Trump to sign executive order targeting social media

Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley joins Akiko Fujita to break down Trump’s latest battle with Twitter and other social media platforms.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: President Trump today escalating his ongoing fight with Twitter, preparing to sign an executive order today against social media companies that essentially, among many things, calls for a review of section 230, which, of course, provides immunity to some of these platforms from the content that is posted on their site. And we should point out this all comes after Twitter this week decided to place a fact checking label on President Trump's tweets after he had circulated some conspiracy theories.

Dan Howley has been tracking this story for us. Dan, I had a chance to read the executive order here. I guess the question is the central premise here that he's making-- that conservatives have been silenced on these platforms-- I mean, that alone, I think there's questions about whether that holds. How do you think social media platforms are going to respond to this?

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah. I think once pen touches paper here, there's going to be lawsuits filed right away objecting to this. Essentially, what the executive order does is asks the FCC to step in and determine if something that was taken down or blocked or, I guess in this case, fact checked was done so without regard for the ideas set forth in section 230-- essentially saying, more or less-- and I have the text here-- that the FCC would be requested to propose regulations to clarify if what the offending party-- Twitter, in this instance-- did in putting that label of fact check on President Trump's tweet was done in good faith, or if it was deceptive, contextual, or inconsistent with Twitter's terms of service.

Now, all of this comes down to the fact that Twitter did not take down President Trump's tweet. It was left to stand. A fact checking point was put down. And then the fact that Twitter stands on here is that this had to do with elections. And so anything having to do with elections that's erroneous, they're going to speak out about and put a fact check label on. Facebook itself has said it would do the exact same thing, despite the fact that they say they wouldn't comment on candidates' or leaders' posts on their own. So this is something that will impact the industry at large. Again, it will be challenged right away. And it would still take upwards of a year for any kind of new rule to come down from the FCC or the FTC, which is also involved in this.

AKIKO FUJITA: So, Dan, let's talk about the legal aspect here. I mean, you've already pointed out-- there's a lot of losses waiting to be filed here, and some have suggested this could go all the way to the Supreme Court. How much muscle do the social media platforms have in this argument if the president is saying, look, you're censoring some of these political voices you don't agree with, and there is not necessarily fact? Do the social media platforms have a stronger hand in this?

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, I would say so, especially on free speech grounds. I mean, it really doesn't seem like this executive order, if it does end up going unchallenged or if there are changes to this, would it stand up? Because it would essentially say, look, you have to leave my content up because I posted it because I'm the president. Well, that really wouldn't fly as far as free speech goes with Twitter, because you would essentially be saying to Twitter, you can't regulate your own platform because I say so, as the president or as a private citizen.

So it really will come down to whether or not the eventual lawsuits clear. I don't think that this is going to go anywhere, really. I think this is more of a temper tantrum that's being thrown. And, obviously, it's an election year. It's a good way to rile up President Trump's base-- kind of raging against the, I guess, perceived elite-- liberal elite that run these companies.

But we found-- you know, or we've seen that there's no findings of any bias towards conservatives. And in fact, if you look at who the company has spoken to as this relates to political speech, they've been significantly going towards the Republican side to avoid issues like this. If you look at Facebook by the way, they specifically said outside, again, of anything that could have any real world harm, which this would in Facebook's case, because it relates to elections-- they wouldn't be regulating speech to candidates or leaders because they wanted to avoid something like this entirely.

AKIKO FUJITA: And just to think-- a month ago, we were saying the techlash is over, right? Certainly not going to be over, it's only going to escalate. I know, Dan, you're going to be on top of that. Thanks so much for bringing that to us.