Trump threatens social media after Twitter fact-checks him https://apnews.com/c8898aad60175df06ebd160023285001 President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened social media companies with new regulation or even shuttering a day after Twitter added fact checks to two of his tweets. The president can’t unilaterally regulate or close the companies, which would require action by Congress or the Federal Communications Commission. But that didn’t stop Trump from angrily issuing a strong warning. Claiming tech giants “silence conservative voices,” Trump tweeted, “We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.” And he repeated his unsubstantiated claim — which sparked his latest showdown with Silicon Valley — that expanding mail-in voting “would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots.” Trump and his campaign angrily lashed out Tuesday after Twitter added a warning phrase to two Trump tweets that called mail-in ballots “fraudulent” and predicted that “mail boxes will be robbed,” among other things. Under the tweets, there is now a link reading “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” that guides users to a Twitter “moments” page with fact checks and news stories about Trump’s unsubstantiated claims. Trump replied on Twitter, accusing the platform of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election” and insisting that “as president, I will not allow this to happen.” His 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said Twitter’s “clear political bias” had led the campaign to pull “all our advertising from Twitter months ago.” Twitter has banned all political advertising since last November. Trump did not explain his threat Wednesday, and the call to expand regulation appeared to fly in the face of long-held conservative principles on deregulation. But some Trump allies, who have alleged bias on the part of tech companies, have questioned whether platforms like Twitter and Facebook should continue to enjoy liability protections as “platforms” under federal law — or be treated more like publishers, which could face lawsuits over content. The protections have been credited with allowing the unfettered growth of the internet for more than two decades, but now some Trump allies are advocating that social media companies face more scrutiny. “Big tech gets a huge handout from the federal government,” Republican Sen. Josh Hawley told Fox News. “They get this special immunity, this special immunity from suits and from liability that’s worth billions of dollars to them every year. Why are they getting subsidized by federal taxpayers to censor conservatives, to censor people critical of China.”
The President has no right to make comments about enforcing or regulating Twitter, in my opinion. That being said... Twitter's fact check is content publishing and Twitter should now be treated as a content publisher, not just a platform. That was a mistake. Not to mention it wasn't even "factual". Twitter re-published content stating there was no proof that mail-in ballots were subject to fraud. Then there is this, posted on Twitter this morning. Rather funny. West Virginia mail carrier charged with attempted absentee ballot application fraud
You need to keep in mind that the largest recent absentee ballot fraud was committed by Republicans in North Carolina's 9th District Congressional election. Leslie McCrae Dowless led a absentee ballot harvesting operation for Republican candidate Mark Harris. This led to the election being overturned. I should note that prior to 2015, Leslie McCrae Dowless did the same exact thing for Democratic candidates for nearly two decades -- but the Democratic controlled State Board of Elections never cared about this. The laws in all stated need to be changed to make Absentee Ballot Harvesting illegal before we allow large-scale elections by mail.
All of this gets back to the problem of "us versus them" narrative on the issue instead of fixing the known problems in Absentee Ballot voting and moving forward.
Voter fraud has happened, does happen and will continue to happen. This is an indisputable fact. Twitter has violated there own policy in claiming otherwise.
Totally. But in the context of this thread, Twitter shouldn't have re-posted content in what was obviously a politically motivated response - which isn't even accurate - and called it a "Fact Check". Does not absolve the President from threatening regulation.
Trump called all mail-in ballots “fraudulent”. He was fact-checked with the real information. I expect that this will soon become a near daily occurrence on his Twitter account. He best get used to it. Trump voted with a mail-in ballot himself.
Then Twitter needs to get used to being treated as a content provider. I suspect they will not like that. Edit: If you've not seen this, you should watch it.