HistoryMinor
Well-known member
You guys won't be cool with this once a Democrat uses it to go after the incel hackers known as 4chan.
Executuve Order for Social Media.
- Thread starter Chaos Marine
- Start date
The democrats have already gone after the chans in the past and 4 chan is currently being monitored by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. Your basically talking about some thing that happened what close to 20 years ago maybe more if you count the clinton years because I'm pretty sure he went after the chans then too.
Your essentally talking about some thing that is old news man, I mean we already have mass deplatforming, taking away fincial services based on politicl alienment and other much worse stuff happening to concervatives and moderates. The cats out of the bag man much worse cats have come out of said bag since then.
your argument is that we wont like some thing the democrats have already done, and are currently doing when it happens again in the future. When their already doing stuff that is a lot worse and a whole lot more legally questionable.
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
I was under the impression that this EO was Trump laying down an enforcement standard of the safe harbor protections, as these laws already have definitions of publisher and platform that are mutually exclusive. And these companies, at least with Facebook, literally operate under both categories simultaneously, using platform protections to divest themselves of liability, but publisher protections to keep their moderation practices.
Like, Facebook's actually been taken to court to try to re-instate some page that was banned, and argued that it would be compelled speech and thus in violation of the 1st Amendment, outright calling themselves a publisher while doing so, but the entire point of the safe harbor protections is that the content is not the platform's speech. So basically this EO is saying that you get one set of legal protections, not both. Either you're a platform that isn't liable, but doesn't get protections against compelled speech, or you're a publisher who can freely decide allowed content, but is legally liable for what is present.
Which is how the law, as written, is supposed to work already, this is a matter of declaring its enforcement as such in a particular way. Which is fairly well established Executive Order territory, if only because far more egregious non-compliance shit has been gotten away with in the past.
Like, Facebook's actually been taken to court to try to re-instate some page that was banned, and argued that it would be compelled speech and thus in violation of the 1st Amendment, outright calling themselves a publisher while doing so, but the entire point of the safe harbor protections is that the content is not the platform's speech. So basically this EO is saying that you get one set of legal protections, not both. Either you're a platform that isn't liable, but doesn't get protections against compelled speech, or you're a publisher who can freely decide allowed content, but is legally liable for what is present.
Which is how the law, as written, is supposed to work already, this is a matter of declaring its enforcement as such in a particular way. Which is fairly well established Executive Order territory, if only because far more egregious non-compliance shit has been gotten away with in the past.
President Obama was actually relatively conservative in the extent of executive orders issued, something that *really* pissed off a lot of people on the left who felt that Obama should be just as aggressive as President Bush had been before him, just "on our side".
President Trump, on the other hand, has issued roughly half as many executive orders (121) in under two years than Obama and Bush each issued in all eight of their years (291 and 276 respectively). Regardless of one's opinion on the appropriateness of those orders, it is a clearcut fact that Trump is a huge, HUGE fan of executive orders.
ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
121*2=242...
bit off half as many.
still lots in not the end of his first term though, will give you that.
not the most executive orders ever issued by a President IIRC.
bit off half as many.
still lots in not the end of his first term though, will give you that.
not the most executive orders ever issued by a President IIRC.
There's nothing wrong with Executive Orders, so long as you stay within your lane. Obama using it to shove through his policies that he couldn't possibly get through Congress was the problem. I don't know what Trump has done with a 121 orders, so I'm sure we'll find at least a few that bypass Congress in the short term, but from what I have seen, Trump has mostly stayed within his own lane.
LMB The Mun
Well-known member
I am absolutely not a fan of the government crowbaring their way into social media like this. Power that a government takes like this is not power they'll give up, easily.
Gov. needs to keep their booger hooks off of it.
Gov. needs to keep their booger hooks off of it.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
That is no longer the case in a world where mimetic weaponry is already in the wild as it were...
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
No, it won't. Goggle is one of those 'structural monopolies', which means it can't be taken down. The only way you can take it down a few pegs is to basically turn it into the equiv of a power company.
ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
I suspect the anti-trust investigation might decide that as well...
or it might decide that Google is a shit and DuckDuckGo is the clear superior for utility status.
or it might decide that Google is a shit and DuckDuckGo is the clear superior for utility status.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
That won't happen because breaking Google up like that would be... catastrophic... from an internet economy standpoint (and if the internet economy has problems, the physical economy has problems). If I was President, I would ensure that the various consumer algorithms were outright banned with a percentage-based fine levied on anyone that is using them. We're talking low double-digit percentages here like 10-20%.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
That won't work because that would cause a major capital run by the other businesses. If Google was nationalized, then they might be next and you'll have a capital flight like you wouldn't believe. Think the 1929/1930 bank runs but not simply limited to banks...
Oh, and the words 'democratically controlled' and 'corporation' don't mix well.
Two things to note.
The first is that the Antitrust investigations are into Alphabet, of which Google is but a part.
Second... I think you can pretty safely break up the various Google things without doing damage to the internet. There's no reason that, for instance, Google's Web Based Office Suite (Google Docs) needs to be in the same corporate structure as their Ad company and search engine. They're not intrinsically linked, well, save for their purpose of data gathering on consumers to feed to the ad machine. Likewise their email service (Gmail) need not be linked to their streaming video service (Youtube). When people talk about "breaking up Google", that's what they're talking about breaking up, having Youtube, Google Docs, Google Search, and Adsense all be their own separate things that cannot collude to drive other people out of those markets.
Google is NOT a natural monopoly. I mean, you can see that simply by looking at web based email providers, of which there are still MANY. Yes, search does seem to trend towards having a dominate player, but that dominate player can change over time, and even with Google's near monopoly on search, they DO have competitors there. Meanwhile in other Google areas, like Office Suite, they've hardly made a scratch on the industry standard Microsoft Office, which has been pivoting towards doing everything Google Docs does but with integration with the much more powerful and better desktop Office programs.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
No, with anything related to the internet, the economies of scale work in Google's favor. Breaking Google up will only allow it to reform again.