US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order which removed some of the legal protections given to social media platforms, few days after his Twitter fact-checking row.
Speaking to newsmen while signing the order which gives regulators the power to pursue legal actions against firms such as Facebook and Twitter for the way they police content on their platforms, the US President said the move was to “defend free speech from one of the gravest dangers it has faced in American history”.
Trump said “A small handful of social media monopolies controls a vast portion of all public and private communications in the United States. 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 executive order also calls for:
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to spell out what type of content blocking will be considered deceptive, pretextual or inconsistent with a service provider’s terms and conditions
A review of government advertising on social media sites and whether those platforms impose viewpoint-based restrictions
The re-establishment of the White House “tech bias reporting tool” that lets citizens report unfair treatment by social networks