Twitter and Facebook diverge on the fight against infox

Audio 03:29

By: Sophie Malibeaux

A new escalation in the battle between Donald Trump and the digital giants, especially Twitter. The President followed through on Thursday, May 29, with the signing of a decree to change the status of content hosts, in retaliation for what he sees as censorship by Twitter against him .

Publicity

With this decree , the whole edifice of digital platforms could be weakened. Twitter, Facebook and all the other operators currently benefit from a protection clause allowing them to operate and distribute content, without having to respond to it, without risking possible legal proceedings that could be generated by certain comments exchanged on their sites. Donald Trump has therefore decided to end this regime, and to make the hosts responsible for the content circulating on their platforms.

It is a retaliatory measure against the tendency of the networks to henceforth want to hunt down the most flagrant and dangerous information and information manipulation. This trend of fact checking or verification has been reinforced with the Covid-19 crisis. What's more, with the approach of the November 3 US election, Donald Trump wants to end it.

Recall that he himself has just been pinned for the first time for tweets that could mislead voters according to the boss of Twitter. This is what sparked the fury of the outgoing president who wants to be able to twitter as he pleases, without the hosts of his messages getting involved.

Trump officially defends " freedom of expression "

From his point of view, Donald Trump thus defends freedom of expression. He must be able to say, for example, that those who advocate postal voting are rigging the elections, without twitter asking for his assertions to be verified. Otherwise, says the President, there is interference from Twitter. But it is also for Donald Trump a campaign strategy, to attack the digital giants, the "  big tech  " of Silicon Valley, who according to him act in a biased manner against the conservatives, and threaten his re-election.

Scattered reactions

In fact, Donald Trump does not have a united front in front of him, contrary to what he claims. When Twitter suffered the wrath of the president, Facebook boss Marc Zuckerberg recalled his difference. This Wednesday on Fox News he believed that platforms should not set themselves up as the arbiter of the truth. Facebook sometimes reports questionable content, but not that of politicians. A position full of ambiguity, of which Zuckerberg is customary.

Legal and constitutional obstacles

However, it is unlikely that the decree could be applied imminently, as there are many legal and constitutional objections. The first amendment to the United States Constitution, which defends freedom of expression, could be used to prevent it. Especially since what Donald Trump calls "  censorship  " is often only a warning to the reader, calling him to verify the information. Regarding him, the platforms have never eliminated a single one of his tweets. Besides, a decree is not enough to modify the federal law, for that a law is needed. He instructed his Minister of Justice to do so. But for now, we are still in the intimidation stage.

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• Infox
• Social media
• United States
• Donald trump
• Twitter
• Facebook