Trump's War Against Social Media: What Does it Mean For Future Of Internet?
Trump has signed an executive order that would limit protections for social media companies.
A few days ago we saw one of Donald Trump¡¯s baseless tweets flagged for false claims by Twitter. This wasn¡¯t received well by the president of the United States of America, which was evident from his threats later too.
And now, he has gone ahead and signed an executive order that would limit protections for social media companies.
Reuters/Pexels
Trump's executive order on social media
Today, social media companies in the US are shielded by Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. This act basically states that these companies aren¡¯t really liable for what content their users post. It¡¯s sort of like their safety net.
This executive order argues that tech companies should lose Section 230 protections if they discriminate against people on their platform or limit access without really offering a fair chance of explanation or something that their terms of service don¡¯t clearly reveal.
This order would allow the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to take action against social media platforms when companies limit freedom of speech of users in ways that are not included in their terms of service.
The order basically tasks regulators at the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to form new rules that could release some of those protections, resulting to a series of lawsuits for libel, defamation etc.
Reuters
How will this impact our freedom online
This basically means that social media platforms or internet, in general, could land in deep trouble. The limiting of freedom of speech on social media would result in censorship online and the internet would experience a massive paradigm shift, making the internet not as usable as we find it today.
Platforms would be forced to put a ton of barriers not letting you speak or express what you want, to avoid legal clashes. That¡¯s a big loss for all of us.
Chances are it might not be enforceable
Even though POTUS seems adamant to curtail the easements provided by Section 230, chances of it being enforced by law don¡¯t seem too strong. Experts say that the order is toothless and will be challenged in the court.
ACLU Senior Legislative Counsel Kate Ruane said in a statement, "The president also has no authority to rewrite a congressional statute with an executive order imposing a flawed interpretation of Section 230. Section 230 incentivizes platforms to host all sorts of content without fear of being held liable for it. It enables speech, not censorship.¡±
Reuters
Moreover, as Shirin Ghaffary of Recode puts it, the order violates the First Amendment which actually limits the government -- not Facebook, Twitter or Google -- to not infringe on people¡¯s freedom of speech.
Sure, a company¡¯s specific policies could ban you from the platform, but you won¡¯t go to jail for it. It¡¯s actually Trump who¡¯s being unconstitutional, not Twitter. And this would only go against him to enforce something against the most fundamental rights of a democracy.
