Trump heightens war on Twitter and other social-media companies
WASHINGTON—PRESIDENT Donald J. Trump escalated his war on Twitter and other social-media companies Thursday, signing an executive order challenging the lawsuit protections that have served as a bedrock for unfettered speech on the Internet.
Announced with fanfare, the president’s action yet appeared to be more about politics than substance. He aims to rally supporters after he lashed out at Twitter for applying fact-checks to two of his tweets.
Trump said the fact-checks were “editorial decisions”bytwitter amounting to political activism and that such actions should cost social-media companies their liability protection for what is posted on their platforms.
Trump, who personally relies heavily on Twitter to verbally flog his foes, has long accused the tech giants in liberal-leaning Silicon Valley of targeting conservatives by fact-checking them or removing their posts.
“We’re fed up with it,”trump said, claiming his order would uphold freedom of speech.
Technology industry groups disagreed, saying it would stifle innovation and speech on the Internet. And the US Chamber of Commerce objected, “Regardless of the circumstances that led up to this, this is not how public policy is made in the United States.”
The executive order directs Executive branch agencies to ask independent rule-making agencies including the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission to study whether they can place new regulations on the companies—though experts express doubts much can be done without an act of Congress.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement: “This debate is an important one. The Federal Communications Commission will carefully review any petition for rulemaking filed by the Department of Commerce.”
Companies like Twitter and Facebook are granted liability protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act because they are treated as“platforms,”rather than“publishers,” which can face lawsuits over content.
A similar executive order was previously considered by the administration but shelved over concerns it couldn’t pass legal muster and that it violated conservative principles on deregulation and free speech.
“They’ve had unchecked power to censor, restrict, edit, shape, hide, alter virtually any form of communication between private citizens or large public audiences,”trump said of social-media companies as he prepared to sign the order.“there is no precedent in American history for so small a number of corporations to control so large a sphere of human interaction.”
Trump and his campaign reacted after Twitter added a warning phrase to two Trump tweets that called mail-in ballots “fraudulent” and predicted “mail boxes will be robbed.” Under the tweets, there’s now a link reading “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” that guides users to a page with fact-checks and news stories about Trump’s unsubstantiated claims.
Trump accused Twitter of interfering in the 2020 presidential election” and declared “as president, I will not allow this to happen.” His campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said Twitter’s “clear political bias” had led the campaign to pull “all our advertising from Twitter months ago.” In fact, Twitter has banned political advertising since last November.
Late Wednesday, Twitter Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jack Dorsey tweeted, “We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally.”
On the other hand, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Fox News his platform has “a different policy, I think, than Twitter on this.”
“I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,” he said.
The president’s critics, meanwhile, scolded the platforms for allowing him to put forth false, or misleading information, that could confuse voters.
Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat and advocate for Internet freedoms, said Trump was “desperately trying to steal for himself the power of the courts and Congress .... All for the ability to spread unfiltered lies.”
Trump’s proposal has multiple, serious legal problems and is unlikely to survive a challenge, according to Matt Schruers, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a Washington-based organization that represents computer and Internet companies.
It would also seem to be an assault on the same online freedom that enabled social media platforms to flourish in the first place—and made them such an effective microphone for Trump and other politicians.
“The irony that is lost here is that if these protections were to go away social-media services would be far more aggressive in moderating content and terminating accounts,” Schruers said. “Our vibrant public sphere of discussion would devolve into nothing more than preapproved soundbites.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it was “outrageous”that whiletwitter had put a fact-check tag on Trump’s tweets asserting massive mail-in election fraud, it had not removed his tweets repeating a debunked conspiracy theory that a TV news host had murdered an aide years ago.
The president and fellow conservatives have been claiming, for years, that Silicon Valley tech companies are biased against them. But there is no evidence for this—and while the executives and many employees of Twitter, Facebook and Google may lean liberal, the companies have stressed they have no business interest in favoring one political party over the other.
The trouble began in 2016, two years after Facebook launched a section called“trending,”using editors to curate popular news stories. Zuckerberg met with prominent right-wing leaders at the time in an attempt at damage control, and in 2018, Facebook shut down the “trending” section.
Despite a few glimmers of hope, most of the latest economic news from around the globe was likewise grim, as some of the world’s most populous countries reported rising infections and deaths. The confirmed US death toll has surpassed 100,000, the highest in the world.
The latest job-loss figures from the US labor department bring to 41 million the running total of Americans who have filed for unemployment benefits since the coronavirus shutdowns took hold in mid-march.
There were some encouraging signs: The overall number of Americans currently drawing jobless benefits dropped for the first time since the crisis began, from 25 million to 21 million. And firsttime applications for unemployment benefits have fallen for eight straight weeks, as states gradually let stores, restaurants and other businesses reopen and the auto industry starts up factories again.
But the number of US workers filing for unemployment benefits is still extraordinarily high by historical standards, and that suggests businesses are failing, or permanently downsizing, not just laying off people until the crisis can pass, economists warn.
“That is the kind of economic destruction you cannot quickly put back in the bottle,” said Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork.
The US unemployment rate was 14.7 percent in April, a level not seen since the Depression, and many economists expect it will be near 20 percent in May.
On Wall Street, stocks that climbed for much of the day fell by
the end of trading over concerns about rising Us-china tensions. After a plunge in February and much of March, the market has been recovering, most recently as investors move into stocks that would benefit most from a reopening economy.
The unemployment figures come amid an intensifying debate in Congress over whether to extend $600 in extra weekly federal unemployment benefits, provided under rescue legislation passed in March but set to expire July 31.
Democrats have proposed extending the payments, while Republicans have argued that the extra money could discourage laidoff workers from returning to jobs that pay less than they are getting on unemployment.
Kelly Kelso, a 30-year-old roadie from Nashville, Tennessee, for the rock group Foreigner, got her first unemployment check last week after more than eight weeks of waiting. She said she is still receiving far less in benefits than the $1,250 per week or more she made on tour.
Though Kelso is reluctant to leave the music industry, she said, “I have a cosmetology license. If all else fails, I could go back to doing hair.”
Another looming storm cloud: Economists say the sharp loss of tax revenue for state and local governments is likely to compound the damage from the shutdowns by forcing additional public-sector layoffs in the coming weeks.
Those layoffs have just recently started showing up in the weekly jobless claims report. Washington state, for example, reported layoffs of government employees.
Job cuts also are appearing far beyond the initially hit industries such as restaurants and stores, a sign that the damage is spreading even as businesses reopen. Washington state said it saw layoffs in insurance, and New York state reported job cuts by information technology companies.
Economists say many of the jobs lost are never coming back, and double-digit unemployment could persist through 2021.
And as discouraging as the numbers are, the real picture may be worse. The government counts people as unemployed only if they’re actually looking for a job, and many Americans probably see no point in trying when so many businesses are shut down.
Airlines and aircraft manufacturers are struggling after air travel plummeted early in the outbreak. Boeing is cutting more than 12,000 US jobs through layoffs and buyouts, many expected to be in the Seattle area. European budget airline Easyjet said it will cut up to a third of its 15,000 employees. American Airlines plans to eliminate about 5,100 jobs.
Amtrak likewise announced it will lay off about 20 percent of its 18,000 workers amid a collapse in train ridership.
A number of European countries have strong safety-net programs that are underwriting the wages of millions of workers and keeping them on the payroll instead of adding them to the ranks of the unemployed. But the economic damage is mounting there, too.
Nissan is rolling back production in Spain in a move the government said could lead to 3,000 direct job cuts and thousands more losses at the automaker’s suppliers. And French unemployment claims jumped 22 percent in April, with 843,000 more people seeking work.
Elsewhere around the world, India saw another record daily jump in coronavirus cases. Russia reported a steady increase in its caseload, even as Moscow and provinces across the vast country moved to ease restrictions in sync with the Kremlin’s political agenda.
And South Korea reported dozens of new cases, all in the densely populated Seoul metro area, as officials scramble to stem transmissions linked to a massive ecommerce warehouse and avoid losing some of the hard-won gains that made it a model for the rest of the world.
Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 5.8 million people and killed about 360,000, with the US having the most confirmed cases and deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Europe has recorded about 170,000 deaths.
The true dimensions of the disaster are widely believed to be significantly greater, with experts saying many victims died without ever being tested. AP