President Donald Trump, on Thursday, will sign an executive order on social media companies. White House released this statement after Trump launched a threat against the companies it accused of ‘stifling conservative voices’. It gave no further details and how Trump would follow on the threat to shut down private companies like Twitter is still a mystery.
The dispute with Twitter erupted when, for the first time, it tagged Trump’s tweet about unsubstantiated claims of fraud in mail-in voting with a warning that advised readers to fact check the post.
A three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington on Wednesday upheld a previous dismissal of a lawsuit by a conservative group and a right-wing YouTube personality against Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple accusing them of conspiring to suppress political views.
During an interview with Fox News, Mark Zuckerberg said that censoring a social media platform would not be the “right reflex” for a government worried about censorship. Facebook did not touch any of Trump’s posts regarding mail-in ballots.
The American Civil Liberties Union said the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution limits any action the President can take. Trump tweeted a few more posts on Wednesday saying, “Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives’ voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.” He later added, “Clean up your act, NOW!!!!.”
‘The largest threat yet’
Trump sent another tweet on Wednesday night saying, “Big Tech is doing everything in their very considerable power to CENSOR in advance of the 2020 Election. If that happens, we no longer have our freedom.”
This threat was the strongest threat by Trump so far and caused the shares of Twitter and Facebook to fall. During Twitter’s annual meeting on Wednesday, General Counsel Sean Edgett said, “We have a group and committee of folks who take a look at these things and make decisions on what’s getting a lot of visibility and traction.” This has come after Twitter was accused for years that its hands-off approach allowed fake accounts and misinformation to regularly sprout, which led to it tightening its policies.
Tech companies have been accused of violating privacy laws and Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon face antitrust probes by federal and state authorities and U.S. congressional panel. They have been looking to change a law (Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act) for years that allowed such companies to be exempted from any legal backlash for materials posted by their users. This change could allow for more lawsuits.
The question that now remains is ‘Is this the opening of a Pandora’s box of censorship?’
