President Donald Trump pushes back against social media companies after his tweets have actually been checked.
Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images
President Donald Trump plans to sign a social media regulation on Thursday, according to tweets by several White House reporters on Wednesday. The expected move comes after Twitter reviews Trump’s mail-in ballot tweets for “possibly misleading misinformation.”
No further details have been released on what the executive order will contain. The White House referred CNET to “pool reports” on the executive regulation.
Trump tweeted earlier that Twitter “has now shown that everything we said about them (and their other countrymen) is correct” and that “great action” would follow. He didn’t specify what the action would look like, but White House reporters for the New York Times, PBS, and CNN tweeted on Wednesday that the president would sign an executive ordinance “on social media” tomorrow.
On the return flight to Washington, press spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany informed reporters that President Trump would sign a kind of executive order on social media. No further details seem to have been offered, but it comes after checking the facts in his tweets.
– Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) May 27, 2020
The White House says Trump will sign an executive regulation “on social media” tomorrow, but doesn’t release any details on what it could say or do.
– Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) May 27, 2020
Trump’s expected action shows how tensions between some of the world’s largest social media companies and conservatives increase when they try to fight misinformation. Twitter and other social media companies have repeatedly denied suppressing conservative language.
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted to his more than 80 million followers: “There is NO POSSIBILITY (ZERO!) That mail-in-ballots will be anything but fraudulent,” a statement exposed by fact-checkers and news organizations. He continued in another tweet, saying that it would be a “rigged choice”. In rare cases, Twitter added a label to Trump’s two tweets because they contained “possibly misleading information about voting processes”.
Under both tweets, a label that reads “Information About Mail-In Ballots” appears. Clicking the warning will direct people to a page to explain that Fact checker There is no evidence that postal ballot papers are related to election fraud.
Twitter, Google and Facebook declined to comment. Snap and TikTok didn’t answer immediately. It is unclear whether the executive order has yet been completed.