President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order banning “federal censorship” of online speech, drawing praise from supporters who say the Biden administration illegally suppressed conservative voices and fire from critics who fear a wave of Unchecked false and dangerous information on social media can be dangerous. the American public.
“Over the past four years, the previous administration violated free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often exerting significant coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppressed speech that the federal government did not approve,” the executive order states.
The order prohibits federal officials from any conduct that would “unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.” It also prohibits the use of taxpayer resources to limit free speech and directs the Justice Department and other agencies to investigate actions taken by the Biden administration and propose “corrective actions.”
Critics say the censorship order could encourage misinformation
The executive order fulfills a campaign promise for conservatives, who for years have argued that biased big tech companies are colluding with Democrats to suppress their voices.
Limiting communication and coordination between Big Tech companies and the federal government could jeopardize public safety in natural disasters and health emergencies, some observers warned. Conspiracy theories and lies abounded on social media platforms during the Los Angeles firestorm this month.
Disinformation watchdogs say Trump’s executive order will encourage foreign and other bad actors to pollute social media platforms with lies and other harmful content to anger and divide Americans.
“What Trump’s executive order to ‘End Federal Censorship’ really does is a cold call to action against bad actors who use disinformation as a tool to destabilize our country and profit from lies,” said Nina Jankowicz , who worked in the Biden administration and is now CEO. of the American Sunlight Group, an advocacy group that pushes back against online misinformation.
Conservatives say Big Tech colluded with Democrats
Multiple lawsuits have accused the Biden administration of relying on social media platforms to suppress legal speech related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently backed those claims, alleging that senior administration officials pressured his employees to remove or inappropriately suppress content during the pandemic.
The Biden administration has said it was fighting the spread of lies to protect the public. Last year, the Supreme Court sided with Biden in a lawsuit brought by the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri and a small number of social media users who had accused administration officials of crossing the line.
Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said that social media companies’ decisions to remove content cannot be directly traced to government influence.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill slammed the Supreme Court’s decision as a free pass for “the worst government coercion scheme in history.”
Facebook, X and other social media facilitate content moderation
The order is unlikely to convince conservatives that Big Tech isn’t censoring their speech. This perception peaked in 2021 when major social media platforms banned Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and led Florida and Texas to pass laws aimed at stopping alleged social media censorship.
Complaints of ideological bias come from across the political spectrum, but it’s hard to prove that social media platforms are targeting any group since tech companies reveal so little about how they decide what content is allowed and what isn’t.
Social media companies say they don’t target conservatives, only harmful speech that violates their rules.
But now these rules are becoming much looser.
Meta and other major social media platforms are taking a lighter approach to content moderation in Trump’s second term, pulling back on efforts to fact-check information on their platforms and signaling their support for the administration. cloud.
In the Capitol Rotunda, as Trump was sworn in as the 47th president, Zuckerberg, X owner Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — collectively worth just under a trillion dollars — sat before the Cabinet of Trump and behind his family.
