On Thursday, Donald Trump officially signed an executive order taking aim at tech companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, who fact-checked two of his tweets for the first time earlier this week. The tweets made misleading claims about mail-in voting leading to voter fraud, to which the social media giant responded by adding a link leading users to resources with facts.
“We’re here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers it has faced in American history,” Trump said, according to the NY Times.
“They’ve had unchecked power to censure, restrict, edit, shape, hide, alter virtually any form of communication between private citizens or large public audiences,” Mr. Trump said, saying there was “no precedent” for it. “We cannot allow that to happen, especially when they go about doing what they’re doing.”
“In these moments, Twitter ceases to be a neutral public platform — they become an editor with a viewpoint,” he said, including Facebook and Google in the attack
“We’re fed up with it,” Trump said in the Oval Office Thursday before signing the order that would scale back some of the immunities that protect tech and social media platforms. “That’s a big deal. They have a shield. They can do what they want. They’re not going to have that shield,” he went on to snarl..
While the official executive order has not yet been released, a draft order circulated earlier this week with intentions to pull back liability protections outlined in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides broad protections for the content their users post on their platforms. The draft order will give the Commerce Department and the Federal Communications Commission the power to reinterpret the law and allow the Federal Trade Commission to create a tool for users to report instances of bias online.
