Donald Trump’s priority on the day after we crossed 100,000 coronavirus deaths is social media. After Twitter took a very small step, marking a couple of his tweets with a fact-check link, the president lost it. In the last two days, he has tweeted or retweeted things about “social media” no less than 10 times.
Wednesday Trump threatened “Social Media Platforms” saying, “We will strongly regulate, or close them down.” And he didn’t waste any time in trying to regulate them. Today the president made a big show of signing an executive order. The Wall Street Journal says “The order seeks to make it easier for federal regulators to hold companies such as Twitter and Facebook liable if they are deemed to be unfairly curbing users’ speech by, for example, suspending their accounts or deleting their posts.” It’s expected to be immediately challenged in court.
Meanwhile, today the two most powerful people in social media are responding in very different ways. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is defending his company’s decision to fact check the president, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg seems to be siding with Trump on this one.
And here’s how Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is reacting. She is calling Trump’s move against social media “a distraction.”
Vox writes:
“Ironically, it’s actually Trump — not Twitter — who is wading into unconstitutional territory here. If Trump were to try to shut down social media companies in retaliation for Twitter’s fact-check of his tweets, that would be a clear violation of the First Amendment. It would be sure to invite a fierce legal challenge and would signal an alarming attempt by the president of the United States to wield his executive power against one of the most fundamental rights in this country.
“One thing Trump can do is try to regulate tech companies like Twitter in other ways. He could press for a repeal of Section 230, a law that’s part of the internet’s foundation and which shields tech platforms from being sued over content that users post on their sites.“
And here’s the official response from Twitter.