President Donald Trump blasted Twitter on Thursday night for allegedly making up the “trends” on their site and discriminating against conservatives.
“Twitter is sending out totally false ‘Trends’ that have absolutely nothing to do with what is really trending in the world” Trump wrote. “They make it up, and only negative ‘stuff’. Same thing will happen to Twitter as is happening to @FoxNews daytime. Also, big Conservative discrimination!”
Twitter is sending out totally false “Trends” that have absolutely nothing to do with what is really trending in the world. They make it up, and only negative “stuff”. Same thing will happen to Twitter as is happening to @FoxNews daytime. Also, big Conservative discrimination!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2020
Minutes later, Trump tweeted, “For purposes of National Security, Section 230 must be immediately terminated!!!”
For purposes of National Security, Section 230 must be immediately terminated!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2020
Section 230 of the U.S. Code, which protects social media companies from being treated as publishers, states:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.
The term “otherwise objectionable” has given license to sites such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter to censor material they find “otherwise objectionable.” This is critical, because it means that if those two words were removed from the Code, those sites could theoretically be open to legal liability for removal of content for political reasons.
Twitter and other Big Tech companies have come under fire for suppressing content, especially that which is unflattering to Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s family. Some conservative lawmakers, such as Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) have joined Trump in calling for Section 230 to be repealed.
Weeks before Election Day, Twitter censored a New York Post story about a laptop purportedly owned by Hunter Biden that had been dropped off at a repair shop in Delaware. Citing its policy against “hacked materials,” Twitter blocked users from going to the URL of the story. Twitter subsequently locked the New York Post’s Twitter account, and even locked the account of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany after she shared the story.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey later testified on Capitol Hill that such tactics were “wrong.”
Twitter has also repeatedly censored or flagged Trump’s tweets, especially his tweets in which he questions the results of the election. As The Daily Wire reported:
A glance at the Twitter page of Donald Trump two days after the election presents a truly remarkable sight: the sitting president of the United States, as an historically tight Electoral College vote is still being tallied, is being repeatedly censored by one of the world’s most powerful platforms.
To the applause of many on the Left, Twitter slapped its first fact-check label over a Trump tweet in May. The platform rationalized the move by pointing to its newly announced “misleading information” policy, rolled out amid the COVID lockdowns. The new policy blocks out initial posts, replacing them with “labels and warning messages to provide additional explanations or clarifications” on tweets that might present some “risk” of “harm” to the public. Only after clicking on the censoring label can a user read the tweet containing the supposedly “misleading” or “disputed” or “unverified” claim. Twitter offered the following vague criteria for censoring posts:
Misleading information — statements or assertions that have been confirmed to be false or misleading by subject-matter experts, such as public health authorities.
Disputed claims — statements or assertions in which the accuracy, truthfulness, or credibility of the claim is contested or unknown.
Unverified claims — information (which could be true or false) that is unconfirmed at the time it is shared.
Related: Twitter Locks Out WH Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany For Sharing NY Post Hunter Biden Story