Donald Trump Signs Executive Order Targeting Social Media Companies
Donald Trump is calling out social media companies with an executive order.
The 73-year-old President of the United States signed an executive order on Thursday (May 28) following Twitter’s addition of fact-checking warning labels to his tweets about mail-in voter fraud.
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“We’re here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers it has faced in American history,” he said.
“A small handful of powerful social media monopolies had unchecked power to censure, restrict, edit, shape, hide, alter virtually any form of communication between private citizens or large public audiences. We can’t let this continue to happen, it’s very, very unfair.”
“This censorship and bias is a threat to freedom itself. Imagine if your phone company silenced or edited your conversation. Social media companies have vastly more power in the United States than newspapers, they’re by far more rich than any other traditional forms of communication,” he went on to say, adding “that engage in censoring or any political company will not be able to keep their liability shield.”
“My executive order further instructed the Federal Trade Commission to prohibit social media companies from engaging in any deceptive acts or practices,” he went on to explain.
“As president, I’m not allowing the American people to be bullied by these giant corporations. Many people have wanted this to be done by presidents for a long time.”
The order also “seeks to clarify regulations under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 landmark federal law that largely exempts online platforms from legal liability for material posted by their users, allowing them to be treated more like publishers. Rolling back those regulations would expose the tech companies to more civil liability through lawsuits,” according to the New York Post.
The executive order also calls on the government to reassess whether federal online advertising dollars should be held back from the social media giants if they “violate free speech principles.”
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