new York
CNN
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One of President Donald Trump’s first actions upon returning to the Oval Office on Monday was to sign an executive order aimed at “restoring free speech and ending federal censorship” of American citizens.
The order prohibits federal officials from conduct that would “unconstitutionally restrict the freedom of expression of any American citizen” and directs the attorney general to investigate whether the Biden administration has engaged in efforts to censor Americans.
“Under the guise of combating ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘misinformation,’ the federal government has violated the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in ways that have advances the government’s preferred narrative on important public issues. debate,” the order states.
Right-wing media figures and some congressional Republicans have for years denounced what they say are efforts by Democrats and tech platforms to censor their speech online, particularly about the Covid-19 pandemic and the elections . The Supreme Court ruled last year that the U.S. government can contact social media companies about misinformation swirling on their platforms, handing the Biden administration a major victory.
While conservatives view Trump’s order as fulfilling his promise to end government collusion with big tech platforms to censor their voices, some disinformation experts have warned the move will only further the spread false information on social networks, which can become dangerous in times of crisis. .
Nina Jankowicz, who briefly led the Biden administration’s disinformation committee and is now CEO of the American Sunlight Project, said Trump’s order “canonized lies and conspiracy theories about those who respond to misinformation,” calling it a “direct assault on reality” that “emboldens.” both foreign actors and disinformation profiteers.
“Disinformation is not a partisan issue; it’s a question of democracy,” she said. “America’s adversaries benefit when our country is internally divided and politically polarized.”
Other experts have pointed out that this order could have a chilling effect on relationships between government agencies and tech platforms, potentially harming national security.
“The vast majority of contacts between technology and government are not in political discourse but in the areas of national security and combating financial fraud and child sexual abuse,” said John Wihbey, professor associate professor of media innovation and technology at Northeastern University.
Although Wihbey said there are “legitimate concerns about government brutality,” when the government uses pressure to silence speech, the important “channel between tech companies and the Department of Justice/FBI and intelligence communities will be hindered by this order.”
Most experts have pointed out that Trump’s executive order may also be moot, since some of the biggest social media platforms have taken it upon themselves to eliminate professional fact-checkers and dramatically expand the type of language allowed in their services.
Earlier this month, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, Meta, announced that it would abandon its fact-checking program and relax its “hate policy” to allow posts calling LGBTQ people “mentally ill.” The move came after Trump and other Republicans blasted Meta and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg for what they called censorship of right-wing views.
Alex Abdo, litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, warned that Trump’s executive order could be used by the administration to engage in its own form of censorship by ordering the attorney general to investigate on the actions of the last administration.
The order “suggests that its goal is to rewrite history to suit its own agenda, and that it could itself become a means for the new administration to engage in its own form of denigration,” it said. he declared.
“There is an alternative version of this decree that would have been a real victory for freedom of expression,” Abdo continued. “This version of the order would have directed the government to review jawbone evidence in its own possession and in multiple contexts, and follow the evidence where it leads. Unfortunately, that’s not what we got.
Ending efforts to crack down on misinformation could also lead to more abuse, said Alia Dastagir, a misinformation reporter at USA Today and author of an upcoming book about women facing online harassment.
“Abuse and harassment, which is often driven by misinformation, leads to less speech, to collective silencing,” she said. “We cannot view online abuse just as rape and death threats, but as the spread of lies that contribute to violence against some of the most vulnerable people in our society. »
