- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
- Click to share on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
- Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in a new window)
- Click to email a friend (Opens in a new window)
Trump threatens social networks with a decree 4:00
(CNN) - Moments before Donald Trump signed a decree to limit the ability of social media companies to verify it, the president sought a ridiculous comparison to justify the move.
Imagine if your local phone company tried to edit or censor what you said. Social media companies have much more power, "said Trump.
Think about it for a second and maybe the comparison makes some sense. Think about it longer and you can immediately see that this is not even a comparison of apples to pears. It is more like a comparison between apples and spaceships. Because the comparison makes absolutely no sense.
- The legal limits of Trump's decree on social media
To explain exactly how and why, let's take Trump's premise: Let's say a local telecommunications company censored or edited a conversation you were having on the phone with a friend. What that would mean is that your friend will not receive the exact message you want to send. I would receive some kind of altered message.
That's bad! We can all agree on that! For example, if I want to call my wife and tell her that I love her and the phone company turns "I love you" into "I like you," well, I could have a problem!
As I said, Trump's comparison makes sense, just for a second.
But now suppose otherwise. The phone company does NOT edit or censor what you say. And what you say is something like, "Did you know that wearing a mask actually makes you more prone to contracting coronavirus?"
That, of course, is not true. But by not censoring your phone call, the only person you relayed that false information to was the person on the other end of the line. Now, could that person go and tell five other people how wearing a mask really increases their chances of getting covid-19? Yes! Of course. And if they were very diligent and spent a LOT of time on the phone over the next few days, they could even pass that falsehood on to 200 people. (As I said, you would have to spend a lot of time on the phone).
- Twitter tags Trump tweet about protests in Minneapolis for violating "glorify violence" rules
Now imagine that the same person who made the initial phone call to someone else decided to tweet that falsehood about the masks. And it turned out that that person had, say, 80.4 million followers on Twitter. Or even 80,000. Or even 8,000.
At the push of a button - literally! - that one person could spread the lie about facemasks to 8,000 or 80,000 or even 80 million people. And then those people could retweet falsehood to their dozens or hundreds or thousands or millions of followers. In five minutes (or less), a single person tweeting a falsehood could practically guarantee that hundreds of millions of people have seen it.
Do you have any idea how long it would take someone to call 100 million people and tell them a single falsehood? Sooooo much more than five minutes.
You see? The comparison doesn't make sense.
- Alkilados lends their social networks to new groups to publicize their music
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the like are public platforms. Anyone who wants to follow, say on Instagram to Lady Gaga or to me, —something very similar! -, can do it. A phone call (or phone company) is a private platform. I can't log in to hear your call, or mine, just because I want to.
The reach and immediacy of social media platforms sets them apart from a phone company. So it's very different: what works to regulate a phone call is not the same as regulating a tweet.
If someone like Trump is allowed to tweet things that are demonstrably false without any control on any social media platform, he can erode the very concept of truth in American society with nothing more than a few taps on his phone.
Try doing it in a phone call to see if it's possible.
Social networksTwitter