Big Tech Outraged by Trump’s Executive Order on Social Media

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Big Tech officials are spooked by President Donald Trump’s push to regulate social media and they are speaking out.

The confrontation escalated when President Donald Trump tweeted his concerns that mail-in ballots could be “fraudulent.” Twitter then fact-checked his tweet as if his concerns were invalid, which prompted Trump to accuse them of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election.”

Since then he drafted an Executive Order which will use the federal government to strip Section 230 protections from companies that don’t behave properly as platforms for free speech. Big Tech liberals have been enraged by this order.

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Twitter, which has just made headlines again for flagging the president’s tweet about using the National Guard to quell destructive rioting in Minneapolis, tweeted its displeasure as a company. Twitter Policy proclaimed:

“This EO is a reactionary and politicized approach to a landmark law. #Section230 protects American innovation and freedom of expression, and it’s underpinned by democratic values. Attempts to unilaterally erode it threaten the future of online speech and Internet freedoms.”

Facebook has not been happy with recent events. Tech commentator and former Blizzard game developer Mark Kern quipped “Facebook is staring daggers at Twitter” for going too far and bringing the president’s wrath down on all Big Tech platforms.

Zuckerberg took a swipe at Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey during a Squawk Box interview with its co-host Andrew Sorkin when he explained, “I don’t think that Facebook or internet platforms in general should be arbiters of truth.” Since then Facebook has denied that it censors unfairly and decried the executive order as counterproductive,

“Facebook is a platform for diverse views. We believe in protecting freedom of expression on our services, while protecting our community from harmful content including content designed to stop voters from exercising their right to vote. Those rules apply to everybody. Repealing or limiting section 230 will have the opposite effect. It will restrict more speech online, not less. By exposing companies to potential liability for everything that billions of people around the world say, this would penalize companies that choose to allow controversial speech and encourage platforms to censor anything that might offend anyone.”

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), one of Section 230’s architects, slammed the president in a massive tweetstorm. He accused the president of “desperately trying to steal for himself the power of the courts and Congress to rewrite decades of settled law around Section 230” for the “ability to spread lies.” In one particularly damning tweet he suggested:

“Donald Trump’s misinformation campaigns have left death and destruction in their wake. He’s clearly targeting Section 230 because it protects private businesses’ right to not have to play host to his lies.”

Wyden claimed as “the co-author of Section 230” and claimed “there is nothing in the law about political neutrality. It does not say companies like Twitter are forced to carry misinformation about voting, especially from the president.”

He later added “Efforts to erode Section 230 will only make online content more likely to be false and dangerous.” He underlined this point by claiming “Section 230 does not prevent Internet companies from moderating offensive or false content.”



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