b'Executive OrderTwitters own fact check claim-against Social-ingthatthePresidentstweets Media Censorshipwerefactuallyinaccuratewasit-Free speech is the foundationself inaccurate.of the American constitutional re- Bydecidingtoselectivelyre-public and a true beacon for theview a small percentage of tweets wholeWorld.OurFoundingFa- on its site and then running sup-thers protected this sacred libertyposedfactchecksonthem, with the First Amendment to theTwitters exercise of editorial judg-Constitution.And,yet,Twitter,mentisunconstitutionalunder Facebook, Instagram, and YouTubethe First Amendment. Even Mark wieldimmense,unprecedentedZuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, has powertoshapethenarrativeoftold Fox News Dana Perino that publiceventsandtocensorandprivately owned digital platforms deleteinformation,controllingshouldnotactasthearbiterof what people see or do not see. truth.We must allow diverse viewpoints in todays digital com- The Presidents executive order states that social-media com-munications environment where all Americans can, and should,panies that remove or restrict content should be exposed to li-have a voice. We must seek transparency and accountabilityability like any traditional editor and publisher that is not an from all online platforms, and encourage high standards andonline provider. Social-media companies should be like trains toolstoprotectandpreservetheintegrityandopennessofthat allow anyone to board. As common carriers they should American discourse and freedom of expression. allow any ideas to be transported on their platforms without In May 2019, the White House launched a Tech Bias Report- selecting which ones are permitted.ing tool to allow Americans to report incidents of online censor- The executive order does not restrict speech. It focuses on ship. In just weeks, the White House received over 16,000 com- whether the companies act as publishers exercising editorial plaints of online platforms censoring or otherwise taking actioncontrol or simply as unbiased platforms for sharing content cre-against users based upon their political viewpoints. The Whiteated by users. The order also asks Federal agencies to evaluate House is submitting these complaints to the U.S. Department ofwhether the companies are deceptively applying their terms of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The executiveservice in ways that do not match the published terms of ser-order from this May 2020 is excellent progress in the quest to- vice. There is plenty of evidence showing that social-media com-wards safeguarding the Constitutions First Amendment. panies treat ideas and accounts differently based upon political Right now, social-media companies enjoy protection from lia- and ideological affiliation.bility under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act forThe FTC could also look at the potential monopoly of the what is posted on their sites, because in most cases they allowpublic information space by a handful of social media compa-people to post whatever they wishas if they were posting on anies. President Trump has been clear that he does not want to giant virtual bulletin board. In contrast, news organizations cantrade the control exercised at present by the tech firms for the be sued for libel if they publish false information with actualunsubtle hand of a government overseer. But the outright so-malicethat is, with knowledge that it was false or with reck- cial-media censorship of public information space in a way that less disregard of whether it was false or not, according to a 1964discriminates against some ideas is intolerable.Supreme Court decision in the case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. On June 2, 2020, a certain technology policy organization On average, more than 500 million tweets are posted eachfiled the first lawsuit against the Presidents social-media exec-day. It is impossible for Twitter to review each of these tweetsutive order. The case filed by the Center for Democracy & Tech-andfact-checkthemallbeforeposting.Othersocial-medianology asserts that the directive violates the First Amendment companies face a similarly impossible task. However, Twitterby curtailing protected speech by platforms and individuals. has selectively targeted conservativesmost recently PresidentThis lawsuit is comical and a textbook example of psychological Trump himselfand has either taken down their tweets or la- projection.Sources:https://www.whitehouse.gov/presiden-beled them as misleading and added a fact check, as was thetial-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/case with two of the Presidents tweets about the problems withhttps://www.internetlivestats.com/twitter-statistics/ https://mail-in voting. Ironically, the Presidents tweets saying that vot- thehill.com/policy/technology/500907-first-lawsuit-filed-er fraud can take place with mail-in voting were accurate whileagainst-trumps-social-media-order12 H ealtHF reedomN ews /s ummer2020'