When internet first started, online forum board hosts and the like were scared of being liable for content that their own users posted. They wanted the ability to allow for free speech, but were scared of the liability. If they took down information (e.g. copyright material that someone else posted) they would be considered a "publisher" and then anyone could sue them. If they left it up, then people could sue them for not taking it down.
In order to strike a happy medium, a law was passed saying they could moderate and take down unlawful or malicious content ("material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable"). That passage has now been stretched to basically say, they can take down whatever they want and be free of all liability.
The EO reigns the original law back to the original intent. They can take down unlawful material, for example, and not be sued. However, if they take down content for political reasons, then they lose their special status and can be sued for any content on their website.
Imagine if Reddit took down material that was "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy". I had to use RES because Reddit's default ability to block 100 subs wasn't enough to free the front page from filth.
Seems like they could make a big change by simply removing "otherwise objectionable" from the text. Someone is always going to object, no matter what the subject is. So remove it.
It removes special liability protections afforded to social media companies if they engage in political censorship. In otherwords it opens them up to lawsuits for any content on their website (i.e. any post on twitter from any user makes Twitter fully responsible legally and can be sued or held criminally responsible).
In short, when it goes through (and trust me this will be challenged in the courts because of how big of a deal it is to them) it basically means they can censor political content but if they do they will have to deal with billions of dollars worth of lawsuits.
J.D. pede here. My legal thesis in law school was actually on Section 230 of the CDA, the very law the executive order is affecting. Some of the responses below are not entirely correct or not the entire truth. Plus there is a lot of misinformation by fake news. Basically here is a more in-depth of what the law is and what this executive order is attempting to do barring that it does not fail a constitutional challenge:
-A publisher is an entity that controls the content that they present to a user—Think of CNN. Because they are in control of the content being presented (like a news article), they are legally responsible for it and any fake news that they publish (defamation for example), even if they hire someone else to write it. The less control they exert over the content they publish, the less likely they will be considered a publisher (and less likely to be held responsible for the content).
-In 1996 Congress passed the CDA which includes Section 230. Section 230 was passed for two reasons, to stop the spread of pornography on the internet and at the same time to allow other speech to live freely.
-Section 230 basically stated that any internet platform which hosts other users is not responsible for the content posted by those users (and therefore not considered a publisher). So, if a user were to post leaked naked pictures on Facebook, then Facebook could not be held jointly liable for hosting those pictures EVEN IF THEY DID NOT REMOVE THE PICTURES. The intent by congress was that if we protect these companies from liability from users then they will avoid taking action by limiting and censoring posts and as such, speech.
-However, Section 230 contains a clause which has been the subject of a lot of legal debate. 230(c)(2)(A) provides that even if a social media platform exerts control over material that is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable", then it still cannot be considered a publisher (remember that exerting control over content usually makes you legally responsible for that content).
-The problem is that the clause was almost unequivocally referring to violence and porn, but federal courts (who knows why) began interpreting "otherwise objectional" as anything that a platform finds offensive. As such, social media platforms were able to ban and censor speech just because they found it offensive. Thus, exerting control and still immune under the language of 230(c)(2)(A).
-In addition to the vagueness of the term "otherwise objectionable". Some argued that 230(c)(2)(A) is an explicit condition/clause. In other words, a platform can ban things considered "obscene, lewd, etc..." without being defined as a publisher (exerting control) but as soon as they begin to exert control over content that does not meet these criteria explicitly listed, then they are risking moving into publisher territory and no longer immune from lawsuits based on the content posted on their website.
-All Trump is attempting to do with this executive order is to clarify the interpretation of the law and the enforcement of the law. The executive order is basically saying, if you begin to ban or control content that is not under the list in 230(c)(2)(A) then you're going to be considered a publisher. So social media companies have a choice, they can back off and allow free public discourse to take place on the internet, all the while enjoying their (very generous) lawsuit immunity, or they can exercise their free speech rights of association and ban everything to hell, but then they no longer have the immunity.
If you can understand this then you know more than 99% of lawyers and fake news on the topic. I have a 35-page thesis I will be happy to send you if you really want to become a master on the topic. Let me know if you have any ?'s pede.
It really is a tough call. Many people like me believe that Trump's clarification is legally correct and the lower courts have just botched the law because they failed to do their research when they wrote their decisions (I don't think the Supreme Court would make the same mistake).
However, Trump was smart about the way he (his lawyers) wrote the executive order. He uses the platforms own terms of service as the pretext for what is considered deceptive. This means that if they ban something arbitrarily that doesn't match their own listed guidelines then they are censoring content in "bad faith" and not under the protection of Section 230. This is consistent with certain parts of the previous cases.
Here is the catch though, if I were to advise Twitter's lawyers I would say, tread carefully. If they follow the rules of this executive order then they can walk away as winners. If they challenge it then they risk the opinion of the Supreme Court... the last time the Supreme Court heard a challenge to the CDA was in the late 90's and it invalidated the entire section in argument (Section 223) for using some of the same language used by section 230. I think it's possible that once the court is given jurisdiction (through a challenge) to make a decision on section 230, it could do the same. That could mean no immunity for any platform regardless of whether or not they follow the executive order.
But Trump is objectively lewd, obscene, triggering, objectionable and harassing to legions of left-wing loons, which includes 100% of social media compamy employees. Anything be says, an image of him, a red hat FFS, these people are so unstable they just start shrieking, crying, and trembling uncontrollably. It's a medical disorder, a public health emergency, and should be treated as such.
You’re hella smart man!
When internet first started, online forum board hosts and the like were scared of being liable for content that their own users posted. They wanted the ability to allow for free speech, but were scared of the liability. If they took down information (e.g. copyright material that someone else posted) they would be considered a "publisher" and then anyone could sue them. If they left it up, then people could sue them for not taking it down.
In order to strike a happy medium, a law was passed saying they could moderate and take down unlawful or malicious content ("material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable"). That passage has now been stretched to basically say, they can take down whatever they want and be free of all liability.
The EO reigns the original law back to the original intent. They can take down unlawful material, for example, and not be sued. However, if they take down content for political reasons, then they lose their special status and can be sued for any content on their website.
Imagine if Reddit took down material that was "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy". I had to use RES because Reddit's default ability to block 100 subs wasn't enough to free the front page from filth.
Seems like they could make a big change by simply removing "otherwise objectionable" from the text. Someone is always going to object, no matter what the subject is. So remove it.
It removes special liability protections afforded to social media companies if they engage in political censorship. In otherwords it opens them up to lawsuits for any content on their website (i.e. any post on twitter from any user makes Twitter fully responsible legally and can be sued or held criminally responsible).
In short, when it goes through (and trust me this will be challenged in the courts because of how big of a deal it is to them) it basically means they can censor political content but if they do they will have to deal with billions of dollars worth of lawsuits.
J.D. pede here. My legal thesis in law school was actually on Section 230 of the CDA, the very law the executive order is affecting. Some of the responses below are not entirely correct or not the entire truth. Plus there is a lot of misinformation by fake news. Basically here is a more in-depth of what the law is and what this executive order is attempting to do barring that it does not fail a constitutional challenge:
-A publisher is an entity that controls the content that they present to a user—Think of CNN. Because they are in control of the content being presented (like a news article), they are legally responsible for it and any fake news that they publish (defamation for example), even if they hire someone else to write it. The less control they exert over the content they publish, the less likely they will be considered a publisher (and less likely to be held responsible for the content).
-In 1996 Congress passed the CDA which includes Section 230. Section 230 was passed for two reasons, to stop the spread of pornography on the internet and at the same time to allow other speech to live freely.
-Section 230 basically stated that any internet platform which hosts other users is not responsible for the content posted by those users (and therefore not considered a publisher). So, if a user were to post leaked naked pictures on Facebook, then Facebook could not be held jointly liable for hosting those pictures EVEN IF THEY DID NOT REMOVE THE PICTURES. The intent by congress was that if we protect these companies from liability from users then they will avoid taking action by limiting and censoring posts and as such, speech.
-However, Section 230 contains a clause which has been the subject of a lot of legal debate. 230(c)(2)(A) provides that even if a social media platform exerts control over material that is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable", then it still cannot be considered a publisher (remember that exerting control over content usually makes you legally responsible for that content).
-The problem is that the clause was almost unequivocally referring to violence and porn, but federal courts (who knows why) began interpreting "otherwise objectional" as anything that a platform finds offensive. As such, social media platforms were able to ban and censor speech just because they found it offensive. Thus, exerting control and still immune under the language of 230(c)(2)(A).
-In addition to the vagueness of the term "otherwise objectionable". Some argued that 230(c)(2)(A) is an explicit condition/clause. In other words, a platform can ban things considered "obscene, lewd, etc..." without being defined as a publisher (exerting control) but as soon as they begin to exert control over content that does not meet these criteria explicitly listed, then they are risking moving into publisher territory and no longer immune from lawsuits based on the content posted on their website.
-All Trump is attempting to do with this executive order is to clarify the interpretation of the law and the enforcement of the law. The executive order is basically saying, if you begin to ban or control content that is not under the list in 230(c)(2)(A) then you're going to be considered a publisher. So social media companies have a choice, they can back off and allow free public discourse to take place on the internet, all the while enjoying their (very generous) lawsuit immunity, or they can exercise their free speech rights of association and ban everything to hell, but then they no longer have the immunity.
If you can understand this then you know more than 99% of lawyers and fake news on the topic. I have a 35-page thesis I will be happy to send you if you really want to become a master on the topic. Let me know if you have any ?'s pede.
It really is a tough call. Many people like me believe that Trump's clarification is legally correct and the lower courts have just botched the law because they failed to do their research when they wrote their decisions (I don't think the Supreme Court would make the same mistake).
However, Trump was smart about the way he (his lawyers) wrote the executive order. He uses the platforms own terms of service as the pretext for what is considered deceptive. This means that if they ban something arbitrarily that doesn't match their own listed guidelines then they are censoring content in "bad faith" and not under the protection of Section 230. This is consistent with certain parts of the previous cases.
Here is the catch though, if I were to advise Twitter's lawyers I would say, tread carefully. If they follow the rules of this executive order then they can walk away as winners. If they challenge it then they risk the opinion of the Supreme Court... the last time the Supreme Court heard a challenge to the CDA was in the late 90's and it invalidated the entire section in argument (Section 223) for using some of the same language used by section 230. I think it's possible that once the court is given jurisdiction (through a challenge) to make a decision on section 230, it could do the same. That could mean no immunity for any platform regardless of whether or not they follow the executive order.
But Trump is objectively lewd, obscene, triggering, objectionable and harassing to legions of left-wing loons, which includes 100% of social media compamy employees. Anything be says, an image of him, a red hat FFS, these people are so unstable they just start shrieking, crying, and trembling uncontrollably. It's a medical disorder, a public health emergency, and should be treated as such.
Maybe they should be QUARANTINED
There’s a 1min video of Trump giving a summary of the Executive Order.
https://nypost.com/2020/05/28/trump-signs-executive-order-against-social-media-companies