Solving the social media standoff

Published June 19, 2020 3:00am ET



President Trump’s love-hate relationship with Twitter runs through his presidency, and the feeling goes both ways. Trump loves that Twitter lets him talk directly to the people over the heads of the media but hates that the microblogging site’s owners lean left and openly criticize him. Likewise, Twitter loves the exposure Trump’s tweets have given the site since 2015 but hate that one of its most popular users stands for political sentiments it abhors.

Those tensions boiled over last month when Twitter took it upon itself to fact-check one of the president’s tweets, appending a link below his text that connected users who clicked on it with a page that said the opposite of what Trump had said. Trump reacted as expected, criticizing Twitter, on its own platform, and calling for the repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That would cause more harm than good, but it does get at an important point: After 24 years, Section 230 is in need of an update.

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