WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to empower federal regulators to crack down on social media companies like Twitter and Facebook.
The new directive seeks to change a federal law that generally spared tech companies from being sued or held liable for most posts, photos and videos shared by users on their sites. Tech giants herald these protections, known as Section 230, as the bedrock of the internet.
But Trump repeatedly has argued that they allow Facebook, Google and Twitter to censor conservatives with impunity -- charges the companies deny.
"We're fed up with it," Trump said, saying his order would uphold freedom of speech.
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"We're here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers it has faced in American history," Trump told reporters in signing the order in the Oval Office, with Attorney General William Barr standing nearby.
While Trump has threatened such action for years, his signing of the order Thursday was precipitated by a decision by Twitter earlier in the week to mark two of his tweets with fact-checking labels. The move prompted tweets by the president threatening social media companies with regulations and other punishments.
"In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to handpick the speech that Americans may access and convey online," according to an undated draft version of the executive order obtained by The Washington Post late Wednesday.
Already, tech companies are quietly preparing to fight back with a lawsuit challenging the executive order, according to two people familiar with the deliberations who spoke anonymously because no decision has been made.
Legal experts said the directive will almost certainly be challenged in court, arguing that it threatens to undermine the First Amendment. A wide array of critics in Congress, the tech industry and across the political spectrum also accused the White House of deputizing government agencies to carry out Trump's personal vendettas.
"This is simply setting the wheels of law enforcement and regulation in motion against a private company for questioning the president," said Matt Schruers, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a Washington trade group that represents Facebook, Google and other major tech companies.
TRUMP REASONING
"They've [social media platforms] had unchecked power to censure, restrict, edit, shape, hide, alter virtually any form of communication between private citizens or large public audiences," Trump said, adding that there was "no precedent" for it.
"We cannot allow that to happen, especially when they go about doing what they're doing. There is no precedent in American history for so small a number of corporations to control so large a sphere of human interaction."
Twitter, the president said, was making "editorial decisions."
"In these moments, Twitter ceases to be a neutral public platform -- they become an editor with a viewpoint," he said, adding that Facebook and Google are included in his critiques.
Barr told reporters that the tech companies were behaving like "publishers," and Trump said the attorney general would work with states on their own regulations related to online platforms.
Trump's order would pave the way for U.S. agencies to revisit and potentially undo legal protections known as Section 230, which spares tech giants from being held liable for the content they allow online and their own moderation decisions.
The executive order directs executive branch agencies to ask independent rule-making agencies, including the Federal Communications Commission 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.
The order further creates a council along with state attorneys general to probe allegations of political bias, while tasking federal agencies with reviewing their spending on social media advertising, according to the people familiar with the White House's thinking.
It is not clear, however, if the FTC and FCC plan to take the actions sought by the president. The agencies are independent, operating separately of Trump's Cabinet, leaving enforcement to their discretion.
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."
The FTC did not immediately respond.
Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democratic FCC commissioner, criticized the draft order Thursday as unworkable. "Social media can be frustrating," she said in a statement. "But an executive order that would turn the Federal Communications Commission into the president's speech police is not the answer."
CONGRESS CONCERNS
Others fretted that the proposal Trump signed threatens to circumvent Congress. "The idea you could have an executive order that reinterprets a clear statute that Congress passed, that has been interpreted by the courts for over 20-plus years, as recently as yesterday ... is just nonsense," said Jesse Blumenthal, who leads tech policy work for Stand Together, an organization backed by industrialist Charles Koch.
The White House declined to comment. Trump late Wednesday accused tech giants of trying to censor conservatives ahead of the 2020 election, and Thursday he added on Twitter, "This will be a Big Day for Social Media and FAIRNESS!"
Trump is one of social media's most prolific, influential users. He's armed with a Twitter account that reaches more than 80 million people and a campaign war chest that has made the president one of the most pervasive advertisers on Facebook and Google. But he is also one of the Web's most controversial voices.
For years, Twitter in particular largely allowed Trump to share his views unfettered, saying that even his most controversial tweets were in the public interest. But blowback eventually forced Twitter to reconsider its hands-off approach, culminating in the company's first-ever attempt Tuesday to label the president's tweets about mail-in ballots.
Trump responded by claiming that major social media companies are biased, threatening to "strongly regulate, or close them down" in response.
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 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 that 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.
PREVIOUS VERSIONS
Previously, however, the White House has backed down, even shelving prior versions of its executive order targeting social media companies.
But tensions reached a new, public height in July, when the president convened a "social media summit" at the White House featuring GOP lawmakers and Republican strategists, an event seen at the time as a precursor for further action to come. The event drew rebukes from digital experts and congressional Democrats, who said Trump had used the backdrop of the White House to condone some of his supporters' most provocative, controversial online tactics.
That same month, the Justice Department opened a wide-ranging review of the tech industry, which since then has become a full inquiry on Section 230. Repeatedly, Barr has raised the possibility that the U.S. government could seek changes to the rules. "No longer are tech companies the underdog upstarts," Barr said in a speech in February, reflecting on the origin of the statute. "They have become titans."
The law spares tech companies from being held liable for the content posted by their users but also spares them liability for decisions they make to remove content. Critics long have said those exceptions allow some of Silicon Valley's most profitable companies to skirt responsibility for the harmful content that flourishes on their online platforms, including hate speech, terrorist propaganda and election-related falsehoods.
Republicans, meanwhile, at times have threatened to try to revoke the industry's protections in response to allegations of anti-conservative bias, charges that Facebook, Google and Twitter repeatedly have denied.
On Thursday, many in the industry leaped to the law's defense, signaling a protracted fight to come.
"Based on media reports, this proposed Executive Order seems designed to punish a handful of companies for perceived slights and is inconsistent with the purpose and text of Section 230," Jon Berroya, interim president of the Internet Association, which represents major tech companies, said in a statement.
"It stands to undermine a variety of government efforts to protect public safety and spread critical information online through social media and threatens the vibrancy of a core segment of our economy."
The White House did not immediately release a copy of the order.
"We believe that free speech and the right to engage in commerce are foundational to the American free enterprise system," an official with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in an unusually pointed statement.
"Regardless of the circumstances that led up to this, this is not how public policy is made in the United States. An executive order cannot be properly used to change federal law."
Information for this article was contributed by Tony Romm, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Josh Dawsey of The Washington Post; by Maggie Haberman and Kate Conger of The New York Times; and by Zeke Miller, Amanda Seitz, Barbara Ortutay and David Klepper of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/29/2020