Trump expected to sign social media executive order as Twitter battle brews

President Trump is expected to sign an executive order, targeting Twitter and Facebook. Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous, Brian Sozzi, and Rick Newman break down the details.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, President Trump is calling it a, quote, "big day for social media and fairness." He's getting ready to hit back at Twitter and Facebook with a new executive order aimed at social-media companies. It would reportedly review some legal protections for regulating content online, and it could open up the door to lawsuits against a lot of these platforms.

Our senior columnist Rick Newman is joining us now. And, Rick, the president tweeted overnight accusing big tech of, quote, trying to "censor" him. Does he have a case? We should just tell folks this has to do with Twitter fact checking some tweets the president had put out this week bashing mail-in balloting come November.

RICK NEWMAN: It's not censorship. Censorship would be if these companies were trying to prevent Trump from saying anything to the public, and all Twitter has done is take two Trump tweets out of literally many thousands and suggested that they're not truthful and then said here, link over here to find out what's really going on. This was about mail-in voting. That's not censorship.

And by the way, we should point out Twitter owns its own platform. It does have the right to control what people do on its platform. But obviously Trump is incensed at this. This is one of his most effective tools as a politician, the way he uses Twitter. And now he's going to put out this executive order that is going to somehow, in some convoluted way, attempt to potentially punish these platforms if they do this to him again.

BRIAN SOZZI: Rick, what's the-- what's the worst-case scenario for these companies, looking at just from a bottom-line perspective?

RICK NEWMAN: I don't think they're really at much of a risk from what Trump is proposing. I mean, not to get too deep in the weeds here, but there's a 1996 law that says-- you know, that was the beginning of the internet, and Congress passed a law to try to help these companies get a foothold and grow. This was before Twitter and Facebook even existed. I mean, it didn't even apply to them because they weren't around.

But this basically says that if you're developing an online platform, you are not responsible for the content your users put there, unlike a news organization where we-- like, we do have to be responsible for what our journalists put out there.

This is controversial because it allows, you know, Twitter and Facebook to say it's not our problem to control things like hate speech and some of the real terrible, vile stuff. They don't really want it to be there, but they also don't want to have to police all that.

So Trump is saying he's going to-- this executive order, he wants to kind of overturn that law without a new law. So it's hard to see how this would withstand the inevitable legal challenges.

And then it gets-- even if it did, it gets into the whole thorny issue of a government agency, the federal communications agency, trying to figure out what amounts to censorship or abuse of users. So it's just purely a judgment call, and it would be highly political how the FCC ruled on these things. So I don't think this is going anywhere.

If there's a risk for these companies, it's that there could be a more thorough bipartisan effort to perhaps change that protection from the 1996 law, perhaps even revoke that protection. That is more legitimate because these concerns have been mounting for some time. But Trump's version I don't think is really going anywhere.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: No, this is definitely not going anywhere. This morning, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during an interview said that platforms like his should not be, quote, "arbiters of truth." So this is not the last we've heard of it. Rick Newman, thanks for being with us this morning.

RICK NEWMAN: Thanks, guys.