CDT Opposition to NTIA Petition on Section 230
On August 31, 2020, CDT filed comments denouncing the NTIA petition that is the direct result of President Trump’s “Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship.”
This petition is the product of an unconstitutional Executive Order that seeks to use the FCC as a partisan weapon. The petition, and the Order, attack the constitutionally protected right of social media services to moderate content on their platforms, limiting those services’ ability to respond to misinformation and voter suppression in an election year, and depriving their users of access to information and of access to services that operate free from government coercion. Any one of the constitutional, statutory, and policy deficiencies in the NTIA’s petition requires that the FCC reject it without further consideration.
CDT’s comments focus on three key issues: the unconstitutionality of the Order itself, the FCC’s lack of authority to do what the petition asks, and the petition’s fundamental errors about the key issue it purports to request action on: content moderation. These issues are fatal to the petition, and, as such, the FCC should reject it. To do otherwise is to act contrary to the Constitution of the United States and especially to the principles of free speech which it enshrines.
Read our full comments here.
Read CDT’s lawsuit against the Executive Order.
