US, WASHINGTON (ORDO NEWS) — The confrontation between the US president and his favorite mouthpiece, the Twitter service, escalates. The latter’s leadership reacted violently to Donald Trump’s decree on social networks, calling it “reactionary and politically engaged.”
As Vesti.Ru wrote earlier , on the eve the head of the White House signed a decree on regulating the activities of social networks in the United States. It involves the removal of the latest broad legal immunity, which protects against liability from claims for editing content. This is provided for by Section 230 of the Telecommunications Decency Act of 1996 governing the industry. It guarantees that the provider of the interactive computer service, that is, the social network as well, cannot be considered as a publisher or an independent source of information provided by a third party.
“They have a shield, and they can do what they want. They will not have this shield anymore,” Trump commented on his actions.
“This executive decree is a reactionary and politicized approach to the fundamental law. Section 230 defends American innovation and freedom of expression, it is based on the foundation of democratic values. Unilateral attempts to undermine it threaten the future of online speech and Internet freedom,” the Twitter statement said.
The initiative of the offended on the Trump social network and on Facebook was not disregarded. True, there were no charges.
“Facebook is a platform for different views. We believe in protecting freedom of expression in our services, while protecting our community from malicious content, including content designed to prevent voters from exercising their right to vote,” said a spokeswoman for Facebook. Liz Bourgeois. “These rules apply to everyone. The abolition or restriction of section 230 will have the opposite effect. This will lead to even more restrictions on Internet content, rather than reducing them. Placing companies with potential responsibility for everything that billions of people around the world say “It will punish companies that resolve contentious claims and force the platforms to censor anything that might offend anyone.”
Earlier, the head of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg more streamlined stated that no social network should become an “arbiter of truth” and neither Facebook nor Twitter should assume such responsibility.
Trump’s decree is more like personal revenge than a fight for freedom of speech. The reason was the actions of Twitter administrators: earlier they marked one of their scandalous user’s tweets with an icon indicating that the US president was telling a lie. There was also a link to an article in which Trump was convicted of a lie. Trump took this as a direct threat to his political ambitions, namely, plans for re-election for a second term as president of the United States, and promised to take social networks in hedgehog gloves, or even completely shut down if they “drown out the voices of conservatives.” “I’m fed up with this,” Trump said.
The decree also affects the largest players in this market – Twitter, Facebook, Google. At the same time, the social networks themselves insist that they in no way prevent people from speaking out, although they delete or block content that, from the point of view of administrators, contradicts their rules.
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