The White House wants to regulate social-media moderation
If enacted, the executive order would vastly expand the Federal Communications Commission’s responsibilities.
The news: A draft executive order would give the FCC oversight over how social-media platforms like Facebook and Twitter moderate their sites, according to CNN, which obtained a copy. Dubbed "Protecting Americans from Online Censorship,” the order calls for the FCC to develop new rules to define when the law protects tech firms’ decisions to take down content—and when it doesn’t. It also demands that the Federal Trade Commission take those new rules into account when investigating potential malpractice by companies.
The politics: This represents a major escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against social- media firms, which he claims are biased against conservatives (despite a lack of evidence), and would be a vast expansion of the FCC’s responsibilities.
Specifically: Social-media companies have enjoyed wide-ranging legal protections for content moderation decisions under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This would end that, both making the companies more liable for content that users post on their platforms and forbidding social-media sites from removing content without notifying the user who posted it, for example.
A caveat: The order is still in the early stages, and could change significantly, or be completely abandoned.
Sign up here for our daily newsletter The Download to get your dose of the latest must-read news from the world of emerging tech.
Keep Reading
Most Popular
Scientists are finding signals of long covid in blood. They could lead to new treatments.
Faults in a certain part of the immune system might be at the root of some long covid cases, new research suggests.
Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.
And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.
OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora
The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.
Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.
Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.