Huh?
You mean a company can’t decide it’s own political slant?
Ah, will this new thing he’s cooking up apply to NRA?
This has GOT to be a JUST a leaked warning NOT attempt at the first attacks on First Amendment Rights of Private companies or individuals in America by a President who thinks EVERYBODY should kiss his rear……..
“The President announced at this month’s social media summit that we were going to address this and the administration is exploring all policy solutions,” a second White House official said Wednesday when asked about the draft order.
Accusations of anti-conservative bias have become a frequent rallying cry for Trump and his supporters, seizing on incidents in which tech platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube have banned people like InfoWars founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones or faced accusations of squelching posts by pro-Trump social media personalities Diamond and Silk…
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The issue took center stage during a White House gathering in July in which Trump railed against censorship in front of a roomful of online conservative activists, and directed his administration to explore all “regulatory and legislative solutions to protect free speech and the free-speech rights of all Americans.” Just this week, Trump warned that he is “watching Google very closely,” citing the case of an engineer who has claimed the company fired him for his conservative views.
But the White House effort may be complicated by skepticism in some agencies involved in the discussions about tech policy. The Republicans at the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission have said publicly that they don’t see a role for their agencies in policing companies’ online content. The FCC and FTC have joined the Justice and Commerce departments in discussions about the potential bias crackdown.
“There’s very little in terms of direct regulation the federal government can do without congressional action, and frankly I think that’s a positive thing,” said John Morris, who handled internet policy issues at the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration before leaving in May.
He added: “Although the government may be able to support and assist online platforms’ efforts to reduce hate and violence online, the government should not try to impose speech regulations on private platforms. As politicians from both sides of the political spectrum have historically urged, the government should not be in the business of regulating speech.”….
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…the federal government’s options on combating online bias are limited by the First Amendment. Another obstacle is a provision of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which both protects online platforms from liability for content their users post and empowers the companies to remove content without fear of liability….
Ah “ conservatives,” the defenders of the so called “free enterprise “ system.
Everyday it seems more hints of authoritarianism emanating from the Trump Republican Party .The next institution to be attacked may be the Electoral College, not that “conservatives” want to get rid of it, far from it.Its all that’s standing in the way of permanently locking them out of the presidency.
Instead, look for there to be efforts to have presidential electors chosen by the State legislatures, which was common in the early Republic.
Republican chances of ever commanding the most popular votes in a presidential election (they’ve only done so once in the past 30+ years) are growing ever more remote and ,as the demographics continue to shift against them ,ever more desperate actions will be called for.
A more insidious, because more innocent-seeming, threat is to choose presidential Electors by Congressional District, as now happens in Maine and Nebraska, and happened in several states in the 19th Century (for example, Michigan survived a Supreme Court challenge to dividing her Electors between the Upper and Lower Peninsulas).
The threat comes if the Congressional District lines are gerrymandered by GOP legislatures— (not that it would be any fairer should the gerrymandering be done by any other party.
The last state to start choosing Presidential Electors by popular, instead of legislative, vote was Jack’s own Palmetto State, South Carolina, in 1868 (during Reconstruction).