its fair to argue that that would be unacceptable interference.
That's not at all how section 230 works. Section 230 protections. Section 230 provides protection from liability over what their users post. Whatever content they have of their own on their site is completely out of scope as far as section 230 goes.
You'll say one thing is "ethically correct", and someone else will say the exact opposite thing is "ethically correct".
Neither of you is right, and neither of you is wrong.
If it hasn't, does this mean they are free to ban every conservative viewpoint from their platform, like T_D does for liberal ones? If not, why are we letting T_D behave in such a way?
Given limited resources, don't you think it's undeniably correct to direct those resources where they are more effective?
Personally I think they are just trying to call out a moron. But so what if you are trying to "interfere" with the election. Corporations are allowed to interject their own beliefs and politics too
Example 1 - Drumming up support for a war with Iran. No it's not correct to direct resources to where they are most effective. (According to me.)
Example 2 - Trying to get homeless people in SF back on their feet. Yes, direct resources where they are most effective. (Again, according to me.)
But in example 1 if we ask the same question to a war hawk in congress, they'll give you the exact opposite answer. In example 2 if you ask Ayn Rand, again you'll get a different answer.
No one is objectively right or wrong in any of these cases.
It's funny. I went out of my way to de-politicize the question in order to further the discussion and you promptly re-politicized it in order to muddy it. I suspect it's because you know exactly what I'm getting at. You've avoided the core question no less than 3 times already.
I'll try one more time. Please resist the temptation to play word games or make it political:
If Twitter has limited fact-checking capabilities is it not correct — regardless of politics — to direct those resources where they are more effective?
Therefore (again, regardless of politics), Twitter's actions follow perfectly reasonable logic: that Trump's Tweets would face more scrutiny than say, mine.
Thus, your claim that "the rules are being enforced selectively" can easily be accounted for by Occams Razor: It makes perfect sense that more visible accounts face more scrutiny. It would be highly illogical for Twitter to do otherwise.
That's correct. Luckily, objectivity is not necessary.
But should it be illegal? IMO -- no. If this is the hill that some company wants to die on, let them try. Why not?
Thought experiment: If there was a political candidate running on a platform to destroy the internet, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for internet companies to vouch for the competition.
'gnopgnip may be referring to the much broader liability shield, for the content that you do not remove, which is provided by (c)(1) and has no good-faith requirement. That is Twitter's main "legal protection from defamation and libel" that you mention above.
Trump's executive order suggests that the (c)(1) liability shield could go away if you don't meet the (c)(2) good-faith requirements, which I gather is not considered a strong legal position.
It is not.
That is all.