US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to
regulate social media companies.
This development is coming a day after the US president
threatened to shut down social media.
On Tuesday, Trump had tweeted that mail-in ballots were
fraudulent but the claim was fact checked by Twitter — an action which peeved
the US president.
Twitter put a warning on Trump’s tweet: “Get the facts about
mail-in ballots,” and redirected users to news articles about the president’s
unproven claim.
Addressing journalists at the oval office where he signed
the executive order on Thursday, Trump said his action seeks to “defend free
speech from one of the gravest dangers it has faced in American history.”
He said his administration would check powers of social
media companies to censor opinions and views of Americans.
“We are here today to defend free speech from one of the
greatest dangers,” he said.
“A small handful of social media monopolies controls a vast
portion of all public and private communications in the United States.
“They have had unchecked power to censor, restrict, edit,
shape, hide, alter, virtually any form of communication between private
citizens and large public audiences.
“I guess it is going to be challenged in court, but what
isn’t?”
Trump’s order targets a US law known as the communications
decency act, where section 230 grants liability protections to social media
companies, as well as immunity to websites that curate and moderate their
platforms.
The draft order describes US as a country with age-long
affinity for freedom of expression, adding that censorship against speeeches of
Americans is “dangerous.”
“In a country that has long cherished the freedom of
expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand-pick
the speech that Americans may access and convey online,” it read.
“This practice is fundamentally un-American and
anti-democratic. When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions
with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power.”
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