White House officials announced that U.S. President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on social media companies.  White House officials said after Trump threatened to shut down websites he accused of stifling conservative voices. It was unclear how Trump could follow through on the threat of shutting down privately owned companies including Twitter Inc. The dispute erupted after Twitter for the first time tagged Trump’s tweets about unsubstantiated claims of fraud in mail-in voting with a warning prompting readers to fact check the posts.

Separately, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit by a conservative group and right-wing YouTube personality against Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple accusing them of conspiring to suppress conservative political views.

 The American Civil Liberties Union said the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution limits any action Trump could take. “Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservative’s voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen,” Trump said in a pair of additional posts on Twitter The president, a heavy user of Twitter with more than 80 million followers, added: “Clean up your act, Now. “Big Tech is doing everything in their very considerable power to censor in advance of the 2020 Election,” Trump tweeted. “If that happens, we no longer have our freedom.”

Trump’s threat is his strongest yet within a broader conservative backlash against Big Tech. Last year the White House circulated drafts of a proposed executive order about anti-conservative bias which never gained traction. The Internet Association, which includes Twitter and Facebook among its members, said online platforms do not have a political bias and they offer “more people a chance to be heard than at any point in history.”

 Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said Trump’s tweets about California’s vote-by-mail plans “may mislead people into thinking they don’t need to register to get a ballot.” Separately, Twitter said Trump’s tweets were labeled as part of efforts to enforce the company’s “civic integrity policy.” The policy document on Twitter’s website says people may not use its services for manipulating or interfering in elections or other civic processes.

Source- Reuters