on Thursday, Trump will sign an executive order aimed at social media companies, darn Constitution

Trump is not exactly an author of any Emancipation Proclamations. Trump implies that he will retaliate against private social media but if he chooses anything remotely constitutional, he may actually have to address issues of fact weighed against his usual lies. But he does need diversions from the over 100,000 dead, and calls to persecute Twitter are likely to blow-up in Trump’s face. Perhaps Trump will resurrect his call for “warning labels” for bad people on Twitter.

On the flight back to Washington, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters President Trump is going to sign some kind of executive order on social media. No further details appear to have been offered, but it comes after he lashed out over fact checks on his tweets.

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) May 27, 2020

At virtual shareholder meeting, Mark Zuckerberg says that Facebook's criteria for policing content should remain limited to avoiding "imminent harm" (@jillfgoldsmith / Deadline)https://t.co/UrYfSLmAUEhttps://t.co/CGqyckfj0i

— Techmeme (@Techmeme) May 27, 2020

(2018)

By analyzing a dataset consisting of 10.1 million U.S. Facebook users, a 2014 study demonstrated that liberal users are less likely than their conservative counterparts to get exposed to news content that oppose their political views. Another analysis of Yahoo! search queries concluded that “more right-leaning a query it is, the more negative sentiments can be found in its search results.”

[…]

The calls for regulating social media and technology companies are politically motivated. Conservatives who support these policies argue that their freedom of speech is being undermined by social media companies who censor their voice. Conservatives who celebrate constitutional originalism should remember that the First Amendment protects against censorship by government. Social media companies are all private businesses with discretion over the content they wish to promote, and any effort by government to influence what social media platforms promote risks violating the First Amendment.

Moreover, the current position of the conservatives are in direct contrast to their positions on “Fairness Doctrine”. As my colleague Tom Wheeler explains here, “when the Fairness Doctrine was repealed in the Reagan Administration, it was hailed by Republicans as a victory for free speech.” Republicans should apply the same standard to both traditional media and the modern day social media. If they believe requiring TV and radio channels to present a fair balance of both sides is a violation of free speech, how can they favor imposing the exact same requirement on social media platforms?

Furthermore, the government intervention that they propose is potentially more damaging than the problem they want to solve. If conservatives believe that certain businesses have enough power and influence to infringe on their freedom of speech, how can they propose government, a much more powerful and influential entity, to enter this space? While President Trump’s administration and a Republican controlled Congress may set policies that would favor conservatives in the short term, they will also be setting a very dangerous precedent which would allow later governments to interfere with these companies and other news organizations in future. If they believe that today’s Twitter has enough power and will to censor them, they should be terrified of allowing tomorrow’s government to do so.

www.brookings.edu/…

Rush Limbaugh praises the president for being "clever" in sharing conspiracy theories: “Trump is just throwing gasoline on a fire here, and he’s having fun watching the flames” https://t.co/XVIoVNeZuD pic.twitter.com/IOdr4uiuhm

— Media Matters (@mmfa) May 27, 2020

Much like folks in DK, taking some things literally but similar things figuratively is at the root of most hide-rating. Today Twitter went stupid again because a professional comedian should know better than a realty-show buffoon IMPOTUS*.

He falsely accused several Members of Congress of treason – a crime which can carry the death penalty – and Twitter was… fine with it.
9/

And to excuse that, they made up ludicrous workarounds like leaving up tweets that were “direct communications” between Trump and other world leaders.
Follow that one…
Trump threatening to nuke some random dude: bad!
Threatening to nuke a foreign leader: no prob!

13/

And so now Trump is doing whatever he wants.
Whether that is vomiting up illegitimate medical claims or that wouldn’t in any way cure you but might actually kill you.
16/

Or inciting people to violate lawful state orders and disregard public safety during a pandemic…

17/

Or falsely accusing someone of murder… and therefore tormenting the grieving spouse of a woman who died tragically of a heart condition.

18/

Or lying about mail-in balloting in an effort to corrupt an election.
Oh, but Twitter put a little disclaimer on those. My goodness, the boldness!
“You can try to rig an election… but not without us adding a footnote! Take that!”
19/

Dear @realDonaldTrump: I told you so. I told you so. I told you so.

You signed into law in 2018 the FISA law you are complaining about today. https://t.co/yGxzaUSwt3

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) May 27, 2020

Rather than “nothing matters,” perhaps the catchphrase for Trump should be “nothing works,” because the stakes are so much higher, and the damage he has wrought is no longer abstract (“eroding democratic institutions”) but a matter of life and death.https://t.co/E3Vrnv0Lk8

— Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) May 27, 2020

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