The President of the USA, Donald Trump, has signed the Executive Order and the full text is now posted at the WhiteHouse.gov website.

This article summarizes the key points of the executive order, which stands as the first real action President Trump has taken against the extreme censorship that has been pursued for years by the techno-fascists from Silicon Valley.

Key elements of the executive order:

– Establishes the fact that tech platforms are the modern-day “public square” in which public debate and free speech must be allowed to flourish.

– Confirms that protecting free speech is “essentially to sustaining our democracy,” which is the exact point I’ve been making recently in articles and videos.

We cannot have “fair and free elections” without a free speech landscape. Under the current degree of censorship in America, all elections are null and void.

– States that the politically biased censorship of the tech giants is, “un-American and anti-democratic.” Characterizes Big Tech’s censorship as “a dangerous power.”

– Points out how Big Tech is favoring China and even protecting the speech of communist regimes while censoring the speech of freedom-loving Americans.

“Several online platforms are profiting from and promoting the aggression and disinformation spread by foreign governments like China.” See my related article, “Big Tech Goes Pinko” for more details.

From the EO:

Google, for example, created a search engine for the Chinese Communist Party, which blacklisted searches for “human rights,” hid data unfavorable to the Chinese Communist Party, and tracked users determined appropriate for surveillance.

Google has also established research partnerships in China that provide direct benefits to the Chinese military.

For their part, Facebook and Twitter have accepted advertisements paid for by the Chinese Government that spread false information about China’s mass imprisonment of religious minorities.

Twitter has also amplified China’s propaganda abroad, including by allowing Chinese government officials to use its platform to undermine pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

– Establishes that it is the policy of the U.S. government, “that lawful content should be free from censorship in our digital marketplace of ideas. As a Nation, we must foster and protect diverse viewpoints in today’s digital communications environment where all Americans can and should have a voice.”

– Calls for the scope of Sec. 230 of the CDA to be “clarified.” States that the selective censorship and editorializing of the tech platforms causes those platforms to be, “engaged in editorial conduct,” from which they should not enjoy Sec. 230 legal immunity from lawsuits. “such a provider forfeits any protection from being deemed a “publisher or speaker” under subsection 230(c)(1).”

– Calls for all government regulators to apply this strict interpretation to enforcing Sec. 230, meaning that any tech platform that engages in political censorship or flagging of content for reasons related to viewpoints should be subject to civil lawsuits.

– Calls on the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to file a petition for rulemaking with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), asking the FCC to clarify Sec. 230 interpretation in a way that would preclude political bias, viewpoint censorship or similar actions on the part of the tech giants.

– Furthermore calls on the FCC to establish rules under which users of tech platforms such as Facebook would have to be given adequate notice and an “opportunity to be heard” so that tech giants can’t merely blacklist entire channels without warning and without explanation.

– Calls for prohibiting all federal ad spending on digital platforms that do not respect this interpretation of Sec. 230 and free speech.

– Calls on “large social media platforms,” specifically naming Facebook and Twitter, to be considered the, “functional equivalent of a traditional public forum” and demands that they, “should not infringe on protected speech.” In this context, the word “protected” implies First Amendment protections.

– Orders the creation of a new complaint department to be run by the White House Office of Digital Strategy which will forward censorship and bias complaints to the FCC.

“The White House Office of Digital Strategy shall reestablish the White House Tech Bias Reporting Tool to collect complaints of online censorship and other potentially unfair or deceptive acts or practices by online platforms and shall submit complaints received to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).”

– Calls on the FTC to “prohibit unfair and deceptive acts or practices” that affect commerce.

This is a broad order with potentially enormous implications, especially considering that platforms like Facebook, which censor truthful speech about vaccine risks, for example, is run by people like Mark Zuckerberg who have a financial stake in vaccine companies.

Facebook’s censorship of speech that criticizes vaccines is, of course, anti-competitive and antitrust behavior which is subject to prosecution by the FTC.

– Instructs the FTC to crack down on the deceptive promises made by social media platforms (i.e. telling users they are free to speak) while in reality those platforms practice politically-motivated censorship that contradicts their public promises.

This constitutes “deceptive practices” which the FTC may choose to prosecute.

– Directs the FTC to consider criminal violations by Twitter and other large social media platforms which are engaging in deceptive and unfair marketing and commerce practices that violate U.S. law.

Calls for the FTC to issue a public report about its findings after investigating possible criminal violations.

– Calls on the DOJ to work with Attorneys General of U.S. states to create a “working group” to pursue Big Tech violations of state laws regarding unfair practices and “deceptive acts.”

– Directs the White House Office of Digital Strategy to collect user complaints and forward those complaints to the DOJ working group that’s cooperating with state Attorneys General.

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