Washington - US President Donald Trump
will sign an executive order on social media companies on
Thursday, White House officials said after Trump threatened to
shut down websites he accused of stifling conservative voices.
The officials gave no further details. It was unclear how
Trump could follow through on the threat of shutting down
privately owned companies including Twitter Inc. The
company declined comment.
The dispute erupted after Twitter on Tuesday for the first
time tagged Trump's tweets about unsubstantiated claims of fraud
in mail-in voting with a warning prompting readers to fact check
the posts.
Separately, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals
in Washington on Wednesday upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit by
a conservative group and right-wing YouTube personality against
Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple accusing them of conspiring
to suppress conservative political views.
In an interview with Fox News Channel on Wednesday,
Facebook's Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said censoring a
platform would not be the "right reflex" for a government
worried about censorship. Fox played a clip of the interview and
said it would be aired in full on Thursday.
Facebook left Trump's post on mail-in ballots on Tuesday
untouched.
The American Civil Liberties Union said the First Amendment
of the US Constitution limits any action Trump could take.
Facebook and Google declined comment. Apple did not respond to a
request for comment.
"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," Trump
said in a pair of additional posts on Twitter on Wednesday.
The president, a heavy user of Twitter with more than 80
million followers, added: "Clean up your act, NOW!!!!"
Republican Trump has an eye on the November election. "Big
Tech is doing everything in their very considerable power to
CENSOR in advance of the 2020 Election," Trump tweeted on
Wednesday night. "If that happens, we no longer have our
freedom."
Trump's threat is his strongest yet within a broader
conservative backlash against Big Tech. Shares of both Twitter
and Facebook fell on Wednesday.
Last year the White House circulated drafts of a proposed
executive order about anti-conservative bias which never gained
traction.
The Internet Association, which includes Twitter and
Facebook among its members, said online platforms do not have a
political bias and they offer "more people a chance to be heard
than at any point in history."
Asked during Twitter's annual meeting on Wednesday why the
company decided to affix the label to Trump's mail-in ballot
tweets, General Counsel Sean Edgett said decisions about
handling misinformation are made as a group.
"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 ...," he said.
In recent years Twitter has tightened its policies amid
criticism that its hands-off approach allowed fake accounts and
misinformation to thrive.
Tech companies have been accused of anti-competitive
practices and violating user privacy. Apple, Google, Facebook
and Amazon face antitrust probes by federal and state
authorities and a US congressional panel.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers, along with the US Justice Department, have been considering changes to Section 230
of the Communications Decency Act, a federal law largely
exempting online platforms from legal liability for the material
their users post. Such changes could expose tech companies to
more lawsuits.
Republican Senator Josh Hawley, a frequent critic of Big
Tech companies, sent a letter to Twitter Chief Executive Jack
Dorsey asking why the company should continue to receive legal
immunity after "choosing to editorialise on President Trump's
tweets."