Trump wants to lower tech’s liability forcefield

Even by Twitter standards, it’s been a very strange week. It culminated yesterday, in President Trump’s signing of an executive order that could reshape how the internet’s social giants treat the tweets, memes, and screeds we post on our feeds.

A quick backstory

This week, Trump fired off tweets that made everyone ask: WWJDD (What Will Jack Dorsey Do?).

The answer: Twitter added fact-checking links to 2 Trump tweets about fraudulent voting by mail. Fact-checkers have said mail-ballot fraud is extremely rare, and PolitiFact hit Trump with a pants-on-fire grade.

Twitter later added hundreds of fact-check notes to other non-Trump tweets.

Jack poked the bear

There are 2 big legal issues at play in the order Trump signed. The First Amendment, and a bedrock internet law known as Section 230.

As for the former: The First Amendment doesn’t apply to private companies like Twitter and Facebook. But the order tries to redefine the platforms’ free-speech obligations anyway.

And Section 230 is where it gets interesting

The law is essentially a liability force field — it protects tech companies from being sued over what users post. 

It’s also widely misunderstood — it was designed to encourage tech companies to moderate discussions, not to enjoy total freedom while users slug it out in an unregulated Wild West.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have said 230, which dates back to 1996, could use a fresh coat of paint — or be scraped off the wall entirely. That said, many critics see Trump’s order as little more than retaliation for the fact-check.

Here’s what the order does

In 4 bullet points, translated from Bureaucratese to English:

• It narrows tech companies’ protection. Once they play editor and start removing or restricting access to permitted content, the force field goes away.
• It calls for clarity from the FCC. Clarity on which moderation moves are out of bounds, that is.
• It could clamp down on ad spending. Specifically: ad spending by government agencies on platforms “that violate free speech principles.”
• It includes federal and state reviews. The order says complaints submitted to a White House bias-reporting form will be forwarded to the FTC and the Justice Department. And it calls for a working group to create model state legislation on “unfair or deceptive” practices.

But will the order hold?

Don’t hold your breath, legal experts say. Expect it to end up in court. (For context: Several people have sued social platforms for alleged bias, but a review by The Verge found they keep losing.)

The White House order could also backfire. At The Guardian, Alex Hern said tech’s bigwigs could respond by taming discussions with a chainsaw rather than a scalpel, “deleting posts, or blocking users, rather than simply fact checking or reducing the reach of the worst material.”

Whoever said money can’t buy love has never heard of Zynn. 

It’s the top free iPhone app in the US right now. It looks a lot like TikTok. And it’s shelling out cash to Americans faster than the stimulus checks. 

Create an account? Zynn will send you $1, redeemed through PayPal. Invite 5 friends? Cha-ching, up to $110. Every video you watch earns a handful of points, which you can convert into cash or Amazon gift cards.

Some users say they’ve seen big paydays, but others are less sold: Several users complained that they hadn’t received their earnings. One venture capitalist called it a “giant referral pyramid scheme.” 

TikTok can’t hip-thrust its way out of this one

It’s no accident that Zynn launched in the US last month, a year after TikTok first giddy-upped into the American mainstream with “Old Town Road.”

In China, the companies behind Zynn and TikTok are fierce competitors: Zynn (which is called Kuaishou in China) is the country’s 2nd most popular app after TikTok (known to Chinese users as Douyin). This month, Kuaishou sued Douyin for “unfair competition.”

Zynn has lived in TikTok’s shadow — both feature short videos, an endless scroll, and near-identical “discover” pages.

Paying people to use your app has a rich history

Whipping out the checkbook helped the Chinese news app Qutoutiao and the ecommerce giant Pinduoduo build huge followings, according to The Information. 

And Zynn can afford to run itself into the red for a little while: Last year, the company pocketed $5.7B in revenue.

Reservations used to be, um… reserved …for special occasions. If you wanted to nosh at that buzzy restaurant with the Michelin star, appointment dining might have been your only option.

But now that more businesses are reopening, you’ll start seeing appointment-driven everything: reservation shopping, reservation hiking, even reservation auto safaris.

And Modern Retail says reservation platforms are expanding their services to help businesses control who gets in when. 

Take a number, please

Popular apps like Resy and OpenTable are going beyond seated dining: OpenTable rolled out a free (for businesses and consumers) tool for reserving time slots at grocery stores and farmers’ markets.

Stores at some malls are letting customers join virtual waitlists — a push notification will buzz when it’s time for some mall madness.

No crowd control? 

Smile, you’re Internet Famous.

The reservation route is bound to get more crowded, because there’s an easy way for businesses to get lots of attention when we’re taking baby steps out of lockdown. One picture of shoulder-to-shoulder customers is worth a thousand apologies.

Getting locked out sucks, especially when you didn’t even forget your keys.

According to The Markup and The New York Times, more renters are falling victim to faulty background checks that keep them from getting in the door in the first place. 

What’s to blame? A lax screening process, relying on automated tools that erroneously flag would-be tenants. And you thought your relationship with your landlord was bad.

Your doppelganger might have a long rap sheet

In one survey, landlords cited troublesome tenants as their top concern, and 9 out of 10 said they run checks (of the criminal background and credit variety) on all applicants.

Screening companies prospered and multiplied thanks to growth in the rental industry, but proper regulations have yet to catch up.

Automated checks are churning out errors, from mistaken drug-trafficking charges to evictions that never happened.

Big Brother is just making stuff up at this point

Screening companies don’t have to register with any government agency, and the reports typically aren’t checked by a real-life human to prevent obvious mistakes. Maybe this is Wall-E’s revenge for leaving him in that trash heap.

Gary Vee is disrupting the wine industry

Did you know that Gary Vaynerchuk rose to fame as a…. wine critic?

After college, he took over his dad’s liquor store, renamed it ‘The Wine Library’, and launched a daily wine vlog. He grew the business to $60M/year before leaving to start VaynerMedia in 2009.

But now, he’s back in biz — the wine biz, that is. 

In 2019, Gary launched Empathy, a D2C wine company. 

Want to treat yo’ self and others? $10 from every case of their limited edition Bubbly Rose goes to No Kid Hungry.