Weir 1 Christina Weir Mr. Severson English 1102 11 July 2020 Trump, Section 230, and the Unknown Future of Social Media There is an ongoing battle taking place across a different type of battlefield than has yet to be seen: social media. At risk are both the First Amendment rights of United States citizens and the future of intellectual expansion, as members of the alt-Right side fight for the removal or amendment of important statutes in place to protect social media platforms. Through means of censorship, various platforms have successfully navigated potential perils of establishment for almost twenty-five years since the US government passed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Overwhelmingly now, the oppositional Left also calls for the removal of censorship, both sides desiring new regulations to balance the individual bias platforms may exhibit through their current means of removal, obstruction, and prioritization of content. As a result of outstanding call for equality across platform content discretion, President Trump signed the Executive Order on “Preventing Online Censorship” which aims to recall legislation currently in place allowing social media to remain free from certain liabilities. Though Trump’s Executive Order seems to promote right of free speech, the removal of such provision concerning censorship and liability could lead to further regulations, decreased political content, and strengthening presence of political administration and governance across online platforms. The fight between the two main social media-based political groups, referred to commonly as the altRight and the Left, peaked upon the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Tanner Mirrlees examines the political role played by social media in a 2019 article published for the Democratic Communiqué, Weir 2 explaining that the platforms “constitute a political communications battlespace in which a plurality of social actors- from left to right- struggle for recognition and attention, try to organize consent to their ideologies, and seek to influence how people think and behave” (30). Propagated since the 2016 election, these opposing nationalist views have surged conversations surrounding Section 230 of the CDA, particularly addressing potential future implications of the legislature’s statutes which have long allowed social media platforms to perform acts of censorship such as the suspension, expulsion and alteration of content and accounts to avoid liability for such content added by the platforms’ users. Many people believe that Section 230 protects the First Amendment rights of the platforms themselves by allowing them to discern the content they distribute. By requiring censorship, Section 230 also assures that platforms remain devoid of liability, and the removal of such legislation would mean the upheaval of current platforms’ operations. Despite this, many arguments call for the amendment or removal of Section 230 based on potential dangers of online procession amid the online war, and perceived political bias performed by platforms through censorship. Doxing is a tactic of many political activists in the online battle against their enemies. The act of doxing is when a user of a social media platform posts information that both incites and leads to the harassment of another user. To add implication to the argument of Section 230 ratification, Alexander Lindvall expresses in an article for Creighton Law Review, “although doxing may be ‘therapeutic or cathartic’… their activity is surely not protected by the First Amendment…” (10). Already there are two statutes that exist to address the issue of doxing, the Interstate Slaking Statute and the Interstate Communications Statute, however, these statutes are not upheld in court often, as rarely do cases surface for lack of prioritization among cases of online harassment (Lindvall 10). Evolving the laws that surround doxing and hate speech would only call for increased monitoring of individual affairs as content exchange would migrate toward more clandestine means and governing factions would increasingly need access to forms of private communication exchange. Section 230 backs the Weir 3 enforcement of the ISS and the ICS statutes as they pertain to doxing, by exempting criminal activity from the platforms’ evasion of liability. Application of these statutes should ensue, perhaps, not by means of dissolution, but by the installation of social media departments that focus on doxing and other criminal offenses across their platforms. A regional expansion of these departments could allow platform associates to collude with specific law agencies according to area, which would tighten the reigns on users without stripping away any preexisting rights. The induction of such content-specific departments may well be on its way for one of the largest mainstream social media platforms. The Facebook Oversight Board, according to an article in The New Yorker, is an “independent council” which is to be functioning by the end of 2020 and will aim to “guide content-moderation decisions” (Weiner). It is not yet known what rules and regulations Facebook’s new board might furnish, absolve, or continue to enforce. Twitter, another mainstream platform, has taken action to alleviate the spread of hate across its platform, most notably, in the censorship of one of President Trump’s tweets in June of 2020. This intervention, though lawful under Section 230, drew instant criticism from the president who in response signed the Executive Order on “Preventing Online Censorship.” With this order Trump appears to advocate for freedom of speech, signing off on its message that platform censorship “is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic” (The White House), however a document released by the Congressional Research Service’s department of Congress reveals the impracticality of Trump’s order. It denotes several instances in which divisions of government are called to act upon censorship and liability concerns regarding online platforms through unprecedented means, and according to the CRS, “the First Amendment restricts the government’s ability to regulate online speech, and courts would likely apply heightened scrutiny to any regulation that makes distinctions based on the content or viewpoint of the regulated speech” (Brannon et al.). Trump’s order makes minimal alteration to preexisting statutes and makes no immediate alteration of Section 230, yet considerable provisions to this order in the future could dismantle Section 230 entirely. Weir 4 In recent years, the forty-fifth president fought in a court of law against The Knight First Amendment Institution at Columbia University which represented seven individuals whom Trump decided were unworthy of viewing his Twitter account based solely on their opposition to his policies. Trump lost the case in 2019 when the court deemed his account a “public forum,” (Knight Institute v. Trump) yet in the effort to correct violations of civil liberties across online platforms Trump himself participated in the act of doxing with his derogatory mention of Twitter’s ’site integrity’ officer in his new Executive Order. This effort to remove an individual from either their position of employment, position in the community, or position of authority is known as “deplatforming” and can have serious social, mental, and financial repercussions on its victims (Rogers). Despite his own success at ruining reputations, the President himself remains impermeable to the many people calling for his accounts to be banned and deactivated. The questions remain as to why Trump might want to limit the span of online communication and backtrack the successes of technological advancement spun from the statutes implemented in 1996. Should censorship be outlawed, what will happen to the social media platforms upon which US citizens have centered many aspects of their lives for the better half of the last two decades? Should censorship continue, will users turn toward platforms which better appeal to their individual interests? Trump produced an order which acts as a new line of offense against opposition to his authority, and with menial knowledge of its future implications based on the impossibility of reform without further provision, social media and all of its users are left standing vulnerable behind the crumbling wall of Section 230. Weir 5 Works Cited Brannon, Valerie, et al. “Section 230 and the Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship.” Congressional Research Service, 3 June 2020, https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved= 2ahUKEwi83qWFwMvqAhUpmuAKHUKaAoMQFjAQegQIChAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcrsreports. congress.gov%2Fproduct%2Fpdf%2FLSB%2FLSB10484&usg=AOvVaw0ptFup8c78J0qWhzNmpRS x. “Knight Institute v. Trump.” Knight First Amendment Institute of Columbia University. June 2019, https://knightcolumbia.org/cases/knight-institute-v-trump. Lindvall, Alexander J. “Political Hacktivism: Doxing & the First Amendment.” Creighton Law Review, vol. 53, no. 1, December 2019, pp. 1–13. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=a9h&AN=141245437&site =eds-live&scope=site. Mirrlees, Tanner. “The Alt-Right’s Platformization of Fascism and a New Left’s Digital United Front.” Democratic Communiqué, vol. 28, no. 2, July 2019, pp. 28–46. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=ufh&AN=141835838&site =eds-live&scope=site. Rogers, Richard. “Deplatforming: Following Extreme Internet Celebrities to Telegram and Alternative Social Media.” European Journal of Communication, vol. 35, no. 3, June 2020, pp. 213-229. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=edb&AN=144258247&site =eds-live&scope=site. Weir 6 United States, Executive Office of the President Donald Trump. Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship. The White House, 28 May 2020, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidentialactions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/. Weiner, Anna. “Trump, Twitter, Facebook, and the Future of Online Speech.” The New Yorker, July 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/trump-twitter-facebook-and-thefuture-of-online-speech.
