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Trump?s FCC wants to rewrite Section 230 and change how social media works


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SOURCE: https://www.vox.com/recode/21519337/section-230-trump-fcc-twitter-facebook-social-media-ajit-pai
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Summary

This prompted another all-caps demand from Trump to repeal Section 230 and the Republican-led Senate to prepare to subpoena Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, accusing the company of election interference.The very next day, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced that his agency would “move forward with a rulemaking to clarify” the meaning of Section 230, which gives internet platforms like Facebook and Twitter immunity from lawsuits over content their users provide. In May, he went so far as to issue an executive order calling for the FCC to come up with rules that would prevent websites from moderating content based on a perceived anti-conservative bias, which is the basis for the FCC’s actions now.But legal experts — former FCC commissioners and staff among them — don’t think the FCC is allowed to regulate the internet in this way.“I don’t think the FCC has the authority to be thought police over platforms,” former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, Pai’s predecessor and no fan of Section 230 himself, told Recode. The NTIA cited Section 201(b) of the Communications Decency Act, of which Section 230 is part, which says that the FCC may “prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary in the public interest to carry out this chapter.” But, as experts have pointed out, Section 201(b), as written, applies only to common carriers — that is, entities that provide “telecommunications services,” like phone companies — and not internet service providers (ISPs) like Verizon or Comcast.“201(b) is inside Title II of the Communications Act, and Pai has gone out of his way to say that ISPs are not subject to Title II,” Wheeler said. It will threaten the future of the internet.”That’s a vision that Pai himself agreed with back in 2017 when the FCC, under his chairmanship, repealed net neutrality, citing Section 230 as justification for taking a “light-touch approach” to “burdensome regulation that stifles innovation and deters investment.”Because of this, Sohn said, the FCC would essentially have to reverse its own decision — one that has become emblematic of the FCC’s anti-regulatory approach under Pai and the Trump administration — in order to make the case that it has any authority over Section 230 at all. Changing Section 230’s content moderation policies has become a partisan issue — Republicans are the ones writing bill after bill opposing Section 230 and decrying perceived censorship on social media platforms — and that makes it much less likely that Democrats will pick up the Republicans’ cause.If Congress doesn’t reject the FCC’s rules, then it’ll be up to the courts, which has become the norm for an administration that refuses to accede to laws until it absolutely has to.

As said here by Sara Morrison