Trump signs executive order to prevent censorship of online platforms – News

President Donald Trump today signed an executive order that he claims will restore freedom of speech and end federal censorship, with the express purpose of keeping government out of social media.

“Over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the federal government did not approve,” said the order.

This comes after Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg admitted that moderation had at times gone too far on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Zuckerberg, who has cozied up to Trump (pictured) of late, recently announced that his platforms would no longer use third-party fact-checking systems, changing to the use of community notes. Many conservatives in the past aired criticism of Meta and other social media platforms for their moderation policies around COVID-19, presidential elections and the Hunter Biden laptop story.

X Corp., formerly Twitter Inc., was another platform that came under scrutiny for what some considered excessive moderation practices prior to Elon Musk buying it. Following the acquisition, the so-called Twitter Files revealed that there could have been government overreach where the platform’s moderation policies were concerned. Former executives at X deny acceding to government pressure to take down certain posts.

“Under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’ the federal government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate,” added the order. “Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.”

The order aims to “secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech” while ensuring anyone working for the federal government cannot “unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.” It also asks the attorney general to investigate how the federal government during the Biden administration might have infringed on free speech and to take “remedial actions” based on what the investigation finds.

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