Trump’s Latest Attack on Section 230 Is Really About Censoring Speech
Right then. Twitter added a fact-check label to a Trump tweet about mail-in voting and now the President of the United States is threatening to shut down social media platforms entirely. This is fine. Everything is completely normal and fine.
The target of his ire is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which is genuinely one of the most important pieces of internet legislation ever written. If youve ever wondered why Facebook can take wildly inconsistent stances on fact-checking without getting sued into oblivion this law is why. It says platforms cant be held liable for content their users post.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been explaining this for years but apparently their excellent work hasnt reached the Oval Office. Without Section 230 every comment section every forum every social network would either shut down or become so heavily moderated that nothing remotely controversial could ever be posted.
Heres the bit that makes me want to bang my head against my desk: weakening Section 230 would result in MORE content moderation not less. If platforms become liable for everything users post theyre going to crack down hard. Conservative content would get hit just as hard as anything else probably harder given how much of it dances on the edge of terms of service.
The executive order he signed is constitutional nonsense according to basically every legal expert who isnt on his payroll. The executive branch cant just rewrite a law through executive order. Thats not how any of this works as they say on the internet. But it plays well for the base and generates news cycles which seems to be the actual point.
The ACLU has already come out against this. So have tech policy experts across the political spectrum. The irony is that Trump and his supporters who claim to care about free speech are cheering on government intervention to control what private platforms can and cannot moderate.
The government using its power to punish platforms for editorial choices is quite literally the opposite of free speech. Its the government trying to control what private entities say and host. If a bakery can refuse to make a cake then Twitter can add a label to a tweet. Consistency matters.
Anyway. Thats where we are. The president is mad about a label on his tweet and hes threatening the legal foundation of the internet over it. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
