Trump’s Social Media Executive Order Is Purely for Show
https://www.wired.com/story/trump-social-media-executive-order/
After Twitter applied a fact-checking label to a pair of the president’s tweets for the first time ever this week, Donald Trump vowed revenge. “Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!” he declared on—where else—Twitter. “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.” Today, he followed through ... sort of.
This afternoon, Trump signed an executive order that targets not just Twitter but social media writ large. The final version still hasn’t been released, but according to leaked drafts, the White House will direct federal agencies to stop advertising on platforms that discriminate politically and ask the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether platforms are mistreating users. Most significantly, it will ask the Federal Communications Commission to propose regulations that “clarify” the meaning of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—the federal law that gives internet platforms broad legal immunity over how they choose to regulate, or not, the content of user posts. It’s a not-so-veiled threat to punish Twitter and other platforms for purported anticonservative bias, by opening them up to costly litigation.