US President, Donald Trump, has today threatened to close down social media platforms over the fear that they “silence” conservative voice.
In a spirited rant on his favourite social network, Twitter, he said that the ruling party will “strongly regulate” or “close them down” over this issue.
“Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that….happen again. Just like we can’t let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country. It would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots. Whoever cheated the most would win. Likewise, Social Media. Clean up your act, NOW!!!!,” he said in a tweetstorm earlier today.
His rant comes after Twitter decided to start labelling his tweets with a fact check for the first time. Twitter uses this fact check tag as a move against misleading information, disputed claims and unverified claims as explained in their blog post.
The US president did not like this move yesterday and as usual, ranted about it on Twitter where he accused them of interfering with the impending 2020 Presidential Election.
.@Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election. They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020
….Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020
Social media platforms have been accused of spreading misinformation before, and a good case is the Cambridge Analytical scandal on Facebook. Twitter would want to avoid such a scandal on their network and that could be the reason they would want to fact check the President’s tweets.
Trump’s fiery rants to close down social media platforms is something we will have to wait and see. These social media platforms have grown so much in the last decade and have become huge multi-billion dollar companies. Facebook, for example, is a $681 billion company as of this post, Twitter is a $26 billion company and Snapchat is a $25 billion company. Trump also enjoys a huge presence in these platforms so it will be interesting to see whether he will follow through with his threats.
