Comment by koheripbal
5 years ago
The legal issue is that their legal protection from defamation and libel under section 230 requires them to moderate "in good faith". If they only selective moderate accounts, then that protection may not survive in court.
...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.
There is no requirement under section 230 to moderate content in good faith. Selective moderation does not affect their liability. This law was passed democratically, for exactly this purpose.
>"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."
It's literally written into the law in section 230 (c)(2)(A)...
> 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.
It reads like the specific action taken must be in "good faith" and has nothing to do with selective enforcement. The "Fact check" label also shouldn't fall under "restrict" or "availability".
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My understanding is that (c)(2)(A) is only about liability for the act of moderation itself, e.g. suing Twitter because they banned you. If they did that in bad faith you could hypothetically maybe sue them for it, but there would need to be a cause of action, which there normally wouldn't be.
'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.
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This is absurd. Twitter is a corporation and can choose to present their product as they see fit. And nothing about them is essential. Twitter could go bankrupt and the world would not hurt at all. There are absolutely plenty of ways to disseminate information.
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.
>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.
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.