President Donald Trump has revealed intentions to take extraordinary steps to “strongly regulate” or shut down social media platforms ahead of the U.S November polls, following rising tensions between the president and Twitter, which he accused of attempting to silence the conservative arm of the country.

The president’s threat came in after Twitter, as part of its new security measure ahead of the elections, added fact-check links to tweets where Trump claimed without backing evidence that mail-in ballots were a part of a ploy by the Democratic Party to rig elections. This is in line with new steps American social media companies, including Facebook, are taking to prevent another 2016 election fiasco.

The popular social media platform which the president has been known to use over the past few years, for the first time, added a strapline link to pages containing articles from CNN and the Washington Post debunking the president’s claim with verified information.

Not long after, the president replied to the fact check in a series of tweets where he accused Twitter of “stifling free speech” and “interfering with the 2020 presidential elections” ending his twitter rampage with, “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.”

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….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2020

We do not Support Manipulative Behaviour – Twitter

Responding to President Trump, Twitter founder, and CEO, Jack Dorsey in tweets posted on his personal page, explained that the platform remains committed to pointing out “incorrect or disputed information about elections globally.” Dorsey also added a link to what Twitter calls its “civic integrity policy,” a set of rules prohibiting certain kinds of “manipulative behaviour” on the platform. Per those rules, misleading information about how to vote, the documents required to vote, or the date and time of an election of other civic process are prohibited.

Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that’s me. Please leave our employees out of this. We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make.

— jack (@jack) May 28, 2020

Executive Order On the Way

Meanwhile, the president is set to sign an executive order “pertaining social media”, that would require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to propose and clarify regulations under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a federal law largely exempting online platforms from legal liability for the material their users’ post. Such changes could expose tech companies to more lawsuits.

The executive order is currently being reviewed.