U.S. Commerce Department agency petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to reinterpret a 1996 law to require transparency in how social media companies moderate content, after President Donald Trump asked it to intervene in the matter.

Trump directed the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to file the petition after Twitter warned readers to fact-check his posts about unsubstantiated claims of fraud in mail-in voting.

Trump’s executive order asked the NTIA to petition the FCC to write regulations stemming from Section 230, a provision of the Communications Decency Act that shields social media companies from liability for content posted by their users and allows them to remove lawful but objectionable posts.

Social media firms to “publicly disclose accurate information regarding its content-management mechanisms” to “enable users to make more informed choices about competitive alternatives.”

Trump has said that Twitter’s trending topics feature was unfair. “They look for anything they can find, make it as bad as possible, and blow it up, trying to make it trend,” he wrote. Both Democratic commissioners on the five-member FCC said the commission should quickly reject the petition.

“The FCC shouldn’t take this bait. While social media can be frustrating, turning this agency into the President’s speech police is not the answer,” FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said in a written statement. Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr said the “petition provides an opportunity to bring much-needed clarity to the statutory text.”

Twitter has called Trump’s executive order “a reactionary and politicized approach to a landmark law.” A spokesman for FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, has said in the past that he does not see a role for the FCC to regulate websites like Twitter, Facebook or Alphabet’s Google.

The NTIA argues that social media platforms have "overarching influence and power," due to section 230's protections from liability for users' posts.  “Given the maturing internet economy and emergence of dominant social media platforms, the FCC should re-examine section 230, as well as other provisions of the Communications Act of 1934," the NTIA argues. "The FCC should determine how section 230 can best serve its goals of promoting internet diversity and a free flow of ideas, as well as holding dominant platforms accountable for their editorial decisions, in new market conditions and technologies that have emerged since the 1990s.”

Source- Reuters