“Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices,” Trump tweeted.
By World Israel News Staff
President Donald Trump will sign an executive order targeting social media companies on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters on Wednesday evening.
The move comes after Twitter on Tuesday added a warning phrase to two Trump tweets.
No further details were offered but a Trump administration official quoted by the Politico website said Wednesday that the executive order “would address complaints that the online platforms are deceiving people by picking and choosing what content to allow or block instead of acting as politically neutral platforms or moderators.”
“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,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday.
There have been cases of what conservatives claim is bias against their political views. In February, Prager University, which produces conservative videos on YouTube, failed to win a free speech suit against YouTube and its parent company, Google, after YouTube classfied its videos as “restricted.”
The judge ruled that YouTube is a private platform and has the right to moderate the platform as it pleases.
Trump is upset at Twitter after the social media platform fact-checked tweets to to his more than 80 million followers.
“Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!” he tweeted Tuesday.
While Congress could pass legislation further regulating social media platforms, Trump “has no such authority,” former federal judge Michael McConnell told the Associated Press. “He is just venting.”
But Jack Balkin, a Yale University law professor, said, “This is an attempt by the president to, as we used to say in basketball, work the refs,” he said.
“He’s threatening and cajoling with the idea that these folks in their corporate board rooms will think twice about what they’re doing, so they won’t touch him.”