President Trump signs executive order targeting big tech censorship.

President Donald Trump. 

President Trump has signed an executive order targeting social media companies over the censorship policies. The Hill. The order mostly focuses on section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects tech companies from liability from what their users post and allows them to moderate them as long as they are acting in "good faith". However, the President argues that the tech companies, by censoring, fact checking and even editing posts, are acting as publishers and are not entitled to their 230 protections. The order also orders federal agencies to review their spending on social media. It also says that people will be allowed to report tech companies to determine if they are using unfair or deceptive business practices via the Federal Trade Commissions.   

My Comment:

This action is long overdue. Anyone who is seriously arguing that the major tech companies aren't hopelessly biased against conservative, or even non-woke left, is either lying to you or lying to themselves. The President himself had his posts edited, his account temporarily deleted and had "fact checks" on his opinions. Moderation on Twitter and Facebook disproportionately target right wing voices while left wing voices are amplified. 

This is, of course, a major threat to both free speech and free elections. Though people are right that the 1st amendment doesn't apply to private companies, it's also clear that free speech is under threat. It doesn't matter if the government doesn't censor you if you have no ability to have your voice heard. 

Let's take Alex Jones for an example. Regardless of your opinion on the man, it's clear that he has been basically banned from expressing his opinion and making a living. Though he still has his own website, his posts no longer can go "viral" greatly limiting his profits and his ability to reach an audience for his ideas. In short, the tech companies decided who was going to be a winner and who was going to be a loser and they decided Jones had to go because they didn't like the way he acted. And it has become very clear that Jones was merely the canary in the coal mine as now Twitter is moving against President Trump himself. 

The action of censoring President Trump's opinion on the issue of voter fraud shows that the tech companies are going to extend that policy to anyone that they don't like. It doesn't matter if you are someone like me that only has a few hundred followers, or someone like the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world. If you say something they don't like they will ban you or "fact check" your post. And the fact check will have very little do with reality. With the most charitable take ever you could say that you can't prove that the mail in ballots won't lead to voter fraud as it's not in place yet. But more realistically, of course it will lead to voter fraud! 

Since voter fraud is a major issue in 2020 Twitter is basically censoring President Trump's position, and the position of millions of people in this country. You won't be able to argue that voter fraud is even a thing on Twitter without a fake news "fact check". And you know that the left won't be held to the same standards. If they post a story about "Russian interference", or President Trump's taxes they won't be fact checked at all. This is tipping the scales in favor of the Democrats in 2020 and should be illegal. 

Of course there are questions about how this will even work. It's almost certain that the issue will end up in court and who knows how the Supreme Court will rule. And it's possible that the congressional effort to fix section 230 will fail. This executive order might not change much in the long term. 

The media seems to think that this will hurt President Trump as it will force tech companies to moderate posts even more then they actually do now. While that would be true if they kept their anti-conservative censorship, the obvious work around is that they would have to abide by the spirit of section 230. If they simply changed their policies and stopped acting like a publisher they wouldn't have to moderate everyone's posts. Indeed, that's the whole point, trying to moderate everyone's post for anything that could cause liability and would either force a change in policy or would simply destroy the tech company in question after having to ban most of their usership. That would mean that Twitter either has to change or they will die to competitors like Gab and Parler, which do not censor posts based on their political content.   

Time will tell how it works out. It's unclear how the government will implement this order and it's unclear if it will survive judicial review. But I am glad that President Trump is finally doing something on this issue. I myself have been censored on Twitter due to political bias, having been shadowbanned and I even had to give the company my phone number simply because I was posting tweets in support of the President during his state of the union address. My sincere hope is that it works out and that the tech companies will stop their censorship policies.