Over the past few days Twitter has found the courage to stand up to Trump and explicitly fact-check and mark his Twitter rants. Predictably, Trump has responded by threatening to use his perceived “imperial” power to retaliate. While he whines about his first-amendment rights being violated (which does not match constitutional muster on at least two counts), he also signed an edict that would make social media platforms liable for the content their users post.
Meanwhile, at Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg expressed his displeasure with Twitter’s actions. Over the past year he has been kissing up to Trump by meeting with him several times and then exempting only political advertising on his platform from being marked or removed for containing blatant lies. This is probably not surprising given the amount of money the Republican dark money groups are spending on Facebook ad-lies this election year.
Trump’s first-amendment rights would not have been violated, even if Twitter had removed his provably false tweets or even his entire Twitter account. As long as Twitter is a private company they can set the rules for who can use their platform.
However, Twitter did not remove Trump’s tweets. They simply marked them as false with a link to information that is supported by evidence and can be verified. By any standard, telling Twitter they cannot put a link to real information next to a false tweet is a violation of Twitter’s first-amendment rights! This is doubly true, because Trump was acting as a government official when he demanded his retaliatory restrictions.
But perhaps more intriguing is thinking through the possibilities of what will happen if Trump is successful in making his proposed changes to social media content liability and his bid is declared constitutional by the unqualified sycophantic judges Moscow Mitch has rammed through the Senate during Trump’s tenure.
As usual, Trump has not thought through the ramifications of his retaliation. If successful, it will force the social media platforms to start heavily monitoring and restricting their content or risk libel lawsuits. Because most of Trump’s tweets and posts contain not just false information, but information that can cause harm to the reader, others, or both all the social media platforms will have to mark or remove those tweets and posts to protect themselves from lawsuits and potentially serious monetary damages.
If Facebook continues to accept money from many of their current paid-content sources they risk being sued by the targets of those libelous ads. After all, accepting money for an ad’s placement puts platforms like Facebook in an even more precarious legal position than with unmonitored accounts (whose content they also will be responsible for). What will happen to Facebook’s revenue stream if all those dark money ads promoting lies and unsupported insinuations against Trump’s political rivals have to be turned down or withdrawn?
Poor Mark Zuckerberg; what Hell did Jack Dorsey create for you by standing up and holding Trump accountable? And to Jack Dorsey… THANK YOU for having the courage to do what others in power have been too cowardly to do. I hope you continue in your resolve and expand your reach.