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Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

(techcrunch.com)
707 points patd | 4 comments | 27 May 20 12:21 UTC | HN request time: 1.065s | source
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standardUser ◴[27 May 20 19:46 UTC] No.23328914[source]▶
There seem to be some upside down priorities here. Many folks seem to be arguing that its an unacceptable form of censorship for a private platform to annotate content it allows others to post. Meanwhile, I'm seeing barely a mention of the fact that the President of the United States has threatened to use government power to shut down an entire sector of the economy devoted to communication. The latter is almost certainly a violation of the Constitution. The former, almost certainly not.
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meragrin_ ◴[27 May 20 22:00 UTC] No.23330604[source]▶
Perhaps they see it as targeting a political figure because of political differences rather than trying to prevent the spread of misinformation. I'm not seeing any annotations on a number prominent members of Congress spreading misinformation.

Where in the US Constitution does it say presidents cannot threaten companies? Obama had his share of threats. I'm sure they could find a suitable legal issue with Twitter targeting Trump while ignoring members of Congress.

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1. thephyber ◴[27 May 20 22:37 UTC] No.23330974[source]▶
> Where in the US Constitution does it say presidents cannot threaten companies?

The Articles of the US Constitution aren't an enumerated list of illegal actions. It's the wrong place to look for limitations of presidential power.

I love that our expectations of the current president are so low that we will use excuse them because "the previous presidents did it too!" You aren't actually saying what he's doing is legal; you are simply increasing the importance of precedent over the statutory restraints of power -- it's a very dangerous argument to make.

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2. gwright ◴[28 May 20 00:11 UTC] No.23331813[source]▶
> The Articles of the US Constitution aren't an enumerated list of illegal actions. It's the wrong place to look for limitations of presidential power.

The US Constitution is indeed an enumerated list of federal governmental powers, including the President's. At least that is the standard interpretation. Obviously there are an infinite number of ways those enumerated powers might manifest themselves but the overall scope and nature of the powers is indeed limited by the US Constitution.

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3. thephyber ◴[28 May 20 01:00 UTC] No.23332144[source]▶
You aren't disproving my statement.

I was being particularly pedantic because it was relevant to my parent comment.

The Articles of the Constitution are affirmatively defined positive powers of the branches of government. They are not affirmatively defined negative powers.

The Bill of Rights (the first 10 Amendments) are closer to that, but they don't specifically talk about The President and their scopes have had to be interpreted by courts to determine (1) are the rights they guarantee applied to {all people, all US residents, all US citizens, etc} and do they protect against {US government, state/local governments, other private citizens, etc}.

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4. gwright ◴[28 May 20 01:55 UTC] No.23332576{3}[source]▶
Well I guess we are in agreement but I found your formulation confusing. In particular "It's the wrong place to look for limitations of presidential power" is what I was responding to.

Given your followup I now understand what you were saying.