(Reuters) – President Donald Trump said he would introduce laws that could discard or weaken a law that has long protected Internet companies like Twitter and Facebook. This is an extraordinary attempt to intervene in the media, which experts said is unlikely to survive legal control.
Trump signed one top command Thursday afternoon after he attacked Twitter for warning his tweets about unsubstantiated fraud allegations of mail-in polls asking readers to review the posts.
Trump said we could "remove or change" section 230 of a law known as the "Communications Decency Act" so that social media companies do not enjoy this legal immunity, which protects such platforms from liability for content, posted by their users.
The President also said that Attorney General William Barr will continue to enforce these laws regulating social media companies.
On Wednesday, Reuters reported on the White House's plan to amend Section 230 based on a copy of a draft regulation.
Facebook and Twitter did not immediately comment on the executive order.
The President's remarks and the draft written ordinance attempt to circumvent Congress and the courts by making changes to the long-established interpretations of Section 230. This is Trump's latest attempt to use the presidency's tools to force private companies to change policies that he believes are not beneficial to him.
“Regarding the President's efforts to limit critical comments about himself, one would have to resort to the Sedition Act of 1798, which made it illegal to say wrong things about the President and certain other officials to allegedly find an attack President who makes or prints comments on public issues and public persons is legally established, ”said Floyd Abrams, lawyer for First Amendment.
Others like Jack Balkin, a professor of constitutional law at Yale University, said: "The president is trying to scare, force, scare and persuade social media companies to leave him alone and not to do what Twitter just did to him. "
Still, Twitter's shares fell 4.4% on Thursday. Facebook declined 1.7 percent and Google parent Alphabet Inc rose slightly.
Trump, who uses Twitter heavily to promote his policies and insult his opponents, has long claimed without evidence that the service is biased in favor of the Democrats. He and his supporters have filed the same unfounded charges against Facebook that Trump's presidential campaign uses to a large extent as an advertising medium.
