Thread by @evan_greer

wow. i shouldn't be surprised by this, but I am. AT&T will throw its weight behind Trump's absolutely absurd Executive Order that would gut Section 230 & enable widespread Internet censorship. And they're doing it just to confuse ppl about #netneutrality. attpublicpolicy.com/fcc/the-neutra…

this is perfectly in line with Big Telecom strategies over the last few years. AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon are some of the worst perpetrators of privacy violations and they routinely abuse their monopoly power. But they wave their hands and say "look over there at Facebook!"

Which works pretty well, because Facebook and other Big Tech companies are also doing terrible shit, and also have surveillance capitalist business models that are fundamentally at odds with basic rights and democracy. But AT&T wants us to think that you can only fix one of these

Their argument is basically "Alcohol regulations don't cover cigarettes therefor we should get rid of them." It makes absolutely no sense and they know it. But they have enormous lobbying power and a huge PR machine that churns out op-eds and spin doctored stories galore

But honestly I have to say I am pretty shocked that they leaning all the way into this BS by supporting this 230 executive order, which even Trump's own cronies at the FCC have expressed opposition to because it's just that absurd and blatantly incompatible with the 1st amendment

AT&T is finding themselves on the same side as this anti-LGBTQ hate group which has been flooding the FCC with comments also supporting the executive order to gut Section 230. Nice company you keep there @ATTPublicPolicy! dailydot.com/debug/fcc-sect…

I won't even comment on the weird airplane metaphor at the end here because honestly it makes no sense. but LOL at AT&T pointing the finger at websites that it could decide to censor from its network in the blink of an eye and saying "they have all the power."

Trump's Executive Order that AT&T is now lobbying for is basically straight out of an Orwell novel. It's titled "Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship," when in fact it does the exact opposite of that. It deputizes the FCC and FTC as online speech police.

Under this EO, those agencies would be tasked with setting speech rules for all online platforms. If the US government doesn't like the way you do content moderation, they can basically shut you down by revoking your protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act

This is a profoundly bad idea that has been gaining ground among both Democrats and Republicans. The only silver lining I can see here is that Trump's EO is so deeply silly it will help people understand that gutting 230 in this way is a bad idea, no matter how you package it

Here's some sources on just how absurd this EO is:

Wired: wired.com/story/opinion-…

Right-leaning @TechFreedom: techfreedom.org/trump-eo-would…

Coalition of voting rights groups: theverge.com/2020/8/27/2140…

Reason: reason.com/2020/05/28/tru…