Trump signs social media executive order

PRESIDENT D J TRUMP signs executive order, aims to fight ‘unchecked power’ of social media giants

May 28, 2020 | Frieda Powers | “We’re here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers it has faced in American history, frankly, and you know what’s going on as well as anybody. It’s not good,” Trump told reporters from the Oval Office before signing the order.

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“A small handful of social media monopolies controls a vast portion of all public and private communications in the United States,” he said. “They’ve had unchecked power to censor, restrict, edit, shape, hide, alter, virtually any form of communication between private citizens and large public audiences.”

The order calls for the Federal Communications Commission to look at whether companies should lose protections if they appear to be editorializing content shared by users. Those protections, currently under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, give broad protections to the social media companies from content created and posted by users on their sites, something the president noted has been a complaint lodged by both Republicans and Democrats.