Hours after threatening to pull the plug on social media sites, including Twitter, US President Donald Trump would be signing an executive order on social media companies on Thursday.
One of the most active world leaders on Twitter, Trump, known for his love for tweeting, was recently left fuming after Twitter flagged his tweets to fact-check his claims. Trump has 80.3 million followers on the micro-blogging site.
Will US Ban Twitter and Other Social Media Sites?
Earlier, in a tweet on Wednesday, Trump had hinted at the possibility of strongly regulating or closing down social media platforms after he felt that their voices were being suppressed.
The Daily Mail reported that speaking to reporters on board Air Force One, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said an executive order will be issued on Wednesday night. However, she did not reveal any further details. Later, Communications Director Alyssa Farah told reporters that Trump would sign the executive order on Thursday instead.
In a day filled with rants against Twitter, an enraged Trump warned the social media platform to clean up its act. "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 happen again," tweeted Trump on Wednesday morning.
Later, in the evening, Trump tweeted: "Twitter has now shown that everything we have been saying about them (and their other compatriots) is correct. Big action to follow!"
The move came on the same day Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey declined to remove Trump's tweet, hyping a conspiracy theory that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was involved in the death of a staffer when he was a Republican congressman from Florida.
Despite a request made by the family of the deceased, Dorsey refused to remove the tweets stating that they believe that it is important that people have conversations around what's happening.
What Made Trump Angry?
On Tuesday, Twitter, flagged two of Trump's previous tweets, with a fact-check label, making it the first time any social media challenged the claims of a president. The fact-check label was added to two tweets related to Trump's claims on mail-in voting being "substantially fraudulent" resulting in a "rigged election".
Twitter provides a link, which on being clicked leads users to news articles debunking Trump's claims about mail-in voting fraud. The label on the tweets says: "Get the facts about mail-in ballots."
However, there was no mention from the social media platform on what prompted them to flag Trump's claim as bogus.
