The president on Thursday made good on his threat to reign in anti-conservative bias on social media, following unprecedented controversial decision by Twitter to censor his tweets.
Speaking to the press in the oval office flanked by Attorney General Bill Barr, Trump declared, “We’re here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers.”
The President charged that big social media companies like Twitter have "unchecked power to censor restrict, edit shape hide alter virtually any form of communication between private citizens or large public audiences.”
He also slammed the growing monopoly these companies have over the flow of information in America. “There’s no precedent in American history for so small a number of corporations to control so large a sphere of interaction,” the president said.
“The choices that Twitter makes, when it chooses to suppress, edit, blacklist, shadowban are editorial decisions, pure and simple, they are editorial decisions,” he added.
Barr speaking after the president, noted “These companies grew because they held themselves out as public forums. Now that they’ve become these very powerful networks of eyeballs. They’ve now switched and they are using that market power to force particular viewpoints.”
The president's executive order seeks to clarify Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA).
The order in part reads:
(a) It is the policy of the United States to foster clear ground rules promoting free and open debate on the internet. Prominent among the ground rules governing that debate is the immunity from liability created by section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act (section 230(c)). 47 U.S.C. 230(c). It is the policy of the United States that the scope of that immunity should be clarified: the immunity should not extend beyond its text and purpose to provide protection for those who purport to provide users a forum for free and open speech, but in reality use their power over a vital means of communication to engage in deceptive or pretextual actions stifling free and open debate by censoring certain viewpoints.
There is an ongoing debate among conservatives about the effectiveness of this approach by the president. There are three main perspectives.
One perspective is that executive order(and or legislation) is necessary to limit the legal protections afforded these social media companies.
Critics warn that this approach will make the situation worse and stifle innovation since companies will be forced to engage in even more censorship to avoid libel litigations. This, they warn will drive small budget companies offline, and lead to shutdown of comment sections on websites.
A second perspective is that legislation is necessary to make social media companies operate more like utilities like telephone companies.
While many seem to agree with this, critics say that given the hyper-partisanship in congress, it may be impossible for democrats and republicans to agree on a legislation. The left care more about privacy, while the right care more about free speech.
A third perspective may eventually be the consensus on the right: supporting alternative platforms like gab.com and bitchute.com.
Gab is a free speech social network that competes with both Twitter and Facebook. Bitchute is a video hosting and streaming website more like youtube.
According to Gab CEO Andrew Torba, the company is building free speech solutions to the censorship problems rampant on big tech platforms.
Reacting to the President's executive order, Torba tweeted, "Mr President the best thing you can do to fight Silicon Valley tyranny is get on Gab.com and other alternative platforms. We need to decentralize away from all Big Tech products. With one tweet you can shake up the entire tech and media landscape."