Washington (AFP)

Ulcerated by the attitude of Twitter towards him, Donald Trump signed a decree Thursday to limit the protection of social networks and the latitude they enjoy in moderation of their content.

"We are here to defend freedom of expression in the face of one of the worst dangers," said the President in the Oval Office, referring to what he called the "monopoly" of the tech giants.

"They have the uncontrolled power to censor, edit, conceal or modify any form of communication between individuals and large public audiences", he elaborated by signing the decree which should be the starting point of a long legal battle.

Very active on Twitter where he mixes, at a frantic pace, political announcements, personal attacks, conspiracy theories and campaign statements, the tenant of the White House denounces for a long time what he considers to be an ideological and political bias of the from the giants of Silicon Valley.

"We cannot let this continue, it is very very unfair," he said.

The decree is supposed to give the possibility of regulating the famous section 230 of the "Communications Decency Act", a law of 1996, pillar of the functioning of digital platforms.

It offers Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Google immunity from any legal action related to content published by third parties and gives them the freedom to intervene on platforms as they wish.

The decree would modify the scope of this law and allow regulatory authorities to decide on content moderation policies.

- "Editorial decisions" -

The former businessman accuses Twitter of making "editorial decisions" and showing "political activism" in the choice of messages he decides to submit to verification.

Critics say the president does not act in the name of freedom of expression but in his own interest.

Donald Trump threatens Section 230 to "intimidate" social networks, responded Democratic Senator Ron Wyden.

"I think these companies, and all Americans who exercise their right to express themselves online, will resist this illegal decree in every way possible."

The debate on the sacrosanct status of hosting online platforms has been raging for months and goes far beyond the dispute between Donald Trump and Twitter.

On the left as on the right, voices have been raised for a few years to force the networks to take more responsibility - and therefore to better filter the content.

Frequently accused of being lax in its treatment of remarks made by leaders, Twitter posted for the first time Tuesday messages from the president, adding the mention: "Check the facts."

These were tweets from the billionaire claiming that postal voting was necessarily "fraudulent" because subject to manipulation.

The question is particularly sensitive in the middle of an election year turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic, which casts doubt on the methods of organizing the American presidential election on November 3.

"These tweets contain potentially misleading information about the voting process and have been reported," said a spokesperson for the platform.

- Censorship in the name of censorship? -

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and boss of Facebook, entered the battle by reminding Fox News on Thursday morning that in his opinion the platforms should not pose as "arbiters of the truth about everything that people say online".

But "a government that chooses to censor a platform because it worries about censorship does not seem to me to be exactly the right reflex," he added.

On Thursday, the tempestuous president added fuel to the fire, tweeting that it was "ridiculous" and "stupid" on the part of Twitter to assert that there was no fraud in the vote by mail.

Donald Trump is followed by 80 million people on his favorite social network.

Asked during the signing of the decree on the possibility of deleting his account, he replied: "If we had an honest press in this country, I would do it in a second."

Twitter, on the other hand, did not take action against other recently published vitriolic messages from Donald Trump, in which it relays a conspiracy theory against the host of the MSNBC cable channel Joe Scarborough, ex-friend of Mr. Trump who became openly critical on air.

© 2020 AFP