President Donald Trump accused the social media platform Twitter of “interfering” with the 2020 election and has called for legislation to prohibit such interference by social media companies.
Twitter’s new fact-check feature is said to have been established as an effort to keep down false claims on their site. They have fact-checked hundreds of “tweets” and decided last week to increase their “check the facts” label to include even more tweets, including those published by President Trump. The social media company has been facing accusations of attempting to silence conservative viewpoints for quite some time now, but this seems to have made it official.
Twitter made the controversial move at the end of May of flagging President Trump’s post about alleged fraud in mail-in voting, and then had the audacity to deem it as potentially misleading information. White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany called out the liberal platform during a press conference Thursday.
“If we were to judge the bias of Twitter and its top employees by their own words, the case would be an easy one to make,” she stated. “Twitter’s head of site integrity has tweeted that there are, quote, actual Nazis in the White House and no fact check label was ever applied to this absolutely outrageous, offensive and false claim made against the White House and its employees.”
The social media company is now trying to save its image by applying those fact-checking standards to tweets on a variety of topics to make it look like they have been “fact-checking” everyone. They don’t seem to be very good at the backdating of fact-checks though, as they just recently added the fact-check warning to a tweet from the spokesman for China’s foreign ministry in which he suggested the U.S. Army may have brought the coronavirus to Wuhan – which was over two-months old.
Twitter’s actions are obviously retaliatory and only came after the president signed an executive order that rescinded the legal protections granted to online social media platforms, like Twitter, which censor user content.
President of tech trade association NetChoice, Steve DelBianco, said that Twitter has provided the president with an advantage and warned of the danger of an executive order against them.
“President Trump is right to embrace social media platforms as a way for him and ordinary citizens to share their news and views without being filtered by traditional media” DelBianco stated. “…this idea of creating brand new government powers that could regulate the way that private social media platforms moderate speech is really the road to ruin, because under a future administration those powers could be wielded in a way that suppresses the very conservatives that Trump is representing today.”
Trump and other GOP leaders believe that protections should only be given to companies who do not moderate content. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been a long- time supporter of Trump’s attempts at regulation.
“If you listen to what Zuckerberg said, he does not believe these social media companies should be the ‘arbiter of truth’ of everything that people say online,” said McCarthy. “That it’s a platform for people to express themselves, that they can say one thing and say another.”
He continued, “And think about how powerful these companies are, almost 90 percent of all searches go through Google. If you’re not on the front page, 95 percent drop off.
The president also has serious concerns about the size of social media companies like Twitter. “What they’re doing is tantamount to Monopoly, you can say it’s tantamount to taking over the airwaves,” he stated. “Can’t let it happen.”
Trump also posted this on his Twitter account,” Twitter is doing nothing about all of the lies & propaganda being put out by China or the Radical Left Democrat Party. They have targeted Republicans, Conservatives & the President of the United States. Section 230 should be revoked by Congress. Until then, it will be regulated!”
