It won’t hold up in court. That’s not the point.
President Donald Trump’s executive order attempting to change the protections enjoyed by thousands of websites and social media platforms likely won’t achieve its stated goal: fundamentally altering the law that governs how much of the internet works.
But that doesn’t mean it’s useless. The executive order might do markedly little, but it symbolizes a great deal about the president and his understanding of his voters. In short, Trump perceives that his voters care a great deal about purported censorship aimed at conservatives on social media platforms, and wants to signal his resolve to do something about it.
The executive order, issued Thursday, was inspired in part by Trump’s ire at having fact-checks appended to his tweets on voting-by-mail. It takes aim at social media companies and the law that protects them from lawsuits over their moderation practices or user-posted content.
The order is likely to be hamstrung in court, and perhaps even overturned, for myriad reasons. But the fight is the point: It lets Trump show his supporters and fans that he’s taking on “liberals” in Silicon Valley.
Some conservatives view Trump’s efforts to “take on” social media companies as part of an overall narrative in which Trump alone is standing up for them against leftist incursion, National Review editor Charles C. W. Cooke said.
“It’s an example of a cultural power that Trump tries to wield,” Cooke said. “And so he thinks that people will look at him running against Joe Biden and they’ll say, well, I need that guy fight my corner against all of this left-wing cultural power that is unchecked.”
It doesn’t matter that most voters, or even most Trump supporters, aren’t on Twitter.
“Whether or not his voters are on those social media platforms, that willingness [to fight] which he will recount these rallies and his emails and press releases and TV appearances, I think appeals to a lot of people,” Cooke said.
Or as Daniel Castro, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a non-partisan group focused on tech, put it: “The executive order is more bluster than action, but that does not mean it should not be taken seriously.”
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is the portion of federal law that allows thousands of websites to curate, edit, delete and otherwise modify content by their users without fear of massive lawsuits. It created much of the Internet as we know it: Users (that’s you) can post third-party content (YouTube videos, SoundClouds, and Instagram posts) and websites can’t be sued over that content, even if they edit or delete it.
It was written in 1996 with the aim of protecting websites from lawsuits based on the content posted by users. As Sen. Ron Wyden, one of the co-authors of the law, told my colleague Emily Stewart last May, the law had nothing to do with creating “neutral” platforms and everything to do with ensuring that websites could exist as their creators wished.
If you want to post a comment on the conservative website HotAir.com, or on the left-leaning website DailyKos.com, or even InfoWars.com, the administrators of those websites can permit your comment without being worried about getting sued over its contents — or they could edit or delete it.
