Tech lobby NetChoice, whose members include Google, Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo!, are slamming President Trump for his tweeted threats against social media.
The President threatened "big action" against Twitter following its fact check tagging of his tweets about mail-in ballots, and the White House signaled that would be coming in an executive order related to social media.
Related: Trump Threatens to Shut Down Social Media
In a statement early Thursday (May 28), NetChoice president Steve DelBianco had some choice words for that other President, who he said "is trampling" on the First Amendment" by threatening the fundamental speech rights of social media.
"Conservatives should be very afraid of future administrations following President Trump’s example to bully social media platforms into suppressing political speech," he said. “By harassing America’s tech industry, the Administration emboldens foreign governments to control online expression,” he said. "Conservatives have truly lost their way if they believe that the government should dictate the terms of online political speech.”
Republican FCC commissioner Brendan Carr. backing up the President, suggested on Fox News Wednesday that Twitter was trying to have it both ways, publishing its own political speech by tagging the President's tweets while still claiming it should be exempt from for its treatment of that third-party speech because it was not a publisher but a neutral platform.
Google also took fire from the President and Capitol Hill Wednesday for, it said mistakenly, deleting Chinese language phrases insulting to the Chinese Communist Party.
