Donald Trump took action on Thursday, May 28. Ulcerated by Twitter's decision to add a link to two messages posted on Tuesday which specified that he advanced untruths about the reliability of the postal vote, the president of the United States signed an executive decree which invites the federal agencies concerned to reconsider the cornerstone on which social networks developed . This is section 230 (c) of the Communications Decency Act, a law of 1996, which provides that sites and services that allow Internet users to post messages are not directly responsible for those messages.
" They have the uncontrolled power to censor, edit, conceal or modify any form of communication between individuals and large public audiences. There is no precedent in American history for such a small number of societies controlling such a large sphere of human interaction. "Railed the President of the United States about the behemoths of social networks. The charge is paradoxical since the former businessman partly built his political career on a frantic use of Twitter. Its account is followed today by more than 80 million subscribers.
A gesture for the moment especially political
The move is potentially devastating, but it remains mostly political for the time being. There is nothing to suggest that the theoretically independent agencies concerned, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, choose to comply. Like many presidential decrees signed by Donald Trump, the one initialed on Thursday is also the guarantee of an intense legal fight in the absence of clear support from Congress. The latter is hardly conceivable on such a controversial subject given the political polarization.
Hostilities should be heightened by the proximity of the presidential election. Democrats were indignant on Thursday for an attempt to intimidate Twitter, which the Conservatives had long opposed to the Conservatives. The social media camp is equally divided since Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of the Facebook giant, has distanced himself from the initiative of Twitter, while expressing his greatest reservations compared to that of Donald Trump.
On the eve of the signing of the presidential decree, Jack Dorsey, the general manager of Twitter, said that he did not intend to back down. "We will continue to report incorrect or disputed information ", He assured. Links similar to the one that launched Donald Trump’s offensive have since been added to dozens of messages posted on the platform, including those of Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The latter claimed that the coronavirus epidemic may have started in the United States and had spread to China because of the United States military.
