The White House is spinning this executive order “Preventing Online Censorship” as a positive for free speech! However, if they succeed, it will accomplish the opposite. It places majority power to the White House appointed Commissioner of the FCC Republican Ajit Pai.
We are all for equalizing the playing field. We agree there is a content filtering monopoly. However, this Executive Order is NOT the solution and would shift censorship to the government. The order would also allow news and conspiracy theories, and influence from outside government to go unvetted when favorable to one party or the other. Stop the movement of the White House to take this country to Autocracy. (A) It is a similar move as defunding the United States Postal Service prior to a presidential election.
CONTENT FROM MY FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES AT FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE:
Bad news. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is moving forward with a White House Executive Order that would lead to massive Internet censorship. They’ve opened an official public comment period, and we have to act NOW because the deadline is just a few weeks away. We’re launching a new campaign to flood the FCC with comments opposing the “Censor the Internet” Executive Order, which would gut Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and put FCC chairman Ajit Pai in charge of policing online free speech. Will you chip in to help us stop the “Censor the Internet” Executive Order? There’s a lot to do. First, we need to rebuild our tool that makes it easy for ordinary people to submit comments to the FCC (their regular comment website is essentially unusable.) Then our campaign team will need to get that tool in front of millions of people so we can generate as many comments as possible, as well as media attention and signal boosts from popular musicians and celebrities to keep the issue in the spotlight. We know how to do this, and we know how to do it well. During the net neutrality fight, our tools drove more comments to the FCC than ever before in history. But because we’ve done it before, we also know we need to raise more funds to cover the costs of this campaign. Please chip in whatever you can—whether it’s $5 or $500—to make sure we can stop the FCC from enacting this Executive Order and keep the Internet free from political censorship. You might be wondering, will the FCC even listen to our comments? Fair question! The overwhelming majority of comments they received opposed the repeal of net neutrality, and they did it anyway.(1) But here’s the deal: this Executive Order is so poorly written—and so blatantly illegal—that even Ajit Pai has signaled that he’s against it. (2) But if there aren’t enough comments opposing it, politicians that want to censor the Internet and control the free flow of information will seize on that to push their agenda. We can’t let that happen, which is why we’re building a tool and launching a campaign to flood the FCC with comments against Internet censorship. Will you chip in to fund this work? We know these are tough times and not everyone can give right now. If you can’t, don’t worry. We’ll follow up soon with information on how to submit a comment and help sound the alarm. If you’re lucky enough to be in a position to give right now, please stretch as much as you can. This is important! Chip in here: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/donate Thanks for all you do, -Evan at Fight for the Future
Footnotes:
(1) – Cnet: https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-gets-more-10-million-comments-on-net-neutrality/
(2) – Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robpegoraro/2020/07/28/heres-trumps-plan-to-regulate-social-media/#61ac2f9562fa
(A) – Autocracy is a system of government in which supreme political power to direct all the activities of the state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control
ABOVE IS THE CONTENT FROM MY FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES AT FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE
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