President Trump says tech companies are not acting as neutral platforms and will now lose their liability shield. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other companies are in the spotlight as President Trump has just signed an executive order that could end up becoming a major legal battle. This all began when Twitter though it would be a good idea to fact check Trump’s tweets about mail-in voting.
Breaking: @realDonaldTrump has signed an executive order holding social media companies accountable under section 230 for viewpoint discrimination in social media censorship.
— Jason Alexander Roberge VA-7 (@JasonRobergeVA) May 28, 2020
Although President Trump has been telling conservatives on social media for a long time now that he would do something about social media censorship, it took Twitter fact-checking him to prompt action apparently. Legal protections for companies who claim they aren’t publisher under Section 230 could be done away if this order is implemented.
The order would open the door for people to complain to the FTC about political bias. Many people support this move and many people believe it is overreach, and although it’s based on conservative censorship in President Trump’s eyes, the divide doesn’t seem to be along party lines. Some libertarian-leaning Republicans are afraid this gives the government too much power.
Some Democrats such as former Congresswoman Katie Hill, who lost her seat in part because of nude photos of herself that went viral, sees it as potentially good, and “bigger than Trump”. The Washington Post reported about the unfolding news:
The order could mark the White House’s most significant salvo against Silicon Valley after years of verbal broadsides and regulatory threats from Trump and his top deputies. It also may raise fresh, thorny questions about the First Amendment, the future of expression online and the extent to which the White House can properly — and legally — influence the decisions that private companies make about their apps, sites and services.
It is not clear, however, if the FTC and FCC plan to take the actions sought by the president. The agencies are independent, operating separately of Trump’s Cabinet, leaving enforcement to their discretion. The FCC declined to comment, and the FTC did not immediately respond.
“There’s no precedent in American history for so small a number of corporations to control so large a sphere of human interaction, and that includes individual people controlling vast amounts of territory, and we can’t allow that to happen…” President Trump begins. See the whole video below:
