President Donald Trump is taking action to limit social media companies’ legal protection.
“We’re here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers it has faced in American history, frankly, and you know what’s going on as well as anybody. It’s not good,” Trump said before signing his executive order on Thursday.
He continued, “What they’re doing is tantamount to monopoly, you can say it’s tantamount to taking over the airwaves,”
“Can’t let it happen. Otherwise, we’re not going to have a Democracy. We’re not going to have anything to do with a republic,” he added.
Specifically, Trump said social media giants have “unchecked power to censure, restrict, edit, shape, hide, alter virtually any form of communication between private citizens or large public audiences.”
Watch the video below:
Pres. Trump: "I'm signing an Executive Order to protect and uphold the free speech and rights of the American people. Currently, social media giants like Twitter receive an unprecedented liability shield based on the theory that they are a neutral platform, which they are not." pic.twitter.com/awl4RULTRR
— CSPAN (@cspan) May 28, 2020
Trump said the executive order would limit the companies’ liability protections. He also the order would direct federal agencies to review their ad spending on social media companies that allegedly restrict free speech.
The order would, in theory, make changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives social media companies liability protection.
However, Trump would likely need Congress to act to enact changes to Section 230. But, Trump said he would consider introducing legislation that would weaken or scrap Section 230.
Addressing Twitter, Trump said, “If Twitter were not honorable, if you’re going to have a guy like this be your judge and jury, I think you shut it down as far as I’m concerned. But I would have to go through a legal process to do that.”
He also said, “If it were legal, if it were able to be legally shut down, I would do it.”
His comments come after Twitter applied a fact-check to some of his tweets, as IJR reported.
After Twitter fact-checked Trump, he accused the company of interfering in the 2020 presidential election. And he accused social media companies of censoring conservative voices and vowed to regulate them.
