Donald Trump's Website's Terms Of Service Rely On Section 230, And Promise To Remove Content That Violates Its Terms
from the such-cancel-culture dept
We had just noted that should Donald Trump ever launch his rumored social media website, it would undoubtedly rely on Section 230 despite the fact that Trump insisted that Section 230 must be repealed and even tried to block military funding if the law wasn't taken away.
Yet, apparently we don't even need to wait for his vaporware social media website to appear. As the excellent @Section_230 Twitter feed alerts us, the new "The Office of Donald J. Trump" website already appears to invoke the protections of Section 230 by mirroring its language in its terms of service concerning liability for 3rd party content:
OFP takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any User Content posted, stored or uploaded by you or any third party, or for any loss or damage thereto, nor is OFP liable for any mistakes, defamation, slander, libel, omissions, falsehoods, obscenity, profanity or other objectionable content you may encounter. Your use of Interactive Areas is at your own risk. Enforcement of the user content or conduct rules set forth in these Terms of Service is solely at OFP’s discretion, and failure to enforce such rules in some instances does not constitute a waiver of our right to enforce such rules in other instances. In addition, these rules do not create any private right of action on the part of any third party or any reasonable expectation that the Sites will not contain any content that is prohibited by such rules. As a provider of interactive services, OFP is not liable for any statements, representations, or User Content provided by its users in any Interactive Area.
As you can see, when it's Trump's own website, he declares that he gets full say and full discretion in how to moderate, and should accept no liability "as a provider of interactive services," just as Section 230 makes clear as well. Furthermore, for all of Trump's ridiculous talk about how content moderation is "censorship" or "cancel culture," his own website now makes clear that it may moderate however it sees fit:
Although OFP has no obligation to do so, it reserves the right, and has absolute discretion, to remove, screen or edit any User Content posted or stored on the Sites at any time and for any reason without notice, and you are solely responsible for creating backup copies of and replacing any User Content you post or store on the Sites at your sole cost and expense. Any use of the Interactive Areas or other portions of the Sites in violation of the foregoing violates these Terms of Service and may result in, among other things, termination, or suspension of your rights to use the Interactive Areas and/or the Sites.
And yes, this is all standard boilerplate kinda stuff that lots of websites have. But it demonstrates why websites need to be free to moderate, and why Section 230 is important in protecting websites from liability -- even for former Presidents who claim to hate the law (or, at least, demonstrate near total ignorance of the value of the law). The nice thing about both the 1st Amendment and Section 230 is that it protects you, even if you don't like it.
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Filed Under: content moderation, donald trump, intermediary liability, section 230, terms of service
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The hypocrisy is delicious.
This narcissistically expedient attitude of Donald Trump should be so lucky he didn't repeal §230 when he was prez. I guess it's "§230 for me but not for thee", eh?
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Re: The hypocrisy is delicious.
That HOSTS are immune for what USERS publish is all right. It's the immunity AND hosts still acting as publishers with full control that needs changed.
No, Trump follows existing law -- the FULL text of the law, not changing it to suit by removing the "in good faith" part as Maz tried to do in arguing with me, see my comment with link below.
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Re: Re: The hypocrisy is delicious.
Where is the good faith provision in the above quote? It allows arbitrary moderation by OFP.
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Re: Re: Re: The hypocrisy is delicious.
No, no, you misunderstand - the moderation is done in good faith because it's Trump. As everyone knows, Trump is always acting in good faith. And pigs are always flying around him.
/s for the one person that couldn't figure it out.
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Re: Re: The hypocrisy is delicious.
"Trump follows existing law -- the FULL text of the law"
You should be in contact with Trump's lawyers. They need your advice when NY and Georgia indict him.
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Re: Re: Re: The hypocrisy is delicious.
"No, Trump follows existing law"
I can point to 3500+ lawsuits against him that suggest otherwise, but given the number of new lawsuits incoming I don't know how long that figure will be close to accurate.
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Re: Re: The hypocrisy is delicious.
Donato v. Moldow
"If the conduct falls within the scope of the traditional publisher's functions, it cannot constitute, within the context of § 230(c)(2)(A), bad faith."
https://www.eff.org/document/donato-v-moldow
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Re: Re: The hypocrisy is delicious.
Hosts are completely liable for anything they publish themselves. Section 230 only immunizes them for the speech of others, and their moderation (or lack thereof) of such. Surely you knew that though, right?
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Cognitive dissonance is a requirement for Trump supporters.
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Re:
"Cognitive dissonance" is the pseudoscience term for it, but the rest of us know the condition better by the term "cognition disability".
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Re: Re:
"but the rest of us know the condition better by the term "cognition disability"."
Or better yet, compartmentalization. To be a trump cultist, as with so many other religions, you first need to be able to hold two completely opposed assertions in your head simultaneously, without conflict. The fact that they then flip out and lose their shit completely when that border is challenged is just sheer mental self-defense in fear their minds will break if they're forced to actually reconcile those opposing views.
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Re: Re:
Most people I know with an actual cognitive disability is much nicer than this.
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Re:
It's not really cognitive dissonance or even hypocrisy it's a misunderstanding of the underlying thought process and motivations. Trump doesn't have anything against section 230, he just thought it would be useful to say so at the time. His supporters don't have anything against 230.
Imagine you believe for some unknown but unshakable reason that life is a 0 sum game and you have two choices politically, every decision in politics is a tool to be used to take advantage of your neighbor or something they will use to take advantage of you. It's not about whether section 230 is good or bad overall. It depends on your personal context at the time, if it would be great for you but someone is donating money to help your side win if you say it's bad, then it's bad for you. You aren't pretending it's bad for you, you believe it's bad for you because it makes your side lose those donations..
It's not about whether white supremacists "have a point" or "are really fine people", if they are helping you rob someone they are acceptable, if they are helping someone rob you they are not and those are the only choices
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Trump will have it moderated "in good faith".
That's actually the point of contention. I've never advocated that the immunity be removed from HOSTS for what USERS PUBLISH.
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Re: Trump will have it moderated "in good faith".
ut YOU claim that HOSTS are PUBLISHERS and empowered to absolutely control what users wish to publish, on top of immunity! That's not the deal that S230 offers.
Because HOSTS can only remove content in "good faith". Yes, I remarked -- or tried to, was repeatedly blocked -- on your piece this week in which lack of "good faith" was not shown by Plaintiff and so dismissed. -- BUT if it had been, then the law is CLEAR.
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Re: Re: Trump will have it moderated "in good faith".
Sites can control what users get to publish on those sites. Why shouldn't Twitter be able to moderate speech on Twitter?
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Re: Re: Trump will have it moderated "in good faith".
Uh-huh. Yup, it all boils down to this good faith shit, now that you morons ONCE AGAIN have been duped like the idiots that you are.
Tell me, how many times does Trump have to make you guys look foolish before you stop believing his horseshit?
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Re: Re: Trump will have it moderated "in good faith".
I don't think "in good faith" means what you think it means. It's so broad and generic of a qualifier that it might as well say, "only if it happened on a day ending in Y."
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Re: Trump will have it moderated "in good faith".
And of course here you're yet again ranting about TRUMP -- for clickbait and fanboys to do Two Minutes Hate on -- and trying to imply that he's a hypocrite by taking advantage of current law rather than being ideologically pure and disarming himself against the rabid leftists who are sure to attack the site.
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Re: Trump will have it moderated "in good faith".
NOW, yet again, when it comes to "good faith", YOU, Maz, in quoting the law, simply REMOVED THE VERY CHARACTERS because you don't wish corporations to serve The Public, but to arbitrarily RULE over us!
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190201/00025041506/us-newspapers-now-salivating-over-bringin g-google-snippet-tax-stateside.shtml#c530
Anyone with open mind, read through that thread, especially Maz's reply to me in which he deca-downs on that "good faith" is not required, judges ignore it, therefore he can remove the very words! -- Ya modify quotes of statute in a court to suit your view, folks, and it's PERJURY. Maz on his own site is merely LYING, sure, and lying is so habitual with Maz that you need to check even his quotation of statute! Sheesh!
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Re: Re:
Seriously, wipe that RIAA off your lips. It's not good to talk with your mouth full.
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Mike: I'm pretty sure you're reading what the ToS says wrong. I believe the correct interpretation is the site claiming to be an enemy of the state (for the sites understanding of what that means).
(I mean you reading has logic and, so I'm pretty sure it must be wrong).
/s
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Trump and his minions...
"Section 230 is a unconstitutional, a travesty and a threat to our country. But I'm going to use the hell out of it now that I can!"
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Re: Trump and his minions...
He already has, after being legally poked for re-Tweeting some shit.
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Re: Re: Trump and his minions...
In 2017, Trump argued that he shouldn't be liable for the content of a retweet, because of Section 230. In court, Trump argued that Section 230 "should be given an 'expansive' reading" in order to protect himself from defamation claims. https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000015d-219d-db11-a3df-fbbd4ecf0001
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And after a decade or so of intense lobbying and nibbling away at it on a state and federal level, republicans will finally repeal 230, only to find their favourite services and propagandists swept up in the flood of lawsuits. The screaming propagandists will the turn around and blame the left for the self inflicted wound, screaming that they should have done more to stop them doing this thing to themselves.
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Re:
"The screaming propagandists will the turn around and blame the left for the self inflicted wound, screaming that they should have done more to stop them doing this thing to themselves."
I keep saying that the absolutely worst thing you could do to the US of today is to just let the republicans and their contemporary horde of screaming clowns have everything they want. In the nation they're trying to build the democrats and liberals may have a harder time getting the word out but every Trump voter will be rendered completely voiceless. Their agenda, unlike that of democrats, can not be adequately rendered in writing without causing offense and grievance.
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Re:
" only to find their favourite services and propagandists swept up in the flood of lawsuits."
And? So?
Republicans have been using scorched-Earth policies for years. They don't care how many of their own constituents or voters are swept up in their bad policies as long as they can "own dem liberals".
As an example: they claimed there were tons of fraudulent mail-in ballots (without evidence) so they want to restrict mail-in ballots, even though a large number of rural, white, middle-age Republicans use mail-in ballots.
But it's better if 100 Republicans can't vote by mail than let one more Democrat mail-in ballot get in.
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'How dare you do what I'm going to be doing?!'
It's grossly hypocritical to be sure but it is consistent, as that lot and Trump especially clearly believe that the law is there to serve them so it makes perfect sense that he would be all for using the law to engage in the same behavior he condemns others doing, because obviously when he does it it's justified.
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The name is particularly precious. This man made a career in reality, and most pointedly on television, but also in the White House, of kicking people out.
Seriously, some self-awareness here...
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Re:
"This man made a career in reality, and most pointedly on television, but also in the White House, of kicking people out."
Well, in office he made a career of only kicking out people who were competent or dared speak truth against one of his grifts. Incompetent sycophants were hired to positions they were expressly unqualified for or even in departments they wanted to destroy.
On TV, he didn't even do that: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-apprentice-didnt-decide-who-got-fired -former-contestant-clay-aiken-a7837016.html
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An experiment
Here's an experiment:
Who wants to post a left-leaning comment on his site, such as "black lives matter" or "gay people deserve equal rights", then get banned, and then complain about how the site is censoring liberal voices.
Bonus points for taking the issue to Congress and getting them to debate whether Donald Trump's website is actually trying to censor liberal voices.
Extra bonus points for getting Congress to haul Donald Trump in front of them and explain why his website is trying to block what liberals have to say.
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