Trump signs social media executive order while bragging about his follower count

It's kind of a love/hate thing.
 By 
Jack Morse
 on 
Trump signs social media executive order while bragging about his follower count
My toys, my rules. Credit: Doug MIlls / getty

UPDATE: May 28, 2020, 3:03 p.m. PDT: The final text of the executive order has been released, and, well, it doesn't appear to actually do that much. 

It asks federal agencies to request the FCC reconsider the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects social media companies when it comes to what others post on their platforms. Joe Biden has also said he wanted to revoke Section 230.

Original story:


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Donald Trump has had it up to HERE with all these doggone rotten social media companies enabling him to reach hundreds of millions of Americans, and you'd better believe he's going to do something about it.

On Thursday, the president signed an executive order intended to, at least superficially, intimidate social media companies like Twitter that might dare get in his way. Specifically, Trump seemed incensed that Twitter had on Tuesday fact checked two of his tweets.

While we have yet to see the final text of today's executive order, we were blessed with hearing Trump's rambling justification for it.

"There's no precedent in American history for so small a number of corporations to control so large a sphere of human interaction, and that includes individual people controlling vast amounts of territory and we can't allow that to happen, especially when they go about doing what they're doing because they're doing things incorrectly," Trump explained.

"They have points of view and if we go by that it's actually amazing that there was a success in 2016 but we can't let this continue to happen. It's very very unfair, and you look at the statistics and you look at what is going on and I think everybody would very much agree with that."

But wait, he wasn't done. Trump said there was nothing he'd rather do then "get rid of [his] whole Twitter account" before claiming his social media platforms reach over 180 million people.

Oh yeah, Trump also considered the possibility of shutting Twitter down.

In other words, it was all just another normal day in the White House under Trump.

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Jack Morse

Professionally paranoid. Covering privacy, security, and all things cryptocurrency and blockchain from San Francisco.

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