Media & Entertainment

Trump signs an executive order taking direct aim at social media companies

Comment

Image Credits: Photo by Doug MIlls-Pool / Getty Images

On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order targeting the legal shield that internet companies rely on to protect them from liability for user-created content. That law, known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, is essential to large social platforms like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, the kind of companies the president has long accused, without evidence, of deliberately suppressing conservative views.

Trump was joined during the signing by Attorney General William Barr, who has previously expressed interest in stripping away or limiting the same legal protections for tech companies.

We previously examined a draft of the executive order that’s nearly identical to the just-released final version, embedded below. Among other things, the draft argued that platforms forfeit their rights to legal protection when they moderate content, as in the case of Twitter modifying the president’s tweet with a fact-checking disclaimer.

“The choices Twitter makes when it chooses to edit, blacklist, shadowban are editorial decisions, pure and simple,” Trump said during the signing. “In those moments, Twitter ceases to be a neutral public platform and they become an editor with a viewpoint. And I think we can say that about others also, whether you’re looking at Google, whether you’re looking at Facebook.”

Tech companies and internet rights advocates believe that interpretation of Section 230 inverts the original spirit of the act. They say Section 230 was designed to protect internet companies from being sued for the content they host while also empowering them to make moderation choices without being liable for those decisions.

Twitter itself called the order a “reactionary and politicized approach to a landmark law.” Facebook also released a statement, asserting that the company “believe[s] in protecting freedom of expression on our services, while protecting our community from harmful content including content designed to stop voters from exercising their right to vote.”

 

Google also weighed in against the order. “We have clear content policies and we enforce them without regard to political viewpoint,” a Google spokesperson said. “Our platforms have empowered a wide range of people and organizations from across the political spectrum, giving them a voice and new ways to reach their audiences. Undermining Section 230 in this way would hurt America’s economy and its global leadership on internet freedom.”

While the idea of dismantling Section 230 does pose an existential threat to internet companies, it’s not clear that the White House will be able to actually legally enforce its threats. But even if the order doesn’t result in substantial repercussions for social media companies, it might serve to intimidate them from further enforcing platform policy decisions like ones that inspired the president to retaliate against Twitter this week.

Going to war with Twitter, Trump threatens critical social media legal protections

On Tuesday, Twitter added warning labels to two tweets from the president that made false claims about vote-by-mail systems. The labels, which did not hide the tweets or even actually outright call them false, pointed users toward a fact-checking page. The move enraged the president, who lashed out at the company through tweets, specifically targeting Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of site integrity.

The executive order makes it clear that the president’s spat with Twitter inspired the action, though some of its language is likely recycled from an abandoned effort at a similar order last August.

“Twitter now selectively decides to place a warning label on certain tweets in a manner that clearly reflects political bias,” the unusual order reads. “As has been reported, Twitter seems never to have placed such a label on another politician’s tweet.”

Civil rights groups and internet freedom watchdogs denounced the order Thursday, with Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, the co-creator of the law in Trump’s crosshairs, denouncing his actions as “plainly illegal.”

“As the co-author of Section 230, let me make this clear — there is nothing in the law about political neutrality,” Wyden said of the order.

“It does not say companies like Twitter are forced to carry misinformation about voting, especially from the president. Efforts to erode Section 230 will only make online content more likely to be false and dangerous.”

Whatever happens with Trump’s big move against social media companies, it’s likely to energize the president’s base and his allies in Congress and other corners of the government around the issue. And even if adding politically advantageous stipulations to Section 230 proves legally difficult or untenable for the White House, the threat may allow the president to wield new power over some of tech’s most powerful, often untouchable companies just the same.

Jack Dorsey explains why Twitter fact-checked Trump’s false voting claims

More TechCrunch

Trawa simplifies energy purchasing and management for SMEs by leveraging an AI-powered platform and downstream data from customers. 

Berlin-based trawa raises €10M to use AI to make buying renewable energy easier for SMEs

Lydia is splitting itself into two apps — Lydia for P2P payments and Sumeria for those looking for a mobile-first bank account.

Lydia, the French payments app with 8 million users, launches mobile banking app Sumeria

Cargo ships docking at a commercial port incur costs called “disbursements” and “port call expenses.” This might be port dues, towage, and pilotage fees. It’s a complex patchwork and all…

Shipping logistics startup Harbor Lab raises $16M Series A led by Atomico

AWS has confirmed its European “sovereign cloud” will go live by the end of 2025, enabling greater data residency for the region.

AWS confirms will launch European ‘sovereign cloud’ in Germany by 2025, plans €7.8B investment over 15 years

Go Digit, an Indian insurance startup, has raised $141 million from investors including Goldman Sachs, ADIA, and Morgan Stanley as part of its IPO.

Indian insurance startup Go Digit raises $141M from anchor investors ahead of IPO

Peakbridge intends to invest in between 16 and 20 companies, investing around $10 million in each company. It has made eight investments so far.

Food VC Peakbridge has new $187M fund to transform future of food, like lab-made cocoa

For over six decades, the nonprofit has been active in the financial services sector.

Accion’s new $152.5M fund will back financial institutions serving small businesses globally

Meta’s newest social network, Threads, is starting its own fact-checking program after piggybacking on Instagram and Facebook’s network for a few months.

Threads finally starts its own fact-checking program

Looking Glass makes trippy-looking mixed-reality screens that make things look 3D without the need of special glasses. Today, it launches a pair of new displays, including a 16-inch mode that…

Looking Glass launches new 3D displays

Replacing Sutskever is Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI’s director of research.

Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and longtime chief scientist, departs

Intuitive Machines made history when it became the first private company to land a spacecraft on the moon, so it makes sense to adapt that tech for Mars.

Intuitive Machines wants to help NASA return samples from Mars

As Google revamps itself for the AI era, offering AI overviews within its search results, the company is introducing a new way to filter for just text-based links. With the…

Google adds ‘Web’ search filter for showing old-school text links as AI rolls out

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket will take a crew to suborbital space for the first time in nearly two years later this month, the company announced on Tuesday.  The NS-25…

Blue Origin to resume crewed New Shepard launches on May 19

This will enable developers to use the on-device model to power their own AI features.

Google is building its Gemini Nano AI model into Chrome on the desktop

It ran 110 minutes, but Google managed to reference AI a whopping 121 times during Google I/O 2024 (by its own count). CEO Sundar Pichai referenced the figure to wrap…

Google mentioned ‘AI’ 120+ times during its I/O keynote

Firebase Genkit is an open source framework that enables developers to quickly build AI into new and existing applications.

Google launches Firebase Genkit, a new open source framework for building AI-powered apps

In the coming months, Google says it will open up the Gemini Nano model to more developers.

Patreon and Grammarly are already experimenting with Gemini Nano, says Google

As part of the update, Reddit also launched a dedicated AMA tab within the web post composer.

Reddit introduces new tools for ‘Ask Me Anything,’ its Q&A feature

Here are quick hits of the biggest news from the keynote as they are announced.

Google I/O 2024: Here’s everything Google just announced

LearnLM is already powering features across Google products, including in YouTube, Google’s Gemini apps, Google Search and Google Classroom.

LearnLM is Google’s new family of AI models for education

The official launch comes almost a year after YouTube began experimenting with AI-generated quizzes on its mobile app. 

Google is bringing AI-generated quizzes to academic videos on YouTube

Around 550 employees across autonomous vehicle company Motional have been laid off, according to information taken from WARN notice filings and sources at the company.  Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported…

Motional cut about 550 employees, around 40%, in recent restructuring, sources say

The keynote kicks off at 10 a.m. PT on Tuesday and will offer glimpses into the latest versions of Android, Wear OS and Android TV.

Google I/O 2024: Watch all of the AI, Android reveals

Google Play has a new discovery feature for apps, new ways to acquire users, updates to Play Points, and other enhancements to developer-facing tools.

Google Play preps a new full-screen app discovery feature and adds more developer tools

Soon, Android users will be able to drag and drop AI-generated images directly into their Gmail, Google Messages and other apps.

Gemini on Android becomes more capable and works with Gmail, Messages, YouTube and more

Veo can capture different visual and cinematic styles, including shots of landscapes and timelapses, and make edits and adjustments to already-generated footage.

Google Veo, a serious swing at AI-generated video, debuts at Google I/O 2024

In addition to the body of the emails themselves, the feature will also be able to analyze attachments, like PDFs.

Gemini comes to Gmail to summarize, draft emails, and more

The summaries are created based on Gemini’s analysis of insights from Google Maps’ community of more than 300 million contributors.

Google is bringing Gemini capabilities to Google Maps Platform

Google says that over 100,000 developers already tried the service.

Project IDX, Google’s next-gen IDE, is now in open beta

The system effectively listens for “conversation patterns commonly associated with scams” in-real time. 

Google will use Gemini to detect scams during calls