"Twitter has hidden one of Donald Trump’s tweets behind a warning that it 'glorifies violence,' further escalating the social media company’s row with the US president."

"The US president’s tweet, posted on Thursday night Washington time, warned people in Minneapolis protesting against the killing of a black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer that he would send the military to intervene if there was 'any difficulty.' 'When the looting starts, the shooting starts,' Trump wrote, apparently quoting the former Miami police chief Walter Headley, who in December 1967 promised violent reprisals to protests over stop-and-frisk tactics. Two hours later, Twitter added a notice to the tweet: 'This tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the tweet to remain accessible.' The warning was accompanied by a link to its policies about public interest exceptions. Users who try to reply to the tweet are instead presented with a second notice that reads: 'We try to prevent a tweet like this that otherwise breaks the Twitter rules from reaching more people, so we have disabled most of the ways to engage with it.' Existing replies no longer appear below it. The tweet’s spread will also be limited by Twitter’s algorithms, according to the company’s policy documents."

The Guardian reports.

Notice that Twitter grounds its actions in its own stated terms of service, which counters the theory of unfair trade that — as discussed in the previous post — Trump's executive order asks the Federal Trade Commission to investigate.

Twitter's stated policy is:

We... prohibit the glorification of violence.

Content that threatens or glorifies violence can result in some of the most severe and immediate harms our rules are meant to address, and public-interest exceptions are therefore unlikely. We will especially err on the side of removal in cases where there is evidence the content may be leading to actual or likely offline harm. In very rare instances, we may decide that content is worthy of a public-interest exception if there is a more attenuated connection to actual violence, or if Twitter is the only source of the information.

AND: Trump reacts:

Twitter is doing nothing about all of the lies & propaganda being put out by China or the Radical Left Democrat Party. They have targeted Republicans, Conservatives & the President of the United States. Section 230 should be revoked by Congress. Until then, it will be regulated!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020

Is Twitter engaging in unfair trade by holding itself out as a neutral platform for free expression and then engaging in viewpoint discrimination?

That's the theory suggested by this part of Trump's Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship:

Sec. 4. Federal Review of Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices....

(b) In May of 2019, the White House launched a Tech Bias Reporting tool to allow Americans to report incidents of online censorship. In just weeks, the White House received over 16,000 complaints of online platforms censoring or otherwise taking action against users based on their political viewpoints. The White House will submit such complaints received to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

(c) The FTC shall consider taking action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to prohibit unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, pursuant to section 45 of title 15, United States Code. Such unfair or deceptive acts or practice may include practices by [providers of an interactive computer services] that restrict speech in ways that do not align with those entities’ public representations about those practices.

(d) For large online platforms that are vast arenas for public debate, including the social media platform Twitter, the FTC shall also, consistent with its legal authority, consider whether complaints allege violations of law that implicate the policies set forth in section 4(a) of this order. The FTC shall consider developing a report describing such complaints and making the report publicly available, consistent with applicable law.

Elsewhere in the order, I'm seeing the suggestion that "large, powerful social media companies" have deceived people into thinking they will get a free speech forum, with the terms of service stating the limits on speech and giving the assurance that these are the only limits, when in fact there is a hidden practice of treating users differently based on their political orientation. So the order isn't merely talking about depriving the companies of immunity in private defamation lawsuits (immunity provided by the Communications Decency Act). It's talking about federal governmental action against the companies, accusing them of unfair trade.

Here's 15 U.S.C. § 45.

"In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand pick the speech that Americans may access and convey on the internet."

"This practice is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic. When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power. They cease functioning as passive bulletin boards, and ought to be viewed and treated as content creators.... Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube wield immense, if not unprecedented, power to shape the interpretation of public events; to censor, delete, or disappear information; and to control what people see or do not see. As President, I have made clear my commitment to free and open debate on the internet.... Prominent among the ground rules governing that debate is the immunity from liability created by section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act... [T]he immunity should not extend beyond its text and purpose to provide protection for those who purport to provide users a forum for free and open speech, but in reality use their power over a vital means of communication to engage in deceptive or pretextual actions stifling free and open debate by censoring certain viewpoints....  Section 230 was not intended to allow a handful of companies to grow into titans controlling vital avenues for our national discourse under the guise of promoting open forums for debate, and then to provide those behemoths blanket immunity when they use their power to censor content and silence viewpoints that they dislike. When an interactive computer service provider removes or restricts access to content and its actions do not meet the [statutory] criteria... such a provider should properly lose the limited liability shield... and be exposed to liability like any traditional editor and publisher that is not an online provider."

From "Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship" (at whitehouse.gov).

ADDED: This order isn't just about immunity in defamation lawsuits, it's about fraud. I'll do a new post to highlight the language that I think points at the argument that the companies are committing fraud by holding themselves out as a neutral free speech forum and amassing users who they are in fact treating differently based on viewpoint.

"We have a different policy than, I think, Twitter on this. I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn't be the arbiter of truth..."

"... of everything that people say online. Private companies probably shouldn't be, especially these platform companies, shouldn't be in the position of doing that."

Said Mark Zuckerberg, quoted at Fox News. Links to Fox News never seem to work, so I apologize in advance for this bad link. Why does Fox News not play well with social media?

Anyway... I'm glad to hear that from Zuckerberg. I love Zuckerberg's self-effacing term "these platform companies." I have long argued that these platform companies should uphold the free speech values that the law requires government to uphold. (Here's my 2011 argument with Bob Wright on the subject.)

Meanwhile, Trump is choosing the worst way to fight for freedom of speech — governmental suppression: "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." That's a tweet, quoted at CNN. From the CNN article: