Breaking: Trump signs executive directive to regulate social media

United States of America, Donald Trump, has signed an executive directive which target at regulating social media organisations.

This is happening a day after Trump threatened to shut down social media.

Trump had on Tuesday tweeted that mail-in ballots were fraudulent but the claim was fact checked by Twitter — an action which annoyed the US president.

Twitter put a warning on Trump’s tweet: “Get the facts about mail-in ballots,” and redirected users to news articles about the president’s untrue claim.

Speaking to newsmen, Trump said his action asks to “defend free speech from one of the gravest dangers it has faced in American history.”

According to him, his administration would put a check on the powers of social media organisations to censor opinions and views of Americans.

“We are here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers,” he said.

“A small handful of social media monopolies controls a vast portion of all public and private communications in the United States.”

He pointed out that social media organsations had unselected power to censor, restrict, edit, shape, hide, change, virtually any form of communication between private citizens and heterogeneous audiences.

He said “I guess it is going to be challenged in court, but what isn’t?

“In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand-pick the speech that Americans may access and convey online,” it read.

“This practice is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic. When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power.”