Constitutional Law, Free Speech, Media, Politics

Trump Threatens To “Shut Down” Social Media Companies

donald_trump_president-elect_portrait_croppedI have a column criticizing Twitterfor its labelling of tweets from President Donald Trump as presumptively false. Twitter has yielded to demands in Congress to censor and regulate political speech.  In signature style, however, Trump promptly bulldozed the high ground in the controversy by threatening to close down social media companies through retaliatory regulations.  The First Amendment was written to bar that very authority in either the President or Congress or both.  The President cannot be the putative victim of private censorship while claiming the authority to engage in government censorship.  In fairness however Democratic leaders have threatened such a regulatory crackdown in the past. The coverage on Trump’s threat telling omits the fact that Democratic leaders and presidential candidates have made the same threat in the past.

Trump went on Twitter to warn social media giants that the federal government could “strongly regulate” or “close them down” if they continue to “silence conservative voices.” 

Some of us who have long criticized Twitter, Facebook and other companies for bias and speech regulation. However, such private speech regulation presents a difficult “Little Brother” problem under our Constitution, which is focused on state action.  Ironically, Trump is suggesting a more chilling prospect of using government power to retaliate against companies due to their bias.  That is neither nuanced nor difficult. It would constitute a core violation of the First Amendment.

The President tweeted “Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that happen again.”

Again, I have been a long critic of these companies and their policies. However, this threat is chilling and wrong.  It is a circular call for retaliatory regulation to deter the viewpoint bias.  

What is particularly bizarre is that the President was winning in this fight.  Truth will come out.  Many commentators, even some opposed to Trump, raised concerns over the action.  This is precisely what Justice Louis Brandeis meant in his concurring opinion in Whitney v. California (1927) when he declared “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

The President has long struggled with the core values of the free press and free speech, even when those values work to his own advantage. His original objections against Twitter were well-founded and compelling.  He then assumed the very same abusive position as the company in seeking to limit or regulate speech. The difference is that he was speaking as the head of the Executive Branch. That is precisely what the First Amendment was designed to protect against.  That is not the “Little Brother” problem. That is the “Big Brother problem.”

 

131 thoughts on “Trump Threatens To “Shut Down” Social Media Companies”

  1. Why anyone even has a TV is beyond me. Life is so much better without newspapers and TVs

  2. Twitter is increasingly under the control of CCP agents, quislings, and useful idiots
    all you people who whined about Russia Russia Russia and their small FB ad buy, had better be ready for the PRC to show how it’s really done, in this election cycle. and if Joe wins because of Chinese Communist meddling, well, I promise there will be hell to pay. Although that’s obviously the plan in some Democrat quisling quarters already, isnt it?

    We’re going to see who the traitors really are

    https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3940206

    TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A White House petition was created last week after news broke that the Twitter accounts of Chinese dissidents started to disappear after a controversial Chinese-American artificial intelligence (AI) expert was hired to serve on the company’s board.

    On May 11, Twitter announced in a press release that it was hiring Li Fei-Fei (李飛飛), an AI expert and former vice president of Google, to its board of directors as a “new independent director” with immediate effect. Li quit Google in 2018 after a trail of leaked internal emails revealed that she appeared to be more concerned about the public relations damage to Google’s image if news broke about the company’s work on Project Maven than the ethical issues raised by over 3,000 Google employees.

    Project Maven is a U.S. Department of Defense AI project that seeks to use the technology to help military drones select targets from video footage.

    During her tenure at Google, there is no public record of Li objecting to the controversial Project Dragonfly, which was meant to be a search engine that would suit China’s censorship rules, as she opened an AI research facility in Beijing.

    When she took the helm of Google’s new AI center in Beijing, Li was quoted in Chinese media as using the CCP slogan “stay true to our founding mission” and said that “China has awakened.” In addition, Li allegedly has ties to a student association that is affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) United Front, according to Radio Free Asia.

  5. Well there you have it. We’ll see if there’s any movement toward justice, and if there is, we need to start a campaign to personally attack republicans in power with whatever issue they won’t properly address that is ongoing against us.
    Then, when their persona or personal life or whatever atrocity has been widely slammed down upon us meets face to face with the reality of the Reps in power – something will be done. Yes, when it hits them personally it’s not a fairy tale anymore. Imagine that.

  7. Google just changed the search results on Trump twitter today…
    Amazing

  8. While the USG cannot censor political-opinion voices (there are exceptions, such as death threats, suborning murder, treason and other lawbreaking), the USG would be within its powers to institute a Fact Checking Office, and counter deceitful infowarfare through its own publications. A FCO could also encourage audience abandonment of sources it can show are engaging in deceptive infowarfare.

    That kind of “truth warfare” is not censorship, and in my mind would be allowable, in a hedonistic media environment where deceptive campaigns are rampant, well-funded, and professionally-executed….often at the hands of foreign adversary-nations and their trained intelligence services.

    1. A Fact Checking office. Who gets to run it, Peter Sztrok?

      1. Better to give a name and official purpose to such an Office. Strzok and McCabe ran their own unregulated, de facto propaganda op under the guise of counter-intel. Lucky we have an IG such as Horowitz in the fact-checker role.

        My point is simply that, government should not turn a blind eye toward deception ops under some misguided stretch of the 1st Amendment. Our legal system and science community have numerous, strict prohibitions on fraudulent claims. The “political-opinion” sphere has to be more forgiving of disagreements over facts owing to incompatible perspectives — fine.

        But, a well-informed public composed of critical-thinkers weighs in favor of aggressively fighting deceptive ops, and no actor is enjoined from truth warfare.

        1. If you think the science community is strictly prohibited from fraudulent claims you live in a fantasy world. Peer review is an ongoing joke. Censorship has been front and center for decades. Political sway is ever present because big money is attached to it.

          The legal community is a standing fraud and everyone knows it, or should by now. For a couple of decades it has degraded into a crime. Now they do it front and center on the national stage. They even change congressional seats and the power balance. It’s corrupt all the way down to locally. The punishment is nearly always not present in the least.

          We see the same ongoing garbage in social media, it’s attendant functions of credit cards, payments processing, hosting services, gofundme types of participation, and many other associated platforms.

    3. information warfare using the tools of the open society against the United States has been part of the PRC’s doctrine and stragtegy for decades. Now, they’re getting very very good at it.

      https://publications.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/2263.pdf

      And with all the Chicom quislings, running dogs, and useful idiots in America, the center will not hold. This is a prediction.

  9. The threats are too late and too weak – Democrats like Hillary got her 31 other critters of congress together and threatened ABC with pulling their broadcast license if they didn’t modify and delay a movie they made about slick willie skipping over 6 easy chances to take down bin laden. ABC complied with Hitlery.
    All the libturds applauded. After all, without lies and total control of media…

    The social platforms claim neutrality and benefit from section 230, not mentioned in the article. Wow big surprise.
    They act like Lois Lerner’s IRS and everyone knows it.

    Republicans had better play dirty hard and fast and get the right outcome, then ban and silence the critics and jail some. If they do all that we might get back to even handed, but I doubt it, so they need to do it anyway. Then every six months, do it again, or quarterly.

  12. JT:

    “It is akin to denouncing those without fire detectors by threatening to burn down their homes.”
    *****************************
    On the other hand, I think it more like the Allies shutting down Goebbels in 1945 but you say potato and I say potato. Propaganda isn’t free speech; it’s suppression of truth by false communication. No country can tolerate that on a massive scale. At its core, it’s fraud: I tell you something that you rely upon and you act in reliance on it. It turns out not only to be false but a direct benefit to me at your or someone else’s expense. Is that protected free speech? Try convincing a court that it’s Constitutional. And as for the argument that subsequent punishment trumps prior restraint, do you think any judge convinced that a massive fraud would be perpetrated on the public at large with massive negative societal consequences would think twice about enjoining that “speech”?

    One of my favorite works of literature is Ibsen’s play “An Enemy of the People,” that portrays a town economically tied to the fortunes of a natural spring and bath works that brings in both tourists and much needed revenue. It is well-promoted and publicized which inures to the fortunes of the local business and labor segments of the community. Dr. Stockman, the town’s medical officer, learns that the baths are tainted with lethal bacteria and acts to stop the influx of tourists by disclosing the threat to the detriment of the businesses who rely on it. He is the protagonist of the play and learns the lonely existence of such a stand.

    But Imagine for a moment the town stops Dr. Stockman from disclosure and expands its publicizing of the deadly attraction to hold its revenue stream intact by publishing a national Facebook ad to extol the virtues and health benefits of their baths. Tell me what you would do as the judge hearing the case if presented with the choice between prior restraint and subsequent punishment.

    For me, it’s an easy call.

  13. I think these companies claim immunity from liability on the ground that they are simply neutral boards where different views can be posted. I am fine with that. I also like the idea of removing their special privileges when they begin shaping the narratives by selective editing. Do or say whatever you want but face the same legal risks we face.

  14. “Hurry on down to Vietnam!
    Cause it’s one..two..three..
    What are we fighting for?
    Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn.
    Cause it’s five..six..seven..
    Open up the Pearly Gates!
    Ain’t no time to wonder why..
    Whoopee we’re all gonna die.”

  15. Last night I saw the Governor of Texas talk about the mail in ballot problems in his state. Remember Trump was blocked for not telling the truth about mail in ballots. The govenor challenged people to go to twitter and tweet something about mail in ballot problems. I found out by searching that Nevada is currently in the throws of an vote by mail problem because of a primary in a few weeks. There have been over 200,000 complaints of people getting ballots with not their names on them. I rarely tweet. So i made it very short. Nevada currently having voting by mai problems. Sure enough my account and aol e mail were down. Is it just coincidence. Dont know.

  16. Why not quote the President in context? Why three word snippets?

  17. Is it political speech to falsely accuse someone of murder? Or to falsely accuse a deceased person of having had an extramarital affair?

    1. Scarborough went on Don Imus in 2003 and admitted to the affair and killing the woman. Is Trump just repeating what Scarborough has already said?

    2. Nobody knows if it’s false. A lot of people believe it’s true.
      It may in fact be true.
      We need an investigation, a real one.
      Not a fraud criminal macabre examiner let off the hook for the unthinkable and a sleeping security guard and a laughable “undiscovered medical condition” after the death.
      So yes, in that case, it is very much free speech and a yearning for justice.

    3. You actually can ‘accuse somebody of murder’ if the murder actually took place. Young 28 year old girls don’t normally drop dead sitting in a powerful, well-known congressman’s office. It’s not like the family has ever come out in full support of Joe Scarborough. Just because Joe Scarborough had an alibi doesn’t mean he couldn’t have anything to with her death. Bottom line, despite the evidence, or lack thereof, Trump’s statement is an ‘opinion’, not a ‘lie’. Democrats have a unnatural gift for picking and choosing when it comes to the term “Freedom of Expression.

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