US President Donald Trump signed a decree on Thursday to weaken or lift legislation protecting social media companies. Trump is at odds with Twitter, as the company tagged two messages with messages warning of potentially misleading information.
Current US law ensures, among other things, that companies like Twitter and Facebook are not responsible for what users upload. The companies should not be seen as publishers of these statements.
Trump wants companies to be held accountable for choices they make about what content is posted on social media. The president has instructed US Attorney General William Barr to draft new legislation. Critics doubt whether Trump’s decision will be legally tenable.
Trump’s action follows Twitter’s decision to add labels to two messages from the president. These labels indicate that the messages may contain falsehoods. In the two tweets Trump posted, he claimed that voting by mail is susceptible to fraud.
He said that in response to the California Governor’s decision to stamp all registered voters in his state in the November presidential election because of the corona crisis.
Trump was already threatening to shut down companies
Following this decision, Trump threatened to tightly regulate or even shut down social media companies on Wednesday. He stated that in 2016, the companies attempted to influence the presidential election to his disadvantage.
There is no evidence for this. However, there is evidence that Russian intelligence services were active on social media at the time to help Trump move forward.
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