Trump vs Twitter

President Trump has a point when he attacks twitterfor flagging his posts. But it reeks of hypocrisy. 

The social media platforms have to date enjoyedpretty much a license to print money existence with very little in the way of acorresponding social responsibility. 

Under a 1996 American law website operators—unliketraditional publishers—cannot generally be held responsible for content bytheir users. They are effectively a digital wall upon which the public pastefly posts. The social media sites argue that they have no more control of thoseposts than does the owner of a brick wall. 

Of course, the brick wall owner has the right totear down flyers which deface his property or which they consider morally orpolitically repugnant. Twitter, Facebook, etcetera, have fought against thistraditional solution; mainly because their economic model requires a largenumber of controversial posts to attract viewers and advertisers. 

The result has been a backlash against social mediasites as they have become a legal safe haven for  lies, hate speech,conspiracy theories, incitement to violence, racism and libel.   

Several governments have passed legislation toforce social media giants to remove hate speech from their platforms. TheGerman Bundestag in January 2019 started to enforce a law that gives networks24 hours to eject “obviously illegal“ postings. If they fail to do so, theplatform providers face fines of up to $50 million. The British Parliamentindicated that it would follow the German example. Other countries such asRussia and Vietnam, and even India, have introduced similar legislation, exceptthat their definition of hate speech and fake news extends to criticism of thegovernment, thus placing Facebook and Co in the on enviable position ofbecoming government censors or lose their commercially valuable position ofglobal providers.

The social media giants are reluctantly making someefforts to comply with this backlash while at the same time fighting for freespeech rights and their claim to digital wall status. It should be added thatPresident Trump’s main target, Twitter, is headed by Jack Dorsey, who is anactive Democrat who contributes generously to the American Civil LibertiesUnion. 

All the above is the context in which Donald Trumphas signed his executive order withdrawing protection if a social media networkedits posts with a warning or label. 

The decree came about because Twitter posted awarning notice on two of the president’s recent tweets—one related to postalballots and the second about suppressing race riots in Minneapolis. They nearlydid the same with his conspiracy murder theory involving former Congressman JoeScarborough. 

Trump’s decree was clearly the result of what heregarded as a personal attack on him by a social media company run by an avowedliberal. If Twitter had attached the same warning notices to a Biden tweet, thepresident would have been retweeting them to his 80 million followers. 

I personally agree that the social media platforms should be subject to the same legal restrictions as the traditional media. But this should be balanced with the right and responsibility to remove offensive postings and attach warning notices—regardless of the source. 

Tom Arms is a regular contributor.