Trump Signs Executive Order in Attempt to Guarantee Free Speech Online

President Donald Trump is putting his foot down, and conservative social media users everywhere are cheering.

Today, the Commander in Chief signed an executive order that bolsters the right to free speech online, and threatens to throttle the ad revenue that social media companies can receive should they refuse to comply.

“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.

The president criticized the growing monopoly of social media companies in America, vowing to act to change the regulatory framework for the companies.

“There’s no precedent in American history for so small a number of corporations to control so large a sphere of interaction,” he said.

Trump said the increasing editorial actions by social media to control the content on their platforms endangered their liability shield under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as a neutral public platform.

He continued…

“The choices that Twitter makes, when it chooses to suppress, edit, blacklist, shadowban are editorial decisions, pure and simple, they are editorial decisions,” Trump said.

The president accused the companies of political activism, calling it “inappropriate.”

“What they choose to fact check and what they choose to ignore or promote is nothing more than a political activism group,” he said.

Trump said that social media companies had “more power and more reach” than any phone company or newspaper or media outlet, and needed more regulation.

Attorney General Bill Barr chimed in as well, reminding the world that these platforms were first heralded as “public forums”, and have only recently leaned on their private status in order to push a particular political narrative.