Donald Trump is making impulsive threats to change how the internet treats content platforms, and it might not be a bad thing.
On his way out the White House door, Trump has thrown another bombshell, this time threatening to blow up the internet by treating the big tech platforms as publishers rather than innocent carriers of the words of others.
Sure, it’s lame-duck Trump, throwing shi… um, stuff at the wall to see what sticks and the adults in the room in Washington are busy hosing it down. But his call has widespread, even cross party support.
It was only last January that now-President-elect Joe Biden was similarly calling for platforms to lose their immunity, saying: “For Zuckerberg and other platforms, it should be revoked because it is not merely an internet company. It is propagating falsehoods they know to be false.” (He’s been more cautious since.)
