Trump to Sign Executive Order On Social Media Amid Twitter Controversy

Indeed, it's time that big tech companies are held responsible for the content that they publish.

Many argue that because the tech companies manipulate the algorithms to display certain content, they thereby are "publishers" of information. 

If legally true, this would mean that big tech is open to more regulation for fairness than currently applied.

Politico confirms that Trump's executive order on social media will likely come within the next 24 hours:

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order aimed at social media companies on Thursday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters Wednesday evening, a move that comes as the president and his allies have escalated their allegations that companies like Twitter and Facebook stifle GOP voices.

McEnany told reporters aboard Air Force One that the order is “pertaining to social media” but shared no additional details on what it will do. But the announcement revived fears within the online industry that the Trump administration will target a 24-year-old statute that protects the companies from lawsuits — an avenue that a growing number of Republican lawmakers have advocated in their bias allegations about Silicon Valley.

Trump and his supporters have been hammering Twitter since the social network labeled a pair of his tweets with a fact-checking notice for the first time on Tuesday, and the president pledged Wednesday that "big action" will follow.

Twitter acted after Trump had alleged without evidence that mail-in ballots are likely to be “substantially fraudulent,” in tweets that the company said contained misleading information about the electoral process. The move triggered an array of rebukes from Republicans, including Trump.

“@Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election,” Trump tweeted Wednesday, adding that “Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!”

Democrats, meanwhile, have complained that Twitter has been too slow to respond to a litany of abusive, inaccurate or inflammatory tweets from the president, including his recent baseless insinuations that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough may be guilty of murder.

This is nothing new.

Reports circulated last year that Trump was considering an executive order pertaining to big-tech's treatment of user-generated content.

However, such an executive order never materialized.

Now, as Twitter begins adding warning labels to President Trump's tweets, it appears that action is imminent.

Twitter also labeled Trump's tweets concerning mail-in voting as "false."

The supposed Twiter "fact checkers" claimed that there was no increased fraud risk with vote-by-mail.

Of course, there is plenty of evidence that mail-in voting leads to ballot harvesting as well as voting fraud!

But it's something that many in the media want to deny.

Fox News confirms the warning labels that Twitter slapped onto Trump's posts:

This comes after Twitter on Tuesday slapped a warning label on one of Trump’s tweets referring to mail-in ballots, cautioning readers that despite the president’s claims, “fact-checkers” say there is “no evidence” that mail-in voting would increase fraud risks and that “experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud.”

The president, within minutes of the platform's labeling, accused Twitter of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post,” while adding that the Twitter is “completely stifling FREE SPEECH,” and vowing that “I, as President, will not allow that to happen.”

Twitter’s new warning label was issued even though a Twitter spokesperson acknowledged to Fox News that Trump’s tweet had not broken any of the platform’s rules, and even though some other experts have raised fraud concerns surrounding mail-in voting.

The warning label came after Trump tweeted: "There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!!"

Within hours, Twitter then appended a label to the bottom of the tweet reading: "Get the facts about mail-in ballots.”

Clicking that label brought readers to a paragraph saying: "On Tuesday, President Trump made a series of claims about potential voter fraud after California Governor Gavin Newsom announced an effort to expand mail-in voting in California during the COVID-19 pandemic. These claims are unsubstantiated, according to CNN, Washington Post and others. Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud."

Twitter went on to note in a "What to Know" section that "fact-checkers say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud" and that "Trump falsely claimed that California will send mail-in ballots to 'anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there.' In fact, only registered voters will receive ballots."

Twitter acknowledged Trump's tweet "is not in violation of the Twitter Rules as it does not directly try to dissuade people from voting -- it does, however, contain misleading information about the voting process, specifically mail-in ballots, and we’re offering more context to the public."

The warning label was only the latest example conservatives cite as demonstrating a bias on the platform. Just two months ago, Twitter flagged a video uploaded by the Trump campaign as "manipulated media," only to rebuff the campaign's efforts to have the platform flag a similar video uploaded by the Biden team.

Has Twitter ever fact-checked CNN?

What about any of the candidates during the Democratic primaries?

It appears that Trump is the first major leader to have a warning label slapped onto his tweets.

If this is not manipulation by big tech, then we don't know what is!

It's time for major social media companies to stop tilting the scales of the algorithm and allow users to determine the content they want to see!