Trump signs order targeting social media companies

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday targeting social media companies such as Twitter, accusing them of having “unchecked power” and escalating his feud with the popular digital platforms he relies on as a political bullhorn as he runs for reelection.

Trump’s order aims to limit the companies’ legal immunity for how they moderate content posted by users, a goal that legal experts said exceeds the president’s authority unless he persuades Congress to change the law.

But the move could increase political and financial pressure on Twitter,

Facebook, Google and other Silicon Valley giants by opening the door to lawsuits and regulatory reviews.

Trump, who has a history of ordering executive actions that have little direct effect, acknowledged that his latest order is all but certain to face court challenges. Legal experts said it is unlikely to pass judicial muster.

The president acted two days after Twitter, for the first time, added a disclaimer to two of his tweets that falsely said mail-in ballots led to widespread voter fraud. The move infuriated Trump, who often tweets or retweets dozens of times a day.

The order may fire up Trump’s supporters, who have repeatedly accused high-tech platforms of censoring conservative viewpoints, and become a new rallying cry in the 2020 presidential race.

“We’re fed up with it,” Trump said Thursday in the Oval Office. “And it’s unfair, and it’s been very unfair.”

But Trump’s actions also could backfire. If the companies face new legal threats over user-generated content, they may try to limit their liability by blocking incendiary and baseless messages — the same kind that the president routinely posts or shares.

Before signing his executive order, Trump shared a video of a supporter saying “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.” The supporter said he meant the phrase in a political sense, not a physical one, but the statement quickly generated outrage online.

While Trump mostly sticks to Twitter, where he has 80 million followers, his reelection campaign relies on an array of social media, especially Facebook, to aggressively target voters for the November election.

Trump highlighted his latest feud as new labor figures showed 40 million Americans had filed for unemployment in the last 100 days and as the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 exceeded 100,000.

Critics said he is seeking to divert voters’ attention from the ravages of the coronavirus crisis and was trying to intimidate Twitter and other Silicon Valley companies from curtailing his spread of falsehoods and disinformation in an election year.

“This is really just a naked power grab and an attempt at retaliation based on platforms making decisions that the president of the United States doesn’t like,” said Aaron Mackey, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties nonprofit group.

Trump’s executive order complains specifically about Twitter’s decision Tuesday to add fact-check disclaimers to his baseless claims about voter fraud, which research shows is extremely rare.

“Twitter now selectively decides to place a warning label on certain tweets in a manner that clearly reflects political bias,” Trump’s order said.

Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, defended the company’s actions in a tweet Wednesday.

“We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally,” he said.

Twitter responded to Trump’s executive order by describing it as “a reactionary and politicized approach to a landmark law,” arguing that “attempts to unilaterally erode it threaten the future of online speech and internet freedoms.”

Facebook said in a statement that limiting the companies’ legal immunity “would restrict more speech online, not less.”

Social media companies have faced increasing scrutiny from politicians across the ideological spectrum, but there’s little agreement besides a shared sentiment that the platforms have grown too powerful and unaccountable.

Conservatives complain that their voices are not heard, and liberals demand greater efforts to flag deliberate falsehoods and disinformation.

Trump said his executive order would “defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers it has faced in American history.”